Colombia: The Top Cycling Destination
Producing and filming Colombia’s international tourism campaign.
Alto de la Cuchilla, a popular climb just outside of Bogotá.
The Mission
Because of its fantastic mountains, roads, scenery, and agreeable year-round climate, Colombia has the potential to become one of the planet's top cycling destinations for travelers, events, and professional riders seeking warm-weather winter training. This mixed-media campaign was commissioned by ProColombia, the country of Colombia's tourism promotion agency. It features videos, photography, a branding/design packager, and a written cycling guide. Our mission was to shine a worldwide light on the magic of cycling in Colombia and inspire travelers to explore Colombia on two wheels, whether for a multi-stage tour in the Andes or day trips on the outskirts of urban hubs.
The Deliverables
This project’s deliverables included graphic design, video, photography, and a multi-media cycling guide.
The video deliverables were one 5-minute hero video and three 3-minute regional videos focusing on the Coffee Region, the Altiplano region near Bogota, and the Eternal Spring region near Medellin.
Additionally, our agency captured 25 photographic assets and a 40-page cycling tourism guide designed to be distributed at global tourism events. Additionally, we were responsible for sourcing cycling experts, talent, and journalists to contribute to the guide and several live events hosted by ProColombia.
Accelerated Pre-Production
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we faced a limited pre-production schedule of 5-days for the entire project.
Filming Locations
We selected three distinct regions of Colombia for our filming locations, each with its own unique cycling culture and set of routes. The locations were:
The Altiplano - the Altiplano Cundiboyacense is a high plateau in the Eastern Andes to the north of Bogota, ranging from 2,500 meters to 4,000 meters above sea level. It’s home to some of Colombia’s most successful professional cyclists and is one of Colombia’s most historically significant regions.
Coffee Country - located in the heart of the Central and Western Andes, Colombia’s Coffee Region is one of the country’s most beautiful and diverse regions, consisting of spectacular landscapes, picturesque small towns, and thousands of hectares of verdant forest and coffee plantations. In a single day, cyclists can ride across Andean moorlands, down through lush cloud forests, and then through sugarcane fields along the banks of the Cauca River.
The Eternal Spring Region - Antioquia department is a mountainous area in the central Northwestern region of Colombia, in the Western and Central Andes. Its capital city of Medellin has undergone staggering changes in recent years. The countryside is equally remarkable for cyclists, with Andean cloud forest and Pacific jungle meeting the dry forests of the Cauca River valley.
These three distinct locations would provide a perfect in-depth view of the remarkable natural and cultural diversity that makes riding in Colombia such an engaging experience. They also contain some of Colombia’s most iconic and challenging cycling routes, including Cerro Guali, Patios, and Alto de Letras. By producing in these three regions, we would be able to create a campaign that appealed to weekend warriors and casual cyclists alike.
The Story and the Protagonists
We created a storyboard and theme for our hero video and three regional videos. We decided to showcase an international cycling enthusiast and a ‘Colombiaphile’ exploring his adopted homeland on two wheels, accompanied by local cyclists from each region.
Our Colombiaphile protagonist was Nick Perkins, who has been living in Colombia for the past twenty years and has explored much of the country by bike. As a lifetime cyclist, he loves riding in Colombia more than anywhere and has a limitless passion for the country.
Our protagonist, Nick Perkins celebrating with Cesar Grajales after riding the Alto de Letras climb, one of the longest in the world.
We then interviewed a series of candidates to represent their region in each video. We cast Cesar Grajales for Coffee Country, Alejandra Cadena for the Altiplano, and Mauricio Ordóñez for the Eternal Spring region. Alejandra is one of the top amateur cyclists in Colombia and is a fountain of knowledge about the Altiplano region. Cesar is not only extremely passionate about the Coffee Region, but he was also one of Colombia’s most decorated professional road racers. Mauricio’s story is a bit different: he’s a dedicated and curious gravel rider who moved to the Eternal Spring region from Bogota and dedicated much of his time to exploring the myriad routes of his adopted homeland. He also founded the extreme bike race Transcordilleras, where hardcore cyclists ride up and down the three ranges of the Colombian Andes in just 10 days.
These three protagonists were an ideal blend of experience, passion, and local knowledge. Their role would be to guide Nick on a cycling adventure through their home regions.
Our Colombia production company is staffed with competitive and recreational cyclists. Our cycling production clients include H&I Adventures, Experience Plus, Ciclismo Classico, and Bicycling Magazine. We also directed, filmed, and produced the documentaries Esteban Chaves: Behind the Smile and Thereabouts 3 with the Morton Brothers, and our video team was champing at the bit to be once again filming on Colombia’s breathtaking mountain roads.
Cycling along one of Colombia’s myriad breathtaking mountain roads in Coffee Country.
In The Field
The videos were directed by our Founder, Gregg Bleakney, and shot by our Head of Video, Julian Manrique, and videographer, Santiago Ospina, from the back of motorbikes, which provided the best access to some of the more off-the-beaten-track parts of the itinerary.
Throughout the campaign, we highlighted three different riding styles: gravel, road, and mountain biking. This showcased Colombia’s extraordinary diversity and the number of different terrains cyclists can experience in a relatively short space of time. A key challenge in field production was that major swaths of Colombia were still in lockdown, and the story needed to be told with minimal interaction between our talent and local hosts.
Stunning landscapes like this one in Coffee Country are par for the course when you’re riding in Colombia.
Producing the Cycling Guide
Back in our Bogota office, our content team assembled the photographic assets and set to work writing and designing the cycling guide, which was one of our key deliverables. Nick and his three fellow protagonists provided short written introductions to the campaign and their respective regions.
We also contacted cycling experts to provide a series of ‘First Person’ texts about their experiences cycling in Colombia: writer Nancy Pritchard Bouchard wrote a beautiful piece about her experiences riding around Bogota; cycling journalist Casey Fretz wrote about his a cycling pilgrimage to the mountainous home of Colombian cyclist Nairo Quintana; and Danelle Laidlaw, the co-founder of TourAL and TourCO, wrote an informative introduction to cycling in Colombia.
We researched each region's cycling events, foundations, hotels, restaurants, and bike shops. Then, we wrote geographical introductions to each region and a series of cultural and gastronomic highlights to showcase the broader appeal of each area.
The final guide - Colombia: The Top Cycling Destination - was laid out and designed in collaboration with our Art Director, Yenssy González, and ProColombia’s in-house agency.
Check out and download Colombia: The Top Cycling Destination on PDF here.
The Results
Colombia Travel and ProColombia officially launched the hero video and three regional videos in August 2021. They have over 80,000 views on the Colombia Travel YouTube channel and have been ‘liked’ over 12,000 times. In addition, the new tourism campaign was widely covered in Colombia’s national press, and the cycling guide has been distributed among tourism operators and at tourism fairs worldwide.
Learn more about our Colombia production company, or contact us here.
Let the bad go. Follow the good. A hallucinogenic mushroom trip in India.