New Belgium Brewery Promotes Going Carfree

If your a beer enthusiast/snob, or even a cyclist, then you'll know the name New Belgium Brewery. They have long been champions of bicycles, having long been the organizer and sponsor of the Tour De Fat Festival that travels the country and ends up giving away many bikes for festival competitions

But this year is a bit different as New Belgium is promoting going Carfree through a video contest in each of this year's locations. They want people to trade in their cars for bicycles and at this years 11 Tour De Fat locations they will give away 11 hand-crafted commuter bicycles and trailers to the winner of the video contests. New Belgium will promote the winners through a Tour De Fat ceremonial event in each city and will follow people's carfree success and folleys over the next year.

This is a big step forward for the carfree movement. Such a huge sponsorship and promotional campaign of the carfree lifestyle is something that only a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable. I'm sure this campaign will evoke a lot of media attention, mostly for the novelty, as "normal" Americans wonder why the hell someone would give up their car. But at the same time this will give a big boost to the idea of being carfree, and I know that I will be watching the google stats through the end of the Tour De Fat to see if it boosts carfree searches.

I must say that I'm a little jealous of the marketing they will be doing. Missoula used to be a Tour De Fat stop, but we have lost our sponsorship and now have the Pedal Festival. Anything that promotes the idea of getting people out of their cars is great and this is the kind of creative marketing that can help the carfree movement really gain some ground. Cheers to New Belgium for trying this, maybe this will make me drink a little more Fat Tire or 1554, although its a little hard when Kettlehouse is based in Missoula