Sam Taylor
Sam has been there and got the T shirt for all roles related to content creation and marketing in the bike world.
Here we take a look at what goes on behind the scenes, what’s valued by brands and briefly expose you to some of Sam’s stunning exposures.
Photos by Sam Taylor
How would you describe yourself?
I’m Sam, a mountain biking, climbing and generally outdoorsy London escapee who now proudly calls Sheffield home. I tell people I’m a self employed photographer but I get up to a few different things in the outdoors industry, mainly focused around marketing mountain bikes. I work closely with Calibre bikes and handle everything from the studio photography, through to riding shots and launch videos, writing press releases, curating the social media and managing our team of sponsored riders. My car insurance says “Marketing Consultant” which is probably fairly accurate at this point and helps keep the premium down haha
How did you come to be in the position you find yourself in today?
I came to Sheffield uni with a camera in 2013 to study Geography and quickly got stuck into the riding scene. Before uni I hadn’t ridden much in the way of serious downhill, coming from the fairly tame trails of the Surrey hills and was quite happy taking a camera on rides and taking photos of my talented mates as they rode the steep tracks and intimidating jumps of Wharny. From here I travelled to races with friends and took photos for Roots and Rain whilst they rode and I found shooting nationals and world cups was a great way of honing my skills with the constant stream of talented riders providing the perfect scenario to practice shooting. If you take enough decent photos at races and tag enough teams/riders/brands you’ll get noticed and I started to get my photos reposted regularly and job offers coming in. My first paid shoot was for Flare clothing and I remember being so amazed that I’d managed to charge that amount of money for something I was so happy doing anyway. It turns out I probably undercharged but I was stoked on the whole thing and I’m really grateful to Ben and Hannah for the opportunity. Soon after I did a few shoots for Airdrop, again contacted through Instagram, and at the time was working on a lot of projects with Gee Milner, it sort of snowballed from there and we’ve since parted ways as I became keen to shoot video but we were a good team for a few years and pushed each other to improve in our weaker areas. Nowadays I’ve got my own office in town shared with a couple of product designers and spend my time planning ideas to pitch to brands I’ve already got good relationships with.
Ben Crookes riding the Calibre Line 29.
What projects and companies have you been involved with?
I’ve done the odd shoot for a few bike and outdoors brands over the years, Lowe Alpine, Airdrop, KTM, Specialized, a bit of editing recently for Bontrager and Juliana but the main clients are JD Sports (GO Outdoors/Blacks/Millets), Alpkit and The Rider Firm (Privateer, Cairn, Hunt).
You've become the 'marketing' guy at Calibre bikes. Has that unveiled some surprises or things that it's taught you being on the other side of the table?
I work as a self employed contractor who essentially provides the mountain bike knowledge to an own-brand in the JD Sports head office to give Calibre the credibility it needs (and deserves) in the jargon-heavy, mountain bike industry. It’s taught me a lot about managing budgets and perceived value of assets in the sport, be that calculating the return on an ad spend in a magazine or a sponsored rider putting in a top 20 result in an EWS. Every element of marketing is a balancing act between spend and return on investment.
How problematic is the inevitable bombardment of requests for sponsorship? Could you quantify the volume of requests or trends?
It’s not problematic but does represent a significant percentage of the messages we get to the Calibre social media pages. Probably 1 in 5 messages is a sponsorship request and the majority of them are a one line message that says “please can you sponsor me?” or words to that effect. Most are probably under 18 and have very few posts on their Instagram profiles, or little evidence that they’re a good option for a brand to sponsor. With the number of requests we get, at this point it’s essentially a straight up no because the sort of rider we’d be looking to support at Calibre would be someone who’s polite and already producing good content.
Ali Baron for the Calibre Sentry Launch, New Zealand.
What's the most common request or misconception?
Most people messaging asking for sponsorship haven’t considered what they can offer a brand in return for a bike/support and if it’s anything different from riders we already sponsor. They also often seem to think there’s an endless pot of bikes/budget to sponsor people all year round but often we make those decisions at a specific time of the year and have little room for wriggle room from that point onwards.
Do you try and respond to everyone?
I try and reply to everyone and if they’ve put together a reasonable application, give them a bit of feedback.
How do you respond to the folks that are a bit off the mark?
I think the people that don’t put any effort into their message are the sorts of people that just want the prestige of being “sponsored”, so I normally give them a reminder that mountain biking is about having fun on your bike and that if you get out and ride lots, the rest will take care of itself.
If there's any one message you could spread to every sponsorship seeking rider what would it be?
Be honest with yourself when answering these questions:
Can I offer the brand something they don’t already have or can’t do themselves?
Is what I can offer worth the cost/risk of them sending me a bike when I might not deliver the goods?
Have I got a track record of providing good content/results?
Summary: if you were that brand would you honestly give you a bike/support over the next rider? If not, why not, and what can you do to improve your chances?
When you support a rider what's the process for deciding who to support?
For a number of reasons, the main thing is that we like the person. We have to deal with them on shoots, they represent the brand on social media and when riding, so the key starting point is that they’re a decent person.
Once we’ve found a good egg it comes down to what we need of the rider. Is it someone who we’re calling on regularly for shoots? In that case the top things are that they’re local or easy to call on at short notice, and that they’re stylish on a bike, fit and consistent in their riding to make filming days more efficient. If we’re looking for a rider to film, social media presence is less important but a nice bonus. See Ben Crookes (@ben.crookes) as a good example, he’s a local Sheffield lad, super easy to work with and very fit so can keep going all day.
Ben Crookes for the Calibre Triple B launch.
Then we’ve got Ali Baron (@alistairbaron) on the team, he’s another of our photoshoot riders, also has a good presence on social media and is a good presenter for when we need pieces shot to camera, as well as sharing Ben’s fitness and consistency when it comes to skilful riding. This can’t really be overstated enough, the ability to smash out a mid trail manual or huge whip for 10 shots in a row for a video is a rare thing and super valuable on shoot days. They’re also able to ride at a high level but stay comfortably within their skill level so if we’re on a shoot abroad for example, they’re unlikely to go wild and write themselves off on day 1.
Next we’re looking for talented riders who produce high quality content regularly, this often means sponsoring riders who are either photographers/filmers themselves or at least have an eye for getting good shots of themselves and editing phone mash ups. If we’ve got a few riders we use for shoots them having some riders who churn out high quality content themselves is a great addition. Tom Baigent (@little_thomas_dh) down south is our content man and for such a young chap is very professional with how he composes himself online. Other kids should look to Tom for an example of how to run a mtb social media account.
We’re also always trying to increase the diversity of riders from different backgrounds, genders and ethnicities at Calibre and although the last year has been a struggle with having enough stock to keep our current team going, it’s something we’re focusing a lot of effort on for the future.
Does it differ from what other companies might do?
I’m not sure exactly on the main focuses of other brands but I can say we don’t really mind about race results. Calibre is about getting people stoked on riding and although results are a good way of proving you’ve got good fundamentals, we always say to our riders at races that it’s more about them enjoying themselves and getting the crowd going than getting on the podium. Ideally we’d want the Calibre practice laps trains to be the ones the photographers and crowd gets excited about and good vibes usually translate to better results anyway.
Is there anything that anyone has been able to achieve thanks to the influence of your support that you're particularly proud of?
I wouldn’t want to claim any responsibility for Chloe Taylor’s good results in the EWS these last couple of seasons but I’m proud to have been part of the team that helped her out in her first season and had a great time with her in New Zealand on the Sentry launch shoot. Watching her superior pace on the steep bike park trails when riding in a train with Ben and Ali was seriously impressive and I’m sure she’s got a great few years racing ahead.
Do you have examples of when the correct riders have paid dividends in how they work and operate?
On that NZ shoot we had 5 days shooting, probably 4 of which we were all pretty jet lagged and had pre-sunrise starts every morning. All of our heads were in a complete muddle and for the riders to be able to keep focused and keep the pace high all week was a testament to how good they all are on a bike and their work ethic on shoots.
Calibre Sentry Launch, New Zealand.
Steering back to camera work, are there any projects you've been particularly proud of or that are standouts?
I’d have to say the photos from the sunrises on that trip were some of the shots I’m most proud of. They formed the basis of the launch material for the Calibre Sentry and were plastered across magazines and websites for a few months. It was the culmination of a lot of work behind the scenes from the whole crew so to have had amazing light and talented riders to work with was a huge bonus and really brought the whole package together.
The photo I’m most proud of is a half hour long exposure shot stacked photo of my mate climbing a sea arch on Lundy Island with the Milky Way above him, lit by his head torch trail. The whole thing was the most incredible experience of my life, from the 2am ab down this huge granite arch to be greeted by inquisitive seals, to the crazy climb back out 5 4 hours later where our rope was nearly catastrophically cut through, the whole thing was one hell of an adventure and I’m incredibly stoked with the photo we got out of it.
Climbing Lundy Island
At the other end of the scale are there any that were flops, didn't work out or didn't enjoy for whatever reason? It can't be all sunshine and rainbows.
I’ve had a few minor problems on a handful of shoots along the way; over run by midges, shoot-ending mechanicals, riders being less fit than we’d anticipated etc. but nothing totally catastrophic, touch wood!
Is there anything that's taken you by surprise or things you've had to learn as a freelancer in this industry?
If you can get your proposal in front of the right person at the right time and they understand what you’re trying to produce, people are keen to listen and often want to get stuck in because if it’s a good idea you’ve saved them a lot of planning time. However, if you mistime something or get the wrong person at the wrong time you just don’t get a reply to your email and that’s that. The bike industry is so small everyone’s doing 3 jobs at once so it’s often hard to pin down the marketing guys (this is coming from a photographers point of view).
Is there anything you'd like to see the industry do better?
Representation of minorities in the sport, be that women, ethnic minorities or other under represented groups. Some brands do a good job for this and have done for years, Rapha definitely comes to mind. I still struggle with knowing how best to approach the problem though and have spoken to people from various groups for advice so when we’re back in a position to start supporting riders again it’s something that’s going to be top of the list.
Have you worked on any projects yourself or plan to in the future where there is an idea to achieve some kind of step change with?
I’m going to be working with the Alpkit foundation this year on a variety of projects on that general subject, looking forward to sharing the details soon!
Do you have any pet peeves for how content is interpreted these days?
Video wise I’m quite enjoying the rise of the Instagram “reel” format, stacking a few phone clips and putting a song over the top. It allows for people to make high quality little videos really quickly and I think they’re quite good fun to produce myself with either clips from my big camera or just phone clips. HOWEVER, the amount of trap music is getting to me, can we not do better? Maybe that’s an issue with popular music culture rather than mountain bikers but I think it’s important for the youth of today to educate themselves on the decades of bangers we’ve had already.
Photo wise I think the good shots usually stand above the rest and get recognition, but when it comes to the Pinkbike photo of the year comp I’ll never understand the upvoting of an oversaturated berm explosion shot over a stunning photo with amazing natural light and sick riding.
Other things that can stay in 2020 include shralping turns with 15 PSI in the tyres, overuse of poorly edited “film” style filters mid-video and Toyota mtb marketing campaigns.
Do you think good quality content can be under appreciated nowadays?
I think the high quality content is appreciated by the right people and if you want to create squeaky clean videos or photos, keep going because eventually the right client will see it and be stoked. If you want to put out slapped together pan and zoom edits with fast paced sick riding, again if you like producing it, crack on, just be aware that you might be limiting your audience. I think there’s a time and a place for both.
Any predictions for the direction that content creation will go?
I think the riders that have an eye for a good photo or are good at editing their own phone clips will shine in the new few years. Jasper Penton and Laurie Arthur come to mind. 10s seems to be about the attention span of most people on social media these days so if you can get a solid 3 or 4 clips in there with a good song you’re onto a winner.
Is there anything you wish you could tell your younger self?
Move to Sheffield earlier.
Outside of bikes what floats your boat?
Climbing is what I do to keep fit and entertained these days but I’m cooking up some pretty cool bike/climb adventures to get stuck into when the world returns to normal.
