Red Bull Vél’eau is a playful cycling race, combining funny bikes with a floating, obstacle-filled course on the water. It is inspired by the Dutch Red Bull “Stalen Ros” event, launching for the first time in Belgium. The question was how to translate the concept across borders and build awareness among a broad audience in a way that felt true to the brand, effective, and engaging for a digital-native generation that consumes content on its own terms.
The answer was an immersive, creative campaign. Red Bull partnered with Qmusic and Radio Contact to develop a three-phase content series structured around registration, preparation, and race support. Rather than broadcasting a message to its audience, the campaign invited that audience into the story, through relatable personalities, real-time participation, and content formats shaped around how they engage with media.
The numbers reflected it. The campaign reached 1.02 million people on TikTok at an 8.34% engagement rate, converted digital momentum into a high-impact physical event in Kortrijk, and demonstrated what happens when media is treated as a community-building tool rather than a distribution channel.
Finding the right voices
The decision to anchor the campaign in radio personalities was deliberate and well-thought-through. Gerben Tuerlinckx on Qmusic and David Antoine on Radio Contact’s 15/19 were chosen because their audiences trusted them.
Gen Z responds to people they know and follow. Gerben’s storyline leaned into his known persona, mishaps, builder problems, water ballet lessons, and more. David Antoine and his team found a listener duo to represent Radio Contact at the event. Neither execution tried to look polished, and that was part of the experience.
Built for participation
The campaign ran across radio, TikTok, Instagram, and dedicated pages on Qmusic.be and radiocontact.be. Each channel served a specific function:
- Radio carried the narrative and drove registrations through high-reach shows including, including Maarten, Dorothee and Vincent Live.
- TikTok and Instagram distributed short-form content cut from longer footage, matched to how Gen Z consumes video.
- The action pages on both station websites gave audiences concrete action points: vote on bike designs, follow the build, and stay invested in the outcome.
The result was a feedback loop. Radio built the story, social kept it alive between broadcasts, and the interactive elements kept the audience invested in what happened next.
The numbers behind the engagement
- TikTok: 1.02 million reach, 8.34% engagement rate
- Instagram: 596,319 reach, 2.78% engagement rate
- Radio (North, 18-44 target): 238.5 GRPs, 31.4% reach
- Radio (South, 18-44 target): 130 GRPs, 22.3% reach
Media as a community-building tool
This campaign represents a shift from one-way advertising to a community-building process. Rather than simply placing its brand inside existing content, Red Bull gave Qmusic and Radio Contact’s personalities the creative room to bring a foreign concept to life in a way their audiences would care about.
A Dutch cycling concept became a relevant, talked-about Belgian event because native creators acted as cultural translators. Local voices, local humour, high engagement and participation closed the gap between a global brand and an audience considered hard to reach.
