Take a Ride With Tour de frog
Move over, Tour de France—there’s a new multi-stage bike race on the scene
By Abhinav Jain
There’s a quote by British cyclist Sarah Bentley: “You are one ride away from a good mood.” I’ve always found that to be true. In need of energy? Hop on your bike. Stuck on a tough challenge? Get cycling and an answer will come.
My love of cycling led me to launch Tour de frog—a grassroots initiative within frog focused on getting my colleagues on their bikes and strengthening studio culture around the world. It’s been a wild ride and, as we prepare for the 2023 tour, I want to share some behind-the-scenes insights into the inspiration, process and outcomes from the first two tours. For more insights into our most recent Tour de frog, you can also check out the newly launched widget on frog.co.
Prologue
For Tour de frog’s origin story, let’s pedal back to spring 2021. Coming out of the pandemic, I was looking for ways to shake off the inertia and get more active and social. The Tour de France was only a few weeks away so cycling was a hot topic, and that’s when I discovered that a number of my colleagues were cyclists. Some rode regularly at the weekend, while others didn’t use their bike as much as they’d like. My internal wheels started turning and a question came to me: could we all ride together? And not just the colleagues in my studio, but from further afield in the frog community too?
I came up with the idea to incentivize my colleagues by grouping them into teams according to the studio they worked in. Whichever studio had racked up the most kilometers by the point we collectively hit the finish line would be crowned the winner. Simple.
But where would the finishing line be? Figuring out the route was a lot of fun, since it was essentially a virtual layer that brought everyone together — we’d all be riding in our own neighborhoods and geographies, but by mapping the distances to a route we could feel like we’re on a shared path.
For the inaugural Tour de frog, the route visited 12 frog studios in Europe, starting in London and finishing in Paris. In 2022 the route was divided into four stages and went further afield to include North America and India.
1. Roll up, roll up
The first step was to create a Slack channel and put a call-out for frogs to join up. I sent out Slack messages on various global challenges and leveraged the power of the frog network in local studios.
I welcomed anyone and everyone from frog to join in. All that was needed was a regular bicycle and a phone — no lyra required!
One of my favorite parts of Tour de frog was getting to know my colleagues better. Here are some answers to that all-important question: what keeps you on the saddle?
“Bikes for me are transport, happiness, play, training, endurance, exploration, and now also a way to connect with my daughter.” James McKay, frogOS
“Dreaming of buns of steel!” Cris Reglero, frog Alum
“The love for fresh air, efficiency and avoiding my endless annoyance and impatience if ending up in a car at rush hour.” Annenita Bakker Schøyen, frogNO
“I made a choice not to own a car — and that means my bike is my car. So every ride I take on my bike makes me feel like I am contributing a tiiiiiny bit to my children's future.” Janina Sjöström, frogMM
“Ain’t nobody got time for walking!” Kim Gladow, frogMU
2. Ready, set, go!
Next, frogs went for a ride! Whether they were picking up groceries, going for a long weekend ride, cycling alone or getting together with other frogs, it didn’t matter so long as they used a tracking method (such as Strava) to record their kms.
3. frog logs
After their ride, participants would visit the Excel spreadsheet daily to log the kms they’d covered and track global progress. Each ride would count towards their studio total and to the global tour count.
4. The daily KPIs
Every morning I’d share an update to the Slack channel with the KPIs (kms completed, current location and kms left to cycle). The community posted photos and videos of rides and updates on difficulties, new equipment and news on bike rides to take part in.
5. Le fin!
The tour ended when as a global group, we logged enough kms to cover the distance from the start to finish line. The winners were announced according to the frog who covered the most ground, the studio that collectively logged the most kms and the studio with most cyclists taking part.
In 2021, 35 frogs from 13 studios around the world cycled a mammoth 9,833km in 33 days. And in 2022, we upped the ante further: creating four different routes, covering 17 studios and with a target of 13,255km — which we ended up overshooting by 2,700km, since the tour ended over the weekend and many frogs updated their kms on a Monday.
Going for the Triple
Tour de frog’s success was recognized in the Culture category of frog’s annual awards ceremony, the Make Your Mark Awards, and was praised as an initiative that brought people together working towards a larger goal while boosting physical and mental health.
During this process I’ve been witness to the power in our people — it was beautiful to see them all come together and collectively work towards one goal. Tour de frog is 100% fueled by the interest of the passionate frogs, circling back to the power of community and people. We’re currently devising the route for Tour de frog 2023 and no matter what route we take one thing is certain: we’ll continue to cycle from our own geographies while building connections between studios as a larger tour de frog family.
I want to send a big thank you to everyone who took part and supported. There are too many to name, but special thanks to Samuel Belliard and Alexis Desbois for their visual design skills which brought the logo, podiums and more to life! And thank you to the frog Global marketing team for bringing the story to life and creating the brand new Play widget—remember to check it out for more on Tour de frog.
Abhinav Jain — Experience Designer II, frog
Raised in India and having lived on multiple continents, Abhinav is driven by culture, emotions and values. These attributes reverberate in his work and his daily life. He is fuelled by his passion for technology and his pursuit of achieving perfection in everything he does. Abhinav also enjoys experimenting with design styles and techniques and always welcomes a new challenge.
