Wavemaker Wins the Race for Zwift’s Media Consultancy Business

Wavemaker has been appointed as media consultancy partner for Zwift, the at-home fitness company born from gaming. The agency won the account after a competitive pitch process.

Wavemaker will support Zwift’s internal paid media team across a range of projects including Addressable TV, biddable media, audience science and strategic planning, working alongside long term agency of record SHIFT Active Media, whose remit remains unchanged, and adding global broadcast media insight and capability to support Zwift’s future growth plans.

Zwift, which allows users to train and compete together in a socially interactive multiplayer virtual environments, has experienced rapid growth in subscribers since 2014, bringing a huge global community of cyclists, triathletes and runners together on their platform. Zwift has users in over 190 countries worldwide and has seen 4m accounts registered to date. With many professional athletes, including Olympic Gold medallists, World Champions and Tour de France winners using Zwift to train, Zwift is a company with big ideas and this appointment demonstrates the scale of their ambition.

With Zwift’s global media operations based in the UK, Wavemaker will be running the business from their worldwide hub in London with a brief that covers core markets across North America, Europe and APAC.

Steve Beckett, chief marketing officer at Zwift said: “We are looking to complement our existing media expertise with a partner that not only understands our growth ambitions but also how to realise them in truly disruptive ways. As we continue to scale our global media footprint beyond endemic media we are looking for a partner who can help us unlock those goals, and the Wavemaker team proved to be the kind of progressive thinkers we were hoping for.”

Wavemaker’s global client president Alastair Bannerman added: “Our ethos of Positive Provocation really matched well with Zwift’s aggressive growth trajectory and future ambitions. The partnership reflects our expanding credentials as the right strategic partner for a growing new economy sector.” 

Zwift joins a portfolio of new economy wins for Wavemaker, having recently also added clients including Bumble, Coinbase, DiDi, Flixmobility and TikTok to their roster.