Visibility

When I go out biking I tend to wear bright clothing so I’m easily visible in traffic. Today I go out into Central Park for my lunch ride in my favorite screaming yellow fluorescent top. On my way out of the park I’m horsing around at a red light and loose my balance and can’t clip out in time from my pedals and I hit the pavement like a potato sack. I’m intact, only slightly bruised ego. However, as I’m dressed in bright fluorescent yellow, EVERYBODY in the four-way intersection takes note of my fall. Everybody it seems stares at me as I pick myself up and try to look concerned for my bike and not my elbow – I don’t dare make sure I don’t have a scraped elbow until two blocks up the road.

Visibility is a great thing – if you want it.

It got me thinking about a company’s visibility which of course ties in with their economic well-being and I got a new found appreciation for the work of PR firms. How do you spin the fall? Negative PR or no PR at all would spread the word that "Nina has lost her Mojo and fell with her bike, like a beginner at a red light". With good PR we could let word out that "Nina is developing this amazing new fall-proof clothing line for a high end cycling gear retailer and wanted to test the merchandise personally". See? Cool, no?

So: if you saw me fall at the red light with feet still clipped into the pedals (it’s super awkward when that happens, let me tell you), please assume that it was for the good of some kind of ultra cool and rad ‘research’.