Where they were.
When Crankworx Cairns concluded in 2025, AusCycling needed to move quickly. A new world-class event had to take its place at Smithfield Mountain Bike Park — one that maintained the venue's international credibility while establishing its own distinct identity from the ground up. The challenge was clear but demanding: this wasn't a lifestyle festival, it was a race. The brand and campaign needed to speak directly to elite mountain bikers seeking UCI points, signal serious international competition, and sit confidently within the AusCycling brand family — without being subsumed by it.
What we did.
DCC was engaged as lead agency across brand identity, strategy, and full campaign delivery. The creative brief established three non-negotiables: raw without aggression, credible without flash, grounded in nature without leaning into tourism clichés. The Cairns Rainforest Rumble identity had to feel at home on a race plate and a start/finish gantry — not a festival poster. We developed a full event brand system including a logo suite across stacked and horizontal formats, a colour palette derived from AusCycling's events brand space with elemental treatments drawn from the Smithfield rainforest environment, typography direction, and core visual principles. AusCycling was applied as endorser — present and clear, but secondary. Alongside the identity, DCC delivered the full campaign scope: integrated strategy, media and PR, paid digital across Meta and Google, social media content plan, eDMs, event toolkits for riders, clubs and partners, website content, and on-site media support.
What it delivered.
The Cairns Rainforest Rumble brand was adopted across all event touchpoints — digital, signage, merchandise, broadcast and media — as AusCycling's inaugural UCI Oceania Continental Series Finale. The identity system was built to work across social tiles, race plates, start lists and start/finish gantries, with clear do/don't guidance for all AusCycling and alliance partner applications. Delivered in partnership with Cairns Regional Council, Tourism Events Queensland, and Tourism Tropical North Queensland, the commission positioned the event as a credible successor to Crankworx with its own recognisable presence in the international MTB calendar.
