We’re big Tour de France fans in my house. My husband tapes the race each day and watches it pretty religiously and the kids and I enjoy it too. However, despite the usual buzz around Lance Armstrong, it’s just not feeling as big this year in terms of marketing buzz. (I do, however, think the Nissan Leaf commercial is pretty clever.)

Perhaps I’m a bit jaded because I was so impressed with Nike’s chalkbot last year and wrote a post about it here. I just haven’t come across anything as creative and engaging this year. James  over at at DigitalDare had an insightful post when he compared the core elements of the race – the peloton and the breakaway – to marketing campaigns.

James points out that the peloton is similar to marketing where “all the campaigns sit alongside each other and while there are small advances and changes in their make-up, they are all pretty much the same,” but the breakaway is where the magic happens and a “campaign or agency comes along that is not happy to stay with the bunch and makes an effort to break from the norm and come up with something truly original.”

Where is this year’s Tour de France breakaway marketer? Has anything caught your attention?