LA Marathon

The LA Marathon had never sold out. It was a tier two marathon in a tier one city. So the route was redesigned and Division of Labor was brought in to rebrand and promote it. A Landmark Every Mile was the idea for the campaign and we shot different commercials about different landmarks along the race route. The campaign helped the marathon sell out for the first time ever.

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LA MARATHON AND DIVISION OF LABOR

A LANDMARK EVERY MILE became the idea because there is literally an LA landmark along every mile of the course. At Mile 3, there is a landmark church that does a Blessing of the Shoes ceremony the day before every LA Marathon race.

LA Marathon Brand design Division of Labor

The Landmark Every Mile type design was used at the end of every video and on social media.

  • Division of Labor is a San Francisco advertising agency that started in 2009 and the LA Marathon was one of our first clients. Peter Abraham was head of marketing for the marathon and he brought us in early to help him figure out the brand idea and a launch video. After working together for a few weeks, it became clear we would be working together on the project until race day.

  • The original idea was to film 26.2 videos, one video per mile. But we settled for six or seven videos about some of our favorite landmarks. We also did a series of videos in which famous LA residents told us about their favorite mile; Pete Carrol, The Rock, Finneus and Ferb, Tony La Russa, Kobe, Julia Louis Dryfus and more. Division of Labor is an advertising agency in San Francisco so we of course created promotional materials for events, local print ads, social media ads and anything else the marathon needed.

  • Yes, the LA Marathon had never sold out before this. Together with the new course design and our client’s hard work, we helped the LA Marathon go from 60% full to completely sold out.

LA Marathon Division of Labor Book

We wrote and designed a commemorative book for everyone who ran the LA Marathon.