Colnago was working with some friends at True Communications, a PR firm here in the Bay Area. Mark Reidy called and asked if we could help create a social media campaign and website for Colnago to run during the Tour de France. They had this new bike and this young team and, um, yes. No sell needed. I had previously worked on Specialized and Nike Mountain Biking and love the atmosphere around the Tour. So Faruk Sagcan and I jumped in.

A lot of Division of Labor clients are startups and technology clients. But we still work on a fair number of consumer products and they can be a ton of fun.

The history of Colnago is rich. So many incredible names have ridden Colnago. And the bikes often still built by hand. They’re works of art. Yes, there’s mechanized manufacturing on a lot of levels, but hand-crafting custom bikes is still at the heart of the company.

The V3RS is a Colnago Masterpiece. It’s iconic like the cyclists who have ridden Colnago. The line Icons Ride Icons came out during a writing session. It rotates nicely around like a bike wheel. I usually like to write a series of headlines to keep things interesting, but this felt like a combination of old and new photography would be better. Simplicity. Faruk put the logo in the Colnago O and we set out to attack their photo archives.

The first time I worked on a cycling campaign was for Lance Armstrong when he won his first Tour. (Yes, before we all knew what a lying cheat he is.)  Lance was wearing Nike cycling shoes and we were part of the Nike team at Goodby Silverstein and Partners, so kind of a dream assignment.

This one was sheer dumb luck. After the first week on the Colnago V3RS, Tadej Pogacar was riding well. After the second week it was his race to lose. And when he rode through Paris it was all but a formality.

We had the ads ready and the website up and Mark and his team had the PR machine going. It was pretty incredible. Icons do indeed ride icons.