Serotta Spins through Colorado

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If you fancy yourself a a bike geek, or even just an avid cyclist, Serotta is a name you’ve probably heard before. Ben Serotta has been hand-crafting beautiful custom bikes in the US since 1972. In the 1980’s Serotta built bikes for the 7-Eleven team (though they were labeled as Huffy) helping legendary riders like Eric Heiden win the US Pro Championships, Davis Phinney win a stage of Tour de France in 1986 (the first for an American), and Andy Hampsten win the Giro d’Italia. Serotta also pioneered bike fitting, developing the first Size Cycle back in 1979 and organizing the industry’s first School for Professional Bike Fitting. Serotta also created the first double-butted titanium frameset, the “S” bend chainstay and the patented pivoted ST carbon seatstay. If you are looking for a new bike check out the best road bike here.

Today, Serotta is one of the most vertically integrated bicycle manufacturers in the world, with its own carbon fiber composites production facility in Poway, California and manufacturing in a state of the art facility in Saratoga Springs, NY. Serotta also just strengthened its leadership with the addition of Stan Mavis as the new president. Stan was a co-founder of Pearl Izumi and later president of Sugoi (not to mention a former world record holder in the half marathon and Colorado Running Hall of Fame member). The newly formed Serotta Sport company will continue to offer Serotta’s legendary custom, hand-built bicycles and also be the exclusive North American distributor of Catlike helmets and ETXEONDO cycling apparel.

For those of you in Colorado, Stan and the team from Serotta are making a few stops at their dealers to show off their latest handmade creations and talk about what’s new in the world of professional bike fitting. Serotta will be in Aspen today and then in Boulder on Saturday and Sunday. Here are the details:
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  • Thursday 4/22: The Hub of Aspen, 3-6pm (970)-925-7970
  • Saturday 4/24: Sports Garage, 1pm-4pm  (303)-473-0033
  • Sunday 4/25: University Bicycles, 1pm-4pm  (303)-444-4196
The public is invited to attend all of the events to meet Serotta’s new leadership team and geek out on some beautiful custom bikes.
Posted in: Biking, Client News \ Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Backbone News

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A bunch of stuff going on…

SmartWool, New Belgium and Aspen Skiing Company win Best Places to Work in Outside Magazine, for 3rd and 2nd times, respectively.

Skiing is wrapping up. Spring is here with good road riding in the RF valley in between snow storms and powder tours.

Backbone recently was named one of Colorado Companies to Watch by Colorado BIZ magazine. Backbone was one of 50 companies named out of a field of over 420. Additionally, Nate Simmons was voted one of Sporting Goods Business  40 under 40 – one of the most influential young industry professionals for his role as Global Director of Marketing for Polartec and partner here at Backbone.

On the fun side, Nate and Greg were up with Chugach Powder Guides with crew from New Belgium, Powder (thanks Kback!) and various film crews like MSP. Check out Adrian’s warm up video  below.

KBack, G-Dub and Nate

Backbone has always loved to bike. Now we are spinning with new clients Serotta Sports, Honey Stinger, Velogear and Jett MTB. Along with this, Backbone is proud to announce Mike McCormack joining our team. Many may know Mike from his Trek, Yeti or Breck Epic days. Mike is a cycling geek and has a 120 lb. dog named Boo – which easily outweighs both of his boys JJ and Tavish. Mike’s wife Emily is a PR powerhouse in her own right and runs Hula Communications.

To see all the official news you can go to our pitchengine newsroom or check it out on our site. Lastly, our good man Ian Anderson and his wife Sari recently added a new son Axel to their family. I realize we don’t “do” baby announcement blogs here so I’ll include that Ian  was recently  promoted to Director of PR here at Backbone doubling up his responsibilities.

Excuse my French but Axel will be a next generation bad ass

Posted in: Backbone Adventures, Client News, Colorado, Gratuitous Client Plug, Skiing, Videos

Backbone Goes to ad:tech

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Life has been busy for Backbone’s Media’s Media Buying and Planning Director, Greg Williams. After returning last weekend from a life-altering ski trip in Alaska, Greg is getting ready to head out the door again. This time, however, he won’t need his ski gear, but instead, will have to dig through his closet for some rarely-used city clothes.

This week’s destination is ad:tech San Francisco, one of the nation’s premier interactive marketing conferences. Greg will attend with client New Belgium Brewing and social media application developer Friend2Friend. Backbone Media, Friend2Friend, and New Belgium Brewery have been invited to speak about their joint efforts on Facebook. The presentation will include a case study of New Belgium Brewery’s evolving presence on Facebook, and will address topics such as attaining a critical mass of followers, engaging with fans in a meaningful way, and localizing social media messages.

Backbone, Friend2Friend, and New Belgium Brewery will be presenting alongside Levis Straus and Toyota- wish them luck!

To learn more about New Belgium’s Facebook efforts read the blog post by Melyssa Glassman, Creative Director at New Belgium Brewery, vist http://tinyurl.com/y2oz6ry. Also, be sure to check Backbone Media and Friend2Friend’s most recent New Belgium Brewery Facebook application (pictured below) at http://tinyurl.com/4t993. If you’re not a fan of your local New Belgium Facebook page, you should become one!

Posted in: Client News, Social Media \ Tagged: ,

Top 15 Initiatives to Benefit the Planet, according to the French

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French magazine Clin D’Oeil just published their list of the Top 15 Initiatives to Benefit the Planet, and 1% For The Planet ranked second for their digital music compilation that came out at the beginning of this year. The passage below (or what I can gather from guessing French words) describes the organization’s mission, rapid growth in the past few years, and debut of the digital music compilation that directly benefits member-non-profits.

1% for the Planet joins some interesting company on the list.

Number 8 is a rice-crispy treat turned into a hamburger:

Number 5 is this ad campaign that would never make it past the drawing board in the United States:

For more about the 1% For The Planet digital music compilation, visit music.onepercentfortheplanet.org

Posted in: Client News, Environment \ Tagged: ,

Hot Tub Time Machine

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If you’ve been watching the Olympics coverage (if you can call it that) on NBC, you might have seen the previews for Hot Tub Time Machine. Almost two years ago we got a call from a production assistant at MGM asking permission to use vintage Kästle skis in the movie. At the time, we could hardly believe this was a real movie, but the paperwork looked legit and there were some big names associated with the film (John Cusack, Chevy Chase)…so what the hell, right?

Fast forward (or time travel in this case) to 2010 and the movie hits theaters on March 26.

Despite the premise, this actually looks pretty damn funny. “Twitagra?” Awesome.

A bulk of the movie apparently takes place in an 80’s ski resort and the trailer includes some gratuitous shots of neon one-piece suits. At the least we’re hoping for a few shots of some sweet retro Kästle skis. In a dream scenario, we’ll see a Lane Meyer-esque ski scene down the K12. “Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way…turn.”

In related movie news, we were also just contacted by a producer looking for gear to use on the set of 127 Hours, a movie about Aaron Ralston starring James Franco….not sure what to think of that one.

Posted in: Client News, Skiing, Videos \ Tagged: , , ,

Most Likely the Only Time We’ll Post Nude Pictures

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Last Wednesday Spyder hosted a party for the media to unveil the new Slippery race suit that is being worn by all American and Canadian Alpine Racers during the Olympics. The suit was on display and journalists stopped by to ask questions about the suit and enjoy some of the entertainment that Spyder had arranged for the evening.

Outside the entrance there was an ice sculptor:

And inside there was a live model who was painted to match the exact graphics of the suit.

The local artist who did the painting said that Spyder is not her typical client. “I usually end up painting lots of liquor logos on girls for parties,” she said. For the daytime event the girl wore a bikini top to promote a more family-friendly atmosphere:

Turns out Spyder is pretty on-trend with their choice of entertainment. This year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue featured the following model in a painted on bikini in a move to skirt around their no-nudity policy:

And at least we were more tasteful than Red Bull:

Posted in: Client News, Holy Sh*#! \ Tagged: , , ,

Black Diamond’s Trifecta

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Penn’s been a busy man of late highlighting Black Diamond’s Power Series and Efficiency Series coming in Fall ’10. Check out the super fun “Justice” named Gear of the Year in Outside Magazine, the fat and light “Drift” and the great go-to ski the “Aspect”.

The Salt Lake Tribune managed to stop Penn long enough to pull a quote from him as did the Deseret News (under his alias Penn Horton.)

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SLC’s Big Budha

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The ‘Big Budha’ from SLC’s Fox 13 is a staple of the OR Show. His coverage from the floor of the show is great, as long as you don’t mind the 4:45 a.m. wake up call. Kenji gets cut off, but Penn appears to be properly caffeinated for his segment, pimping the new BD Drift ski with typical aplomb, while Chris Hillyer from Teva is fired up for their fall MXT line.

 

Posted in: Client News, Making fun of the boss \ Tagged: , ,