As a dominent force in the cycling industry for decades Diamondback Bicycles was losing market share to a saturated marketplace. In 1998 designed a new full-suspension racing frame. This frame required specialized tuning instructions. Access to these instructions needed to be easily referenced by the dealer's repair shop employees.

 

After considering various medium, Diamondback's management team thought that a poster would allow the repair shop employees the easiest access to this reference material. Feedback from Sales Representatives stated that the dealer's repair shops were consistently adorned with chauvinistic posters featuring female subjects and it would be a hard sell to get them to give up occupied wall space to a boring instructional poster.

 

The concept Marcus proposed was to combine the two, and the result was this tasteful and award-winning poster design featuring the new frame design, all tuning instructions, along with one of Diamond Back professional female riders. The inventiveness behind this concept was that the female model would be fully nude and the new Diamondback athelete's uniform would be painted on her body. The male subject in the background was also nude and body painted.

 

The icing on the cake for this poster design and DiamondBack was that one month after this poster was distributed to it's dealers, Sports Illustrated's famous 1999 Swimsuit Edition hit the consumer stands and coincedentially consisted of their model's swimsuits being painted on.

 

Each year a highly-respected cycling magazine, Velo News, awards the cycling industry's product of the year. For 1999 Velo News declared this Diamondback poster as Cycling's 1999 Product of the Year, beating out all actual cycling products introduced that year.

 

The results for Diamondback following this successful launch were phenomenal, and it's brand's standing in the marketplace for that year. Needless to say, the dealer's repair shops made room on their walls for this poster.