Sportplausch Wider is a megastore for sports equipment and one of the bigger sellers of bicycles in the Zürich area. The brief was to attract attention, build customer frequency and ultimately improve sales. With a low media budget, Sportplausch Wider needed a surprising and powerful idea to disrupt and stand out among the communication efforts of their competitors.

As a single megastore for a wide assortment of sports equipment, Sportplausch Wider runs into danger of being outpaced by retailer chains on the one hand, on the other hand, the store fears to be simply ignored by the trend-conscious biker crowd. Thus, the real challenge was to create an eye-catching poster which would transcend beyond fleeting recognition to establish a lasting impression with viewers in the street. Sportplausch Wider needed a strong idea to express its passion for bikes (which translates to «Velo» in Swiss German/French).

A person who loves cycling can enjoy the ad twice. The Robert Indiana original LOVE is well known worldwide and its meaning is obvious, even to non-native speakers of English. Without much decoding the message is clear as the letters are rearranged: Sportplausch Wider loves bikes.

The poster continues to create a lot of buzz for Sportplausch Wider as the image appeals to the deep connection many people feel with their bikes.

A bike is more than a means of personal transportation. We wanted to distil the insight of people’s affection for cycling. By slightly rearranging the letters, VELO (bike) can be transformed into LOVE. And there is no better design of the word «love» than the iconic piece of art by Robert Indiana. We decided to adapt this famous image and use it as the ultimate declaration of love to bicycles. Thus, we created the poster to closely resemble the original artwork – with a tiny but crucial adjustment to the typesetting.