When Plan B’s founding partner Ric Van Sickle looks for headspace to sort out the creative challenges of running a boutique agency, he often heads to the garage rather than the shrink’s couch. The parallels between the two mindscapes are obvious once we put them side-by-side: neglected, stale, or low-performing brands are often as desperately in need of passion-inspired makeovers as any mechanical basket-case rebuild project. And just like any serious brand refresh, the years of neglect often mean there’s a lot to fix, but little time or money to do so.
Ducati 250 Assembly
The Plan B Bike Build video project began when Ric ran across a Craigslist ad for a ‘shed-find’ ex-Ice-Racing bike while on a film shoot in western Illinois near Galena. He was immediately hooked by the bike’s romantic racing pedigree in the outrageous and oh-so-northern-midwest-in-the-70’s world of spiked-tire, frozen-lake ice racing. Old school…and way too cool to let die.
After making its way to the Plan B offices where a backroom storage space was transformed into a makeshift garage, the once milk-crated jumble of parts was disassembled, refinished, polished, painted or replaced—transforming the ‘B’ bike into a ‘sixties-style’ 250cc Ducati ‘Street Tracker.’ And while a badass 50+ year old bike build isn’t something most would *expect* to find in an ad agency, it does, perhaps, sum up the very spirit of how Plan B works.
With vision, passion, and a can-do enthusiasm for getting stuff done…in-house, on-the-fly, without deep pockets…and especially when it takes a little elbow grease.
