Nike + Wieden+Kennedy
Livestrong Cancer Foundation
It's About You
Tour de France

Business Impact: 46% Boost in Livestrong Sales

Cannes Lion Cyber Grand Prix Winner
Clio Content & Contact Award
Clio Innovative Media Award

My Role:
• Creative Strategy & Concepting
• Creative & Art Direction
• Creative Execution and Production

I was lucky to have a Graduate School internship with world-class creative agency, Wieden+Kennedy. This led to a job, and me working on a campaign for the Livestrong Foundation, and ultimately a career in marketing excellence.

The first use of robotics in advertising, Chalkbot printed inspirational messages, submitted by people all over the world via Twitter, on the route of the Tour de France.

The campaign helped Nike promote their Livestrong sponsorship by reinventing the age-old tradition of fans chalking messages on the course before a race. It disrupted the industry and essentially invented a new type of advertising that combines physical robotics and experience with the digital world.

On the world’s largest athletic stage, the Livestrong brand told their story through the words of individuals whose lives had been impacted by cancer. For Nike and Wieden + Kennedy, Chalkbot offered the real time opportunity to connect emotionally beyond the barriers of a TV commercial.

It was beautiful, it was touching and it was human.

For those of us who worked on the project, it changed perspectives on what it meant to build a product that integrated hardware, software, athletes, and a large event. For a three-week period in the summer of 2009, the world revolved around this machine and the messages it printed on country roads.

We received over 36,000 messages via twitter, sms, web banners as well as the Livestrong website. The messages of hope, support and encouragement were spread across the entire route of the tour, televised over the 3 week period.

The Chalkbot Was Not the Big Idea

Many people look at the case study and see a beautifully integrated award-winning campaign featuring TV spots, digital, media, and physical. But the truth is the Chalkbot was just one component to an overall campaign with the tagline “It’s About You.” The Chalkbot was an out-of-home concept, not the central idea. Beyond limited internet exposure through web banners, there was no media supporting the Chalkbot.

It was during the second week of the Tour when the “What is Chalkbot?” video we had shot was picked up by Versus (kudos to the W+K media team for making that connection). Versus (which went on to be acquired by NBC Universal) was hungry for content, so they ran our video which was nearly two-minutes in length throughout the Tour coverage.