Nike’s LiveStrong/Chalkbot

I saw this via Tom Fishburne’s Marketoonist – The Nike LiveStrong/Chalkbot, which won the digital grand prix at Cannes.

Nike sponsored a computerized road painting machine that “chalked” inspirational messages along the Tour de France. People submitted 36,000 messages through social media. Each message was printed on the section of the course, photographed, tagged with GPS coordinates and emailed to the person who submitted it.

This is where I agree with Tom: “What made this campaign social was not that it used social media tools. It was about the cause, not the shoes. It’s not where brands communicate. It’s how brands communicate.”