Tour de Awareness

• Jul 14th, 2010
• Posted by Rick
• Posted in Cycling, Good Ideas, LIVESTRONG, Non-profit, Social Media

I’ve already written about how you could stay connected to your hobbies through Twitter using cycling as my example. I’d like to point out another very powerful and positive role that social media can play. While following cycling and, at the current moment, the Tour de France, I was made aware of a great campaign for a cause.

First, a little background: Every year at the Tour de France people paint, write in chalk or otherwise cover the roads of France with messages. Most often messages to their favorite riders or expressing their national pride with flags, and even on occasion some sort obscenity to get caught by the unsuspecting helicopter cam for a laugh.

During the first broadcast on TV and later through my Twitter feeds, I began to notice chatter from folks about the CHALKBOT. “What is a CHALKBOT?” I thought. Harnessing the power of social media and following the cycling tradition of writing messages along the course of the Tour de France, folks at home can follow on Twitter, like the Facebook page and sign up at LIVESTRONG.org to send a message of inspiration to the CHALKBOT, a van with a giant “chalk-jet” printer towed behind it following the route that the Tour de France riders will be racing. Your sent messages are then printed out by the CHALKBOT along the route for all to see. With 10’s of thousands of fans daily along the route plus a plethora of video and TV feeds from cars, motorcycles and helicopters filming the race, these messages will be viewed all over the world.

Lance Armstrong wants to promote cancer awareness and is using his celebrity to do so, coupled with social media. A pioneer of viral marketing, the LIVESTRONG organization has had great success with organic, grassroots awareness campaigns. Remember the yellow bracelet craze that raised 100’s of million dollars? They are no stranger to social media, and with the CHALKBOT they have taken it to the next level. Log on, Tweet your message, see your message on a road in France during the Tour de France. Nike will even send you a picture of your messages printed on the Tour de France with a GPS coordinate for you to see it on the road. In addition on the LIVESTRONG website there is an interactive map with coordinates for folks who posted messages.

Today was stage 10 of 21, meaning there are 11 more days left in the tour. This year’s tour is 21 days long, with 3596K or 2234 miles. That’s plenty of room to for your message to be chalked. With so many people tweeting pics of their messages, sharing them on Facebook and LIVESTRONG forums, this is easily one of the coolest and innovative campaigns that I have seen. I tip my hat to Lance Armstrong, LIVESTRONG, and Nike for giving people a chance to participate in something this worthwhile. And it’s nice to see social media acting as the proverbial bicycle that the team rode in this Tour de Awareness.