The Dojo

A year ago I was meant to run in the New York City Marathon – but due to an injury, I had to pull out at the last minute. So this story had an extra special meaning to me.

The lines of real life and social media are truly becoming blurred – and there are campaigns like this ASIC ‘support your marathoner’ that really expose the power of social media, especially when it can touch us in a way only ever before imagined and dreamed.

Running a marathon is never going to be easy, and having the support and encouragement through the run of your loved ones is always going to be an added bonus. but you can’t always have your support team running beside you. So ASIC created the ‘support your marathoner’ campaign where you could upload a message, a photo or a video of words of encouragement to your runner. The messages were mostly done through online means – and advertised on the NY marathon website as well as on facebook, blogs and search. ASIC even set up video recording booths at the registration venue in NY. Each runner was given a RFID tag when they registered and entered the race (which, if you have done any races in the last few years, you would know as the personal chip that registers you when you run over a ‘bump’ in the race – usually the finish line!) and at various points in the race, when that runner ran over a specific track point, their message from their loved one was displayed to them on a huge screen at various stages in the run.

The below youtube video explains more of how it worked.

This is the first year ASIC attempted this sort of digital campaign within the run – but expect to see it grow in the future. I think RFID technology is here to stay, and its very exciting!

thanks Simplyzesty.com for telling me about this campaign