ADIDAS BOSTON MARATHON EXPERIENCE
RUNNING HARD TO CREATE A GREAT EXPERIENCE
For many years adidas running has been one of the primary sponsors of the venerable Boston Marathon. Over the course of the last several years, Owen has helped adidas to take a thorough look at the experience for runners of the world’s most famous footrace – and supply the adidas team with as many great ideas as possible. We’ve always known that Boston was a big deal to runners – but our eyes were opened in 2006 when we came up with the idea to put a video camera in the adidas village and ask people to express their own personal reasons to run. What we got back was remarkable. Close to half of those we got on tape had a difficult time expressing themselves without beginning to cry. Boston, it was clear – was deeply personal. Some people ran for their moms, some ran to overcome disease or health issues, for friends, family – all sorts of reasons and all of them very close (not ironically) to their hearts. Every year we’ve worked on Boston we’ve tried to bring that same heart and passion to our ideas.
The work you see below begins with outdoor / out of home work. Because many people come from out of town, we wanted to great them a Logan Airport with a big, inspiring message – and continue to inspire the before (in adidas village) during (inspirational course signage) and after the race (finish line messaging). You can also watch a 7-minute video that we produced with old Boston footage. We wrote “Reasons to Run” and the video visually and aurally (pay attention to the pace of the soundtrack) follows the course. It’s a long video for sure – but runners stood in front of it for the entire length – and came back to it after the race on YouTube for continued inspiration.
OUT OF HOME > THE EXPERIENCE BEGINS
The experience began at Logan Airport with inspirational "Reasons to Run" banners
As runners made their way downtown from the airport they saw more messages in bus shelters and on cab tops
THE ADIDAS VILLAGE > BUILDING PRE-RACE EXCITMENT
At the adidas village pre-race event we came up with the idea for an interactive "Haile wall"
Runners could walk up and turn the cubes around to learn more about the fastest marathon runner in the world.
In the adidas village shoe store we had the entire race course mapped out on the floor
We filled the course map with facts and fun markers of the famous (and some infamous) spots along the 26.2 miles
People could finish early by jumping in front of pre-printed finish line. Note the personalized finish message above Tammy's head.
We had people fill out an inspirational message on a tag, and hang it up on a huge board.
At the end of the pre-race event all of the tags that had been hung spelled out the message "Impossible is nothing"