I'm a little late with this post (as I am with a number of posts - I apologize for that; my life is getting back on track after the move to Michigan). But it's something I wanted to bring to your attention.As I mentioned in April, the team at Plaid was planning their 2nd annual cross-country trip, heralded as Plaid Nation. Done with their usual style of humor and irreverence, this is a social-media-meets-face-to-face campaign that's worth noting.
If you're not familiar with what Plaid Nation is, it's 5 people from Plaid (an ultra cool and fantastic agency to work with - I had the pleasure of doing business with them when I was at crayon) who for the past two years have decided to do a road tour to meet people and build their brand. In the process they've secured a client or two and have impressed all sorts of people along the way.
While last year's goodwill tour was based on the east coast, this time around, the Plaidish opted for the west coast. In their Econoline van (hey - a Ford product! Cool.) wrapped in the Plaid colors, the team went from Vancouver to Vegas with many stops along the way in just 10 days. From Seesmic to Scoble and Twitter to Zappos, they visited many of the hot companies on every tech geek's short list. Not to be outdone, they had some fun with more of the tried and true, like Jones Soda and Sony Pictures. They even managed to have a run-in with the Canadian authorities.
One of my favorite aspects of this tour was the completely integrated way they treated it: from face-to-face interactions to full online access, the Plaid Nation tour was awash in social media goodness. The the web site. It consisted of:
- An interactive Google map, where the team tracked their progress
- A blog
- A Twitter account
- Opportunity to IM the van
- Three mounted van cams that streamed live video
- Dedicated channels on Vimeo and Ustream with scheduled live and archived materials
- A facebook page
- An updated schedule and Tweetup opportunities
- Flickr photos
Not to mention the really cool, retro chic design they gave the site. It made me feel like I was on the stops along the way with them.
Even though the trip is over, the material that remains behind is still worth checking out. These guys clearly had a lot of fun and were very generous with their experience throughout. Way to go, Plaid!
Plaid Nation Tour - July 21, 2008 from Plaid Nation on Vimeo.