Delivering Customisable Experiences at the Great North Run 2023
The Brief
The Great Run Company – the organisers behind numerous running events across the length and breadth of the UK – reached out to us when looking to add a fun activation in the ‘Finishers Village’ for the world’s biggest half marathon, The Great North Run.
This wasn’t just to be an activation for runners, though. It was crucial that our proposed activation could also be enjoyed by spectators as well as those participating.
As well as being an activation which could be enjoyed by all, other objectives set out in the brief included:
Increase the reach of The Great North Run
Raise awareness of the headline sponsor, AJ Bell
Harvest participant data
Give runners and spectators a fun, highly shareable experience
The Solution
With key objectives such as inclusivity, shareability and collecting user data, we delivered a green screen activation which produced personalised animated GIFs for users to share on the spot.
Stationed inside a large marquee, we created an outdoor green screen studio, with three photo booths lined up side by side. Given the tens of thousands of people who were expected to attend the run, using three booths allowed us to facilitate as many experiences as possible.
Through the application of vinyl wraps (which were printed and applied in-house), the booths themselves sported AJ Bell branding on them, to help with the brand awareness piece.
The booths themselves weren’t the only branded element of the activation, though. An AJ Bell branded overlay was applied to every single piece of content captured by all three booths, ensuring that the brand was front and centre every time a user shared their animated GIF.
To make the activation as inclusive as possible, various presets were created, from which users could choose. There were specific animated backgrounds created for those who took part in the run and alternative ones created for those who were spectating, meaning there was something for everyone.
Furthermore, there was a custom element which was also included in the activation. Should they want to, using the booths’ built-in touchscreens, participants could add their time from the run. And what’s more a similar customisation was also available for spectators, giving them the option to input the name of the runner who they were supporting on the day. This helped to make each individual experience truly unique.
Another objective of the brief was to capture as much user data as possible. To help facilitate this, we restricted the sharing options (usually email, text message and printouts) to email sharing only. By restricting sharing to email only, and coupling it with a GDPR-compliant opt-in, we were able to harvest the data of every activation participant.
All these elements came together to create a truly fun, engaging and memorable activation.
The Results
The solution we provided for the Great North Run generated some fantastic results.
Other than a period of time which saw rain of biblical proportions, the activation itself was busy throughout the entire day, and welcomed hundreds of members of the public who wanted their personalised Great North Run GIF.
Drilling down into the activation statistics, we were thrilled to see some fantastic numbers. Throughout the duration of the activation, we created over 280 animated GIFs – which roughly equates to 53 GIFs being created per hour.
Furthermore, we discovered that there were over 350 online shares of the created content, with an estimated reach of over 23,500!
And finally, through our data capture exercise, we were able to harvest the data of 306 users for AJ Bell, giving them a fantastic number of contacts to add to its database.
When revisiting the key objectives set out in the brief, and measuring them against our activation analytics, we’re delighted to see that we delivered on each of them:
Increase the reach of The Great North Run – estimated reach of 23,700
Raise awareness of the headline sponsor, AJ Bell – branding on each booth and all the content
Harvest participant data – over 300 names and email addresses captured
Give runners and spectators a fun, highly shareable experience – over 280 GIFs created and shared over 350 times
Following the event, Tim Atkins, Partnerships Manager at the Great Run Company, said:
“The support pre, during and post has been exceptional and everyone at Social Jungle has been a delight to work with. On the day the team were professional, solution focussed and took the sudden unprecedented rainfall in their stride! The end product was really well received by our audience and we look forward to our next event together.“
It’s a given that we love delivering activations such as this, but delivering them while smashing each objective in the process, as well as receiving this sort of feedback is truly a delight.
Contact Us
If you’d like to talk to us about delivering a similar activation as this for your next campaign or event, or would like to discuss other photo booth concepts, please get in touch.
And if you’re not sure which activation would be right for your particular event, don’t worry, we have plenty of other activations and ideas which are ideal for an array campaigns and events.