R2integrated (R2i), a leading Internet marketing company, in partnership with Corrigan Sports Enterprises (CSE) announced that the 2009 Under Armour Baltimore Running Festival will be presented online through a new social media platform called R2iSMASH.
Site located here: http://baltrunfest.r2ismash.com.
Created by R2i, R2iSMASH drives interactivity around specific events, campaigns, or initiatives by combining feeds from popular social networking sites into one presentation window. The R2iSMASH site developed for the Baltimore Running Festival will feature live streamed video, Tweets, texts, Flickr and cell phone photos, and blog feeds—all collected simultaneously, yielding a real-time gallery of event content and commentary.
“Unlike most social media tools that push internal messages outward, R2iSMASH technology gathers external messages inward and neatly packages them for exhibition,” said Matt Goddard, CEO, R2i. “We’ve never seen a major metropolitan running festival—or major sporting event for that matter—harness social media in this way, and we’re excited to be aligned with CSE to make sports broadcast history.”
Corrigan Sports Enterprises, which manages the Under Armour Baltimore Running Festival, is projecting 20,000 total runners for the day’s five races all taking place on October 10. By using R2iSMASH, CSE provides both festival participants and non-participants with a unique way of tracking the event and sharing in the experience—live. Fans, friends and family of runners competing in the festival can now watch the scene unfold from almost anywhere in the world.
Lee Corrigan, president of CSE, said: “From a promoter’s standpoint, the media world as we know it has changed drastically since this event started nine years ago. With R2iSMASH we will leverage the viral impact of social media and can give anyone who can not been here on race day a taste of what one of Charm City’s premiere sporting events is all about.”
Additional features on the running festival R2iSMASH site will include a results button that visitors can click to find runner finish times. Site visitors can also view immediate updates from the official time car in the “Running Commentary” feed where they will be marked with a red bus icon. Festival sponsor logos will be interspersed within the Flickr photo stream as well. When the festival concludes, all images, Tweets, and data captured on the R2iSMASH page will be archived and available for review.
“With R2iSMASH, organizations can more effectively leverage social media to promote and add value to their critical initiatives,” said Goddard. “While other social media solutions require costly, time-consuming custom development, the R2iSMASH platform is proven and can be deployed in a matter of minutes. Once deployed, it is virtually maintenance-free, and any required changes can be easily made.”
Early this year, R2i—which has had a 24 percent growth in revenue since 2008—deployed R2iSMASH sites to cover the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation and the Michael Jackson Tribute. Combined, the two sites aggregated more than 300,000 Tweets and texts feeds, and more than 5,000 photos.
For more information about R2integrated, visit www.r2integrated.com. Information about the 2009 Under Armour Baltimore Running Festival: www.thebaltimoremarathon.com