It’s nice to get some recognition for Breakfast NY and quite frankly, for myself. Yes, I am Precious won a Silver Cube for Interactive at the ADC awards and as the copywriter, I got mah mitts on one. Read about the project here. Buy me a beer here (which would link to any pub near us both if it were linked.)

Congrats to Zolty and the team at Breakfast. And here is a gratuitous picture of Precious smelling the glove cube.

I should probably also mention YIAP was selected for the CommArts Interactive Annual 2011. Boy is gettin’ some play.

This project did what I think any good digital project should do for any brand – tell a rich and compelling story. I essentially wanted to tell the story of my trip through my own blog and twitter, but then have Precious give a different POV and experience of that story. BREAKFAST sure took care of that wish. At the same time, we wanted to raise some dough for LIVESTRONG along the way, and that worked out pretty well.

Brief summary of the pieces and my involvement:

THE BRAIN/SITE
The brain, inside a box that sat in a bag under the bike seat, was loaded with bunch of sensors. These sensors measured things like temperature, speed, gradient, location and heading. All of this data formed the basis for readings on the site, while certain manual things would be ‘pinged’ in by me as I saw them (roadkill is a good example). I would also upload a new photo from the road every day to keep the background fresh and the site looking awesome. If you want to know how the brain worked, there’s a case study by BREAKFAST, and I also made an ‘on the road’ video talking about how it worked and what I did every day.

When certain criteria were met – a certain temperature, a GPS position – the system would would reach deep into the brain, find a thought that matched that criteria and send it out to all Precious’s followers on Twitter. I wrote all those tweets well in advance (examples above), and created the personality of Precious (more examples here). In essence, I was the copywriter and brand manager. :)

THE CAUSE
The site provided a direct link to donate. Milestones were also set up in the system to send out donation-based tweets when certain financial goals were met, as a way to encourage followers to get involved. During the course of the ride, Precious raised over $7,500 for LIVESTRONG and also got a shoutout from Lance on Twitter. Not too shabby. (It should be noted that this was a PERSONAL project on behalf of LIVESTRONG. They didn’t have anything to do with it, beyond Lance giving it a tweet after it was live.)

THE OTHER STUFF
Precious has essentially become a brand in his own right. As part of my Kickstarter Project, I made a ‘book of Precious’ for backers. The “Yes, I am Precious” book is now available to buy for anyone who became a fan of Precious during the trip, either on Twitter or on his Facebook page. He still tweets – mostly about how I don’t take him out of the house very much.

This is the book below. Buy it!

FREE FLAT RATE SHIPPING offer codes (expire Jan. 31, 2011)
US – SHARE
GBP – SHAREUK
EUR – SHAREEUR
CAD – SHARECAD
AUD – SHAREAUD

Probably an odd thing to include, but here a side project that is kind of related. In one of those ‘know someone who knows someone’ moments, I ended up shooting the bike footage that was projected at the end of the catwalk at Betsey’s fashion week show. It’s also currently being used in her stores. Used a GoPro HD video camera strapped to my chest to shoot key NY scenes, such as Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, and Central Park.

No Direction Known is currently my primary place of writing residence in terms of book writing. Set up to cater to my love of cycling, but ultimately to publish the journey of my ride across America. The entries here are, in a sense, the first draft of the book. There are very few ‘short reads’ here.