Three McCann producers are building a large-scale social media platform for a group called “Ride With The 40” to raise money and awareness for a national memorial at the United Flight 93 crash site in Shanksville, PA.
The RW40 is a motorcycle club which left Newark, NJ last week and is crossing the country, raising money and awareness for the cause. The McCann producers are riding with the group and working with the Families of Flight 93.
The producers will be using the skills they have mastered in digital and social media, and applying them to something as analog as a motorcycle ride. It’s also about creating a digital platform that reaches out and meets an incredibly powerful grassroots movement of everyday Americans who have made the Flight 93 memorial site a collectively-generated monument.
In a statement, Joe Bargmann, RW40’s head creative for planning and outreach, says, “Americans have donated money to causes using digital media–texting funds to Haiti and Katrina victims, being the two most obvious examples. But we’re building something much bigger, deeper and more engaging. We have created a deeply interactive website for Americans to follow the trip, to get involved, to have a dialogue, to make donations, and to come out and meet the riders. We are using Twitter and Facebook and Foursquare. We are connecting digitally with motorcycle clubs, municipalities, local media, community groups. Nothing has ever been attempted at this size and scope in the history of digital media.”
To learn more about “The Ride With The 40” and/or to follow them online please visit their website where you can see it all unfold.