SeaWheeze mantra wall

The short version: Visa came to us with a sponsorship opportunity at the 2013 Lululemon SeaWheeze half marathon and a product to launch: V.me, their new digital wallet and online payment service. The brief called for a digital activation that would introduce V.me to participants while fitting authentically within the Lululemon brand world.

What we created was the SeaWheeze Mantra Wall: an 18-foot digital display where participants added personal mantras and photos through a custom iPad app, saw their message appear live on the wall, and received a shareable version to take with them. Over 700 unique mantras were added during the event, with reach well beyond that as many participants added theirs as groups.

My role: Creative lead on the project, working with a team of art directors, production, and account management at M Marketing, and an external digital and experiential partner who brought the installation to life.

Several layers of complexity made this project demanding.

Working within two brand systems simultaneously. The installation had to satisfy both Lululemon and Visa, each with their own design guidelines, visual language, and approval processes. Colour palettes, design elements, photography, and the overall creative expression all needed to reflect the SeaWheeze event identity while incorporating Visa’s brand presence where appropriate. Every element required sign-off from both partners.

The scale of the installation. Building an 18-foot digital display is not a straightforward undertaking. It required sourcing display panels that would create as seamless a surface as possible, designing the creative specifically around those specifications, engineering a structure that could safely hold the screens, and networking the iPads to the system so participant content could appear on the wall in real time. The physical scale of the display also created specific design challenges: what works at screen size behaves very differently at 18 feet.

Content integrity. With a live, publicly displayed user-generated content system, we needed safeguards in place. We built in content delays and keyword filtering to catch and block anything inappropriate before it could appear on the wall. Getting this right was critical: a single incident would have undermined the entire experience.

The app experience. The iPad app had to be simple enough for anyone to use in a busy event environment, while capturing everything needed: the participant’s mantra, their photo, contact information for follow-up, and consent. Character limits for the display had to be calculated to work across the full range of message lengths and still read legibly at scale. We also had to train event staff who would be on-site as both installation guides and V.me brand ambassadors.

The creative concept centred on something the SeaWheeze audience already had: personal mantras and messages of encouragement. Runners and fitness participants often carry motivating phrases or intentions with them, and many wanted to share that energy with fellow participants. The installation gave those thoughts a public moment, displayed at a scale that matched the energy of the event.

The app experience was designed to feel immediate and effortless. Participants added their mantra and photo, saw their message appear on the wall, and were done. The interaction was short by design: the event was busy, the moment needed to be accessible to everyone, and the wall itself was the payoff.

Beyond the installation, each participant received their personal mantra in a format designed for easy sharing on social channels, extending the reach of the experience beyond the event itself. A selection of mantras was also woven into a video, combined with event footage, that was screened at the end-of-event concert in front of an audience of over 15,000 people.

The V.me integration was woven into the experience through the ambassador team and the follow-up communication, keeping the product presence relevant without letting it overshadow the participant experience.

Over 700 unique mantras were added to the wall during the event, with reach well beyond that number as many participants contributed as groups. Participants were photographed in front of the display, particularly when their own mantra appeared, creating organic social sharing throughout the event.

The mantra video screened at the closing concert brought the content full circle, giving participants a collective moment at the end of a day built around individual effort.

The most important decision on this project was keeping the participant experience at the centre of every choice. The installation was technically complex and commercially motivated, but neither of those things could be visible to the person standing in front of it. What they needed to feel was that this was for them, not at them.

The mantra concept worked because it was genuine to the audience. These were real runners with real intentions and real things to say to each other, and the wall gave those thoughts a moment they hadn’t expected. That authenticity is what made the social sharing organic and what made the installation feel like part of the event rather than a brand interruption.