Painting The Town Plaid

By Lauri Apple in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 23, 2009 7:00PM

We all know that rock bands pile into vans to go on tour -- well, why not creative agency types? So goes the rationale behind Plaid Nation 2009, a "rolling celebration of creativity and a demonstration of social media in action" founded by the principals at Plaid, an agency based in Danbury, CT. The Plaids kicked off their tour in Detroit on July 20, and yesterday stopped in Chicago to visit the headquarters of t-shirt juggernaut Threadless in the morning, and Wicker Park's The Boring Store in the afternoon. They came, they saw, they tweeted/photographed/filmed/swag-distributed. And then they headed east toward Indianapolis.

The original idea behind Plaid Nation, now in its third year, was to spend all that time trapped inside a car together working on business development and coming up with new ideas. The tour also serves as a self-promotional vehicle -- and quite literally, as the tricked-out Ford Flex shows. But as Plaid "Internetologist" Darryl Ohrt explains, another major goal of the project is to tell the stories of the marketers, designers, brand lifters, advertising concept creators, and others whom they meet on the road. The Plaid Nation website features video clips, blog posts, photos, GPS tracking of their route, and a trio of "vancams" to document the entire experience. (Ohrt even tweeted about being interviewed by Chicagoist while being interviewed -- that's dedication!). Viewers at home can dial in to the van via Skype and chat with the Plaids as they motor down the nation's highways. "It's the great American road trip," Ohrt says. "We're sharing every aspect of that, so people can live vicariously through the tour."

The first Plaid Nation tour focused on the East Coast, and the second on the West. This Midwestern jaunt finishes up on July 31 in New Orleans. "People say we should have done a riverboat tour down the Mississippi," Ohrt jokes. Actually, that could be fun ...