Be here! On a giant billboard at Times Square

Vans introduces “Be Here,” an interactive campaign that allows potentially millions of young people from around the world to share their image along with thoughts, hopes and personal messages with a global audience via the vans.com/behere website with the best submissions getting live airtime on a giant video screen at New York City’s iconic Times Square. During this holiday season, from December 15 until January 5, participants can submit messages and photos by logging on to vans.com/behere or by emailing behere@vans.com. U.S. residents can also send texts to @vans + message to 87884. The cross-channel campaign runs on a place-based social media distribution platform built by LocaModa, Inc. “

As 2009 comes to a close, this is a truly unique opportunity for Vans to share the thoughts of potentially millions of young people in an original and expressive way,” said Doug Palladini, Vans Vice President of Marketing. “Vans is opening a window into the minds of global youth culture via the screen in Times Square to share individual creative expression, a cornerstone of the Vans brand.”

While every appropriate message will appear on the vans.com/behere site, the best submissions and accompanying images will be run in almost real time on a massive live video screen in Times Square during ten minutes of special Vans programming each hour, 24 hours per day. Participants are notified of their moment of fame via email with a link which allows them to view the photo of their message on the Times Square Billboard and share it via Facebook or corresponding url. They can also watch for their messages on live streaming video on vans.com as well as Vans’ Facebook and MySpace pages.

Messages can be simple greetings to loved ones or could be inspired by topics of the day such as reflections on 2009 and hopes for the upcoming year. With the global scope of the campaign, English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese languages are supported.