Caribou Coffee‘s advertising agency, Colle + McVoy, asked me to organize an InstaMeet (a meeting of Instagrammers) for a very special event that happened on October 4, 2014, in conjunction with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and their annual release of Amy’s Blend Coffee. It turned out to be the biggest InstaMeet ever held in Minnesota, with about 100 participants.

Caribou had commissioned street artist HOTTEA to create a site-specific sculpture made out of yarn. The end result was a 60-foot long structure dubbed “The Arch of Hope” which is on view during the month of October in the Cancer Survivor’s Park at Marquette Plaza (Nicollet and Washington in downtown Minneapolis). It’s a beautiful sculpture made of different shades of pink, purple, magenta and white yarn that is tall enough to walk through as you experience it. The idea was to make people feel uplifted in the battle against breast cancer.

Rough weather conditions delayed the start date of the sculpture, so a team of volunteers were there helping the artist to complete it in the hours before the meet began. My job was to get the word out to the Minnesota Instagram community, which I did by publicizing the event on my Instagram account, and by enlisting the help of several influential local Instagrammers to let their followers know.

Then on the day of the event, I welcomed everyone to the InstaMeet, and introduced HOTTEA as well as representatives of Caribou and their charity partner CancerCare to talk a little bit about the sculpture and what happened with the funds that were being raised. Afterwards we all descended upon the sculpture, shooting photos from all kinds of angles and tagging them to #CaribouUplifts and #InstaMeetMpls.

I also did press with KARE-11 and the StarTribune about the InstaMeet.

ClientCaribou CoffeeAgencyColle + McVoyProject#CaribouUplifts Arch of HopeYear2014