In summary
For the Club Adidas Runners at the Santiago Marathon, enelBlanco deployed 4 photographers at key points along the route, captured 39,103 photographs, and processed them in 12 hours with enelBlanco's own AI —facial and bib recognition— to build a 100% custom platform. The result: club runners could find and get their photos directly, without going through a generic album. The club's reception was overwhelmingly positive.
The usual problem: thousands of photos, nobody finds theirs
In any mass marathon, official photography is delivered as a generic album: thousands of unsorted images, where every runner has to scroll through folder after folder hoping to spot themselves. For a brand like Adidas and a community like its Club Runners, that experience wasn't up to what the club deserved.
The goal wasn't to "take good photos." It was for club runners to be able to find and grab theirs — in minutes, not by scrolling through thousands of images.
4 photographers, the whole route, every runner
A team of 4 photographers was positioned at strategic points along the route —the start, key kilometer markers, and the finish line— to make sure every club runner was captured more than once throughout the race. In total, 39,103 photographs moved on to the next stage: the technology.
Coverage
4 photographers positioned at the route's highest-value points.
Capture
39,103 photographs taken over the course of the whole marathon.
Processing
12 hours of analysis with enelBlanco's own AI.
Delivery
Custom platform, ready for every runner to look up their own.
39,103 photos, processed in 12 hours, with enelBlanco's own AI
Here's the part few event photography agencies can offer: the full volume was processed with artificial intelligence systems developed by enelBlanco —not a generic third-party tool— trained specifically for facial and bib recognition in high-motion contexts, like a mass race.
The same technology criterion enelBlanco applies across its whole ecosystem: proprietary systems, trained for the specific problem of each project — not generic software forced to fit.
A platform built for this alone
With the photos already sorted by runner, enelBlanco developed a 100% custom web platform for the club: runners logged in and found, directly, the photos they appeared in — without having to sift through thousands of random images.
We didn't hand over a random photo or an arbitrary selection. We gave club runners a full record of their own race.
The Club Adidas Runners, happy with the result
The club's response was overwhelmingly positive: for most runners, finding their photos stopped being a lottery. Many could see, directly, a full record of their own effort — something traditional marathon photo coverage rarely manages to deliver. The custom platform became one more extension of the race experience — and an extra source of pride and belonging to the club.
The initiative's reach also outgrew the Club Runners itself: the campaign generated 16 times more reach than the original target group, carrying the brand far beyond the community of registered runners.
This is what enelBlanco's own AI can do for your next event
Recognition at scale
Facial and bib identification across tens of thousands of images, with no manual work.
Delivery speed
12 hours of processing for a volume that would take weeks by hand.
Custom platforms
Development of a proprietary web experience, built for this event and this community.
Real amplification
An experience so good that reach grew 16 times beyond the original audience.
The same technology, for any event with an audience and lots of photos
What made this case possible isn't exclusive to running: it's recognition at scale applied to a problem that repeats at any mass event. These are some contexts where it already makes sense — and there are more.
Brand events and activations
Launches, trade fairs, and high-turnout BTL activations: attendees can access their own photographic record of the event, without the team having to sort it by hand.
Conferences and congresses
Talks, panels, and networking moments captured and made available so every attendee can find their part in the event.
Schools and universities
Graduations, ceremonies, and anniversaries: families find their children's photos without depending on someone to hand them out manually.
And whatever else you can think of
If your event brings in an audience and generates photos, it's worth looking into: the technology adapts to any setting where identifying people at scale has value.
If this technology worked for 39,103 photos and an entire club of runners, there's a good chance it'll work for your next event.