The Ask: As part of my role as a Marketing Coordinator at CallFire, I was asked to come up with an entertaining and relevant tie-in for our brand, a B2B, telecom-based software company, to sponsor and document a Mount Everest mountain climb.

My Solution: Humanize the CallFire brand by kicking off an ongoing, philanthropic project that recognizes and celebrates "Fearless, Unique, Exemplary Leaders." CallFire helps small businesses grow by providing easy-to-use telecom software; but on a human level, they also help business owners -- the people behind the businesses -- make their dreams a reality. It was a fitting new addition to the CallFire brand, and we'd begin helping others achieve their dreams under the FUEL umbrella, kicking off the project with Kuntal's climb -- a campaign titled 'Call to Everest.'

My Approach: I studied well-known marketing campaigns and organizations that involved our desired themes, such as sporting events, real-time documentation, co-branding, leadership, entertainment and technology. Influences included the Red Bull Stratos campaign, The Creator's Project by VICE, and the Mission Juno project by Radical Media for NASA. Our climber and a CallFire software programmer, Kuntal Joisher, had a lifelong dream to raise awareness about Lewy Body Dementia by summiting Mt. Everest.

The Campaign: I led our PR, legal, video production, web design, graphic design, and web development teams to build, launch and promote the campaign.

We partnered with the Alzheimer's Association and Climb for Memory -- a charity led by memory champion and mountain climber, Nelson Dellis -- to spread the word about the campaign. Kuntal also wrote several articles for The Huffington Post, discussing his dream of summiting Everest, his life as a vegan, and his experience caring for his ailing father. 

I produced our five-episode web series documenting Kuntal's experience leading up to the climb, at which point, we'd invite followers to track his climb live, via a GPS map on the FUEL website. Audience engagement was maintained by creating an audio diary using CallFire's IVR product, enabling Kuntal to provide real-time audio recordings to his followers. (Kuntal's climb was cut short due to the Mt. Everest avalanche, requiring us to improvise and shift our story a bit, but we completed the projects, documenting events as they took place.)

For extended engagement leading up to the web series' release, I managed a 60-day contest called 'Spark My Mission,' and selected a winner to receive a $5,000 grant to fund a personal project or goal. Contestants applied online and our followers selected from 10 finalist webcam interviews before texting in to vote for a winner. 

For this campaign, I remotely managed teams in California, Arizona, Mumbai and Kathmandu from my local offices in Jersey City, NJ and NYC.