- Eleftheria Parpis

Goodby, Siliverstein & Partners is rolling out a new HP campaign in January, which sends celebrities trekking 19,340 feet up Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness for the global clean water crisis. The public is invited to follow the seven-day journey in real time via a Web site that boasts a home page as tall as the highest peak in Africa.

The site, Summitonthesummit.com, is built at 16, 709, 709 pixels, says the agency, in order to allow visitors to virtually join a group of celebrities that includes musicians Kenna and Lupe Fiasco, actress Jessica Biel and Alexandra Cousteau on the adventure.

The climbers will use HP notebooks to chronicle their experiences and post photos, clips, blog items and tweets that will be displayed on the site at the altitude the content is created. Visitors to the site can sponsor the climb and will be able to keep detailed track of the participants' experiences, including real-time weather reports, oxygen levels and heart rates. "The idea is to capture all this data from the mountain and bring it to the Web," said Will McGinness, agency cd, associate partner.

The communication effort leading up to the climb includes a TV spot explaining the ascent and what to expect from the online experience in the format of HP's "The computer is personal again" campaign, which focuses on the celebrities' hands as they discuss how they use their computers. A series of Web films that launched this week provides a fictional back story about the group's training and an online banner that also re-creates the height of Kilimanjaro.

The concept for the campaign began when Grammy Award-winning musician Kenna approached HP about possibly sponsoring his planned climb. "It's a good cause," said McGinness. "We took something that could have been an arbitrary sponsorship and turned it into an interesting brand story about the incredible role HP will have in this climb. It's really a technology story."

A tech group that includes an agency employee will travel with the climbers to capture and post the content in real time.


Nielsen Business Media