Mammut
The Mount Everest plans of 85-year-old Mary Woodbridge
«85-year-old British grandma wants to climb Everest — with her dachshund!» This story made headlines around the world.
But it all started very small: To protect herself from the wind and weather during her daily dog walks, Granny Woodbridge bought herself a Mammut jacket.
Marys Everest-Trainings-Berg
And suddenly the completely untrained flatlander wanted to climb Mount Everest.
Together with her dachshund Daisy. 🏔️
In order to finance her daring endeavour, the 85-year-old looked for sponsors: with small advertisements in mountaineering magazines and emails to mountain sports equipment suppliers.
She always referred to her website ‘on the world wide web’ mary-woodbridge.co.uk (now offline)
On this amateurish website (created by her grandson Phil), she announced her project, showed videos of her training, looked for sponsors and was delighted with the reactions in her guestbook. And they came in their thousands — with plenty of English humour.
Mary at 85: Climbs Everest. Me at 25: Have trouble climbing out of bed
«I have never read about dogs dying on Everest. So I think the climb is safe for Daisy.»
«It’s people like you who put the Great into Great Britain!»
News of the crazy old Englishwoman’s plan spread like wildfire through mountaineering forums in the media worldwide.
Around two months later, the old lady’s crazy endeavour turned out to be a viral and cross-media campaign by Mammut.
The Swiss mountain sports outfitter placed banners on Mary’s homepage and drew visitors’ attention to the fact that it is easy to overestimate yourself with such good equipment.
The viral campaign was extended with lots of PR, POS, banners and Mary Woodbridge brochures in mountain sports magazines.
The campaign generated countless reactions and reports worldwide, even years later.
German magazine “Der Spiegel” called it a ‘historic example of viral advertising’.
