Title	ALL FOR KILIMANJARO
Brand	UPC ROMANIA
Product/Service	-
Category	B05. Internal Communications & Employee Engagement
Entrant	McCANN PR Bucharest, ROMANIA
Idea Creation	McCANN PR Bucharest, ROMANIA
PR	McCANN PR Bucharest, ROMANIA
Production	McCANN PR Bucharest, ROMANIA

Name	Company	Position
Imola Zoltan	McCANN PR	Managing Partner
Teodor Hedesiu	McCANN PR	Account Manager/BTL Director
Laura Stoica	McCANN PR	Account Manager
George Liloiu	McCANN PR	Graphic Designer
Sorin Barbulescu	McCANN PR	Graphic Designer
Elena Dumitrascu	UPC Romania	PR Manager
Edina Constantinescu	UPC Romania	Digital Manager
Bianca Vlasceanu	UPC Romania	Social Media Manager
Adina Deaconu	UPC Romania	PR Coordinator

The Campaign

The campaign is centered around an iconic visual that triggers the fundamental human drive for exploration and overcoming challenges. But rather than limiting ourselves to just a metaphor, we decided to keep everything real from start to finish. Summits are not for watching. They are for conquering. So, it was UPC who would go to the mountain after all. Everyone in UPC was invited to join. And from them, a team of 15, selected based on their drive and abilities, would assault the summit, carrying with them the spirit all UPC employees and making their achievement an achievement for all the organization.

Execution

The program started with a teasing campaign in late 2015, followed by the launch of the upcnow.ro platform, registration and the first selection stage. UPC employees who registered and completed any six of ten pre-defined challenges (such as environment work, volunteering or sports) and uploaded the “proof” on the platform automatically moved on to the next stage. The second stage involved medical, mindset and fitness evaluations that selected the 15 who would assault the summit, joined by the UPC Romania CEO and a Discovery Channel team documenting the experience. After a mountain bootcamp they departed for Africa on August 16th. The summit was reached after a six-day climb, with the rest of their colleagues cheering them on from home on upcnow.ro. Home, after a hero’s welcome, team members were designated UPC values ambassadors, reinforcing our “achievement through teamwork” theme. They also become the faces of UPC’s next employer branding campaign.

Employee reaction was dramatically higher compared to previous internal engagement efforts – over 90% of UPC employees were reached by the campaign and accessed the platform. Out of the 600+ accounts created a great number – more than 300 of them - took the next step and provided us with the answer to the question “what is your own Kilimanjaro” and entered the selection process. The platform went on to get more than 141,202 page views during the program, an average of over 40 page views per employee. A major win was also the wealth of authentic content generated by the adventure – content that will serve greatly at amplifying the business and leadership message internally. The campaign is now being adapted for UPC in neighboring countries, with Hungary being the first to announce.

The Situation

How do we connect the more than 1100 UPC employees to the new company values without resorting to corporate speak? How do we move the traditionally safe mindset of a telecom company employee some way towards the daring attitude of a start-up company? We challenge them to the experience of a lifetime – literally. The silhouette of the iconic Kilimanjaro summit helped engage all the employees in a campaign that brought to the table legendary locations, memorable journeys and fierce training for the ultimate celebration of esprit de corps – conquering the summit as a team and as a company.

The Strategy

The target audience included all UPC employees, the purpose: to encourage greater individual engagement to the company vision of performance and growth. Taking corporate message to a personal language, this meant looking beyond the safe, current surroundings and daring to tackle challenges, no matter how imposing they might seem. For this, we created a rich content platform that acted as a central communication hub for the campaign – at upcnow.ro. All items of the Kilimanjaro story, whether agency or user-generated were easily discoverable and shareable, and the platform expanded with new channels as the program progressed. “All for Kilimanjaro” is the start of a yearly tradition of exploration for UPC Romanian – both personal and as a team. Each year will bring a new iconic challenge, and new opportunities for reaching individual and corporate goals.