The television documentary of the Webtel.mobi Intercontinental Challenge – including the dramatic Search and Rescue of the Webtel.mobi Challenger – has now been made available for public viewing on the internet.
The documentary can be accessed on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWUp-0n2JC8
The Webtel.mobi Challenge was the challenge extended by Specialized Mobile
Provider Webtel.mobi for the first intercontinental crossing by jet-wing. Done
as a principled marketing campaign, it was one of the most successful marketing
events in history - with the Associated Press reporting that up to half the
world’s population could have been exposed to the TV coverage on the day of the
event. See: http://www.aptn.com/8025701A003B2562/(httpHeadlines)/E57E642536B8912680257690003946F3?OpenDocument
Webtel.mobi turned itself into its own television broadcaster for the day of
the event, filming and broadcasting it live to satellites in Europe, the
Americans and Asia for free and unrestricted broadcast by any TV station that
wanted to use the footage. This resulted in The Challenge was broadcast live
worldwide on all the major global television news channels and hundreds of
others in almost every country worldwide – as the company effectively re-wrote
the rules of global marketing strategies and techniques.
The Webtel.mobi Challenge followed the company’s approach of combining its
marketing with an event that will inspire people, in this case trying to show
that it is possible for anyone to achieve as long as one works hard and
perseveres, and is not of trying – even if an obstacle seems impossible.
This mirrored the experience of Webtel.mobi in implementing the Challenge. The
company had faced naysayers at every turn, with every company and entity that
it originally approached to manage and implement the event telling them that it
couldn’t be done. Applying the same approach that it uses in its commercial
operations, and tries to project in its marketing, the company refused to bow
to the negative sentiment and therefore did all of the research and planning
and preparation for the entire event itself.
Not only did the event succeed, it become the marketing coup of the decade, and
was possibly the most viewed television event in history, echoing the
philosophy of the company, which is that “great things are achieved by ordinary
people who do the extraordinary – something that all of us can achieve".
