CLIMBER BLOG: Nick Pacelli

Why I joined SOTSK

I work for Goodby, Silverstein + Partners. We developed a pretty robust HP marketing campaign and presented it to Kenna, who loved the website idea so much that he said he didn’t want it to just be an HP site, he wanted it to be the Summit on the Summit site, telling us, “Let’s blow this up and make it awesome.” David Roman from HP, SVP of marketing, said done…Goodby would build it and HP would do the tech.

Beginning 8 months ago, I started spending my life in close talks with Kenna, realizing what the site could become and figuring out what kind of access we could get to the climbers while they were on the mountain, like their vitals and other info. About 4 months ago, Kenna invited me to come on the climb. So we went back to HP and said, “This site is a beast and we need someone close to it to be on the mountain to organize everything and be responsible for it.”

I’ve done several large projects but this is the largest fully integrated program I’ve ever been a part of. We organize events all the time, but this EVENT was climbing a mountain! If you broke off just the mountain part of it from the HP campaign, that alone would be one of the largest projects I’ve worked on. Add it all together…climbing, data, posting media to the website, the TV spots, the web films…and it was an incredible undertaking!

As for the climbing part of it, it was my first time climbing but I was fairly confident I could do it. I played water polo for UCLA and keep in good shape. The altitude was the only question and thankfully, it didn’t bother me.

My take away. I’m blown away by how much everyone bought into it. This wasn’t just people doing favors for Kenna, everyone believed in it. It was fun and games for the first 2 days, but once we started getting a closer view of the mountain, it started to get more serious and more emotional. I was one of the first to summit and when people got to the top they cried, even fell to their knees. It had become so much more than a group of celebrities going for a hike.

- Nick Pacelli