On January 14, my client, friend, and mentor, Mary Beall Adler began the Tour d’Afrique, a 6,850-mile ride down the length of the continent of Africa. She was cycling to raise money for women-led bike businesses in Tanzania via globalbike, Inc.
Mary started training for this in 2020, but due the pandemic, rides were postponed. After a few starts and stops, the Tour d’Afrique would finally be underway. The ride would take her 4 months to complete and with limited connectivity, I needed a plan for how I’d promote her adventures, while executing a fundraising campaign.
In November 2021, I reached out to a former student of mine who had reached out to me earlier last fall looking for some freelance work. Juliette Galassini is a talented public relations professional who I had the fortune of having during Spring 2021 in my Writing for Public Relations class. She was eager to become involved in Mary’s promotional campaign, and with a full teaching schedule starting in January, I was excited to have her help me with it all.
Juliette and I mapped out a plan, met weekly to draft, create, post and promote content across social media, while also leveraging Mary’s loyal network of fans and followers to fundraise ambitiously. Without Juliette’s hard work, creativity and outreach efforts, there is no way I would have been able to sustain these efforts.
Additionally, in January I reached out to another former student of mine and recent graduate, Shaylee Bent to create an interactive map for Mary’s website that connected with Mary’s Strava so we could see her trip’s progress in one place. Shaylee’s map provided another way to keep fans and followers dynamically engaged in Mary’s efforts.
Mary’s tour ended April 22 in Cape Town, South Africa — raising over more than $21,000 — thanks to approximately 41 posts across 4 social media platforms, 91,000+ impressions, 6,000+ engagements, and 4x times the traffic to Mary’s website. A successful campaign overall!
Thanks to Juliette & Shaylee for their amazing work on this campaign!
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Update: Thanks to Juliette’s hard work, I’m thrilled to announce that she is a finalist for the Chicago Advertising Federation’s 2023 BEST | NEXT award. Congratulations, Juliette and thanks for all your amazing work!