Hedy Lamarr Memorial

It's one of the greatest untold stories of Women in Tech. Few know that a female inventor helped paved the way for the technology behind wireless phones, Bluetooth, GPS, and even Wi-Fi. Most wouldn’t guess that she was also a 1940's Hollywood bombshell. Hedy Lamarr was an Actress/Inventor ahead of her time.

I am a huge Hedy fan (with a crowdfunding platform promoting tech, science, women, and diversity.) Susan Sarandon's Documentary Film team Reframed Pictures reached out to me for help raising the $9k for a graveside memorial for Lamarr. The campaign took a month to create, and ran for two months.

Campaign

Hedy never made a penny from her work. Her grave in Vienna marked only by a small plaque. While working on a Documentary on Hedy's life, Susan Sarandon's Production Company "Reframed Pictures" honored Lamarr by commissioning a proper memorial for her gravesite.

To cover the cost of the structure, they turned to crowdfunding 9k for a memorial. The team already raised 3k on Indiegogo. They tried my platform Fund Dreamer to raise more funds and reach a wider audience. I wrote all the entire campaign except for the press release. Had a few designers help with executing images.

Challenge

In the 1940s, Hedy Lamarr was a household name. In 2017, not many were familiar with her incredible accomplishments. In order to get people to donate to the project, the campaign had to tell Hedy's incredible life story, while relating it back to the memorial.

Video campaign

We kicked off the campaign with having Susan Sarandon create a video appealing to Women in Technology. The video generated a buzz, bringing Hedy's name back into google searches. To create a buzz in the tech community, I reached out to Women in Tech, and fans of Old Hollywood who were familiar with Hedy's story.

Crowdfunding campaign

The video launched the crowdfunding campaign. Donations were encouraged through rewards, which included meeting Susan and her team at the documentary premiere in NYC. We created custom rewards, ranging from $1 to $25. Ranging from a thank you tweet, to a download of the documentary, or an invite to the doc premiere.

Social

The official Fund Dreamer instagram, twitter, and facebook pages were devoted to Hedy Lamarr for the entire month. The posts told Hedy's story while driving viewers to the crowdfunding campaign page. I promoted the project through a heavy twitter, facebook, and instagram push.

Twitter #HedyLamarr mentions went up by 870%
Instagram #HedyLamarr mentions went up from 217 to 14,929
On Facebook, people shared the campaign 7,101 times

Fb + Twitter

I executed a massive social media effort using Hootsuite. Here are a few posts. If you'd like to see the campaign on facebook go here. If you'd like to see it on twitter, go here.