How do you take a great company with rich history, but seen as stuck in a cold war mentality, and bring it into the future? To compete in today's technology marketplace, we needed to reposition Lockheed Martin as a forward-thinking technology thought leader. To do it, we launched a new campaign that gave the brand a new voice, and we further defined and elevated that voice into cultural relevance through social media.
At Lockheed Martin, we're engineering a better tomorrow. That is the thought at the heart of our new campaign and the message that would help reposition the brand for the future. To deliver on that new promise, we set out to engineer a better marketing plan. With the launch of the Engineering a Better Tomorrow campaign, Lockheed Martin embraced new and innovative ways to use social media, showcasing how they are engineering a better tomorrow with their technology, and sharing their groundbreaking innovations with a wider audience through social media.
In July, we began by stating our new vision to a broader technology influencer target. We launched with an engaging, two-minute video on YouTube, our brand's manifesto, which has gone on to receive over 1.9 million views. We then pushed out across social channels to reach key influencers in the science and technology fields, including George Takei and Nico Marquardt, author of Rush Hour Physics.
In addition, we knew that those technology influencers were highly visual, which gave us an outlet to showcase the awe-inspiring, visual side of Lockheed Martin's innovations through a new social channel for the brand – launching Lockheed Martin on Instagram during the Farnborough International Airshow. Attaching the launch to Farnborough allowed us to take advantage of the buzz around the event and immediately broadcast our vision and innovations to a broader audience. This was the catalyst for a successful launch that saw Lockheed Martin grow to 15,000 Instagram followers in less than 6 months. The account even got the attention of Gizmodo, who featured the channel along with one of the "most badass" aviation photos; a 1980's image of the SR-71 and its pilots that was shared through our Instagram page.
Throughout 2014, Lockheed Martin was able to use social to promote its latest developments and innovations, as well as align several business areas under the overall brand positioning of engineering a better tomorrow. During the month of September, we showcased Lockheed Martin's investment in the future through STEM partnerships, and promoted their partnership with National Geographic through the content series "Are you smarter than a STEM student?"
As the year came to a close, Lockheed Martin turned to Space to capitalize on the anticipation around the launch of the Orion Exploration Flight Test – 1 (EFT-1) spacecraft on December 5th. Content was published across its social channels to make the mission relatable to a larger group of people and inspire them to think about the next step in the journey to Mars. Posts were created to frame key EFT-1 metrics and make them more relevant, sharing facts such as "Orion is ready for its 20,000 mph reentry. At that speed you could travel from NYC to Tokyo in 20 minutes." Engaging content that took advantage of this cultural moment led to a huge success, with content performing 299% better than the average space post for 2014.
In another first for the brand, we had observed a significant amount of conversation on reddit about Lockheed Martin technologies. So we decided to tap into those conversations and cater to this technology-focused audience further. To do so, we hosted an Orion-themed reddit AMA with the engineers themselves and a former astronaut, Rick Hieb, to discuss EFT-1 Orion and its reentry into earth's atmosphere. The AMA was a huge success, with users spending an average of 3:39 on the page, more than twice the reddit AMA average!
This newfound commitment to social activity led to a significant increase in followers for the brand. In the 6 months prior to the campaign launch, Lockheed Martin's social channels increased in followers by 38%. In the 6 months after the launch, the channels experienced an incredible 50% growth rate. And the new audience was highly engaged with the brand leading to a 153% increase in average engagement on social posts post-launch.
In the end, we had truly engineered a better marketing plan, delivering compelling content and value to an expanded social media audience, and developing active communities who are learning more each day about Lockheed Martin's promise to engineer a better tomorrow.
