When your chief client is the military, and you want to trot out your new integrated defense unit, one would think you’d show a lot of high-tech stuff, like unmanned military aircraft and state-of-the-art satellite systems, right?
Not these days.
Chicago-based Boeing Co. is taking a different tack as it gets set to market its new $23 billion Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, which combined the company’s space and communications business with its military unit last July.
It is showing off its wares, but you have to look really closely at a new ad launching the system to see it.
Boeing is putting a human face, albeit a military one, to its new unit in a campaign that strives to fit into Boeing’s over-arching “Forever New Frontiers” branding strategy while still focusing on its core Pentagon and White House customer.
The dual strategy is risky, considering how much Boeing has riding on its new unit as it continues to look past its core commercial airline business.
With Washington going out of its way in a post-Sept. 11 environment to say that any future wars would be fought on new high-tech battlefields, Boeing is trying to shape its message to meet that Beltway talk.
The company also faces stiff competition in that arena. Defense contractor Northrop Grumman’s decision to buy TRW this year was another move to combine high-tech with traditional military. And Lockheed Martin has made moves in recent years to change its military offering.
A new Boeing advertising campaign from its agency, Foote, Cone & Belding, breaks in Sunday’s Washington Post. A montage of more than 3,000 tiny photos (many of them repeated) of fighter jets, military and Boeing personnel form a giant close-up of a soldier looking down the barrel of a gun. “What if a single soldier shared the knowledge of millions?” asks the ad. The copy explains how the U.S. military and Boeing’s new unit are “creating a global integrated battlespace network” to equip soldiers in a new era “so no warfighter is ever alone.”
Similar montage ads will be created for each branch of the military.
Though the campaign has a post-Sept. 11 patriotic feel to it, especially the use of soldiers and military personnel, Boeing says it is not making a patriotism play.
Executives acknowledge the campaign is a major strategy shift but one that was overdue given the new business model.
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“Until we had Boeing IDS, we were focusing on a message about the hardware,” said Pat Riddle, director of advertising for Boeing’s IDS unit. “The challenge was to get the story out on the new unit and show this integration that is totally customer focused.”
“There is a big emphasis on transformation in the military,” said Anne Toulouse, vice president, brand management and advertising at Boeing. “This underscores the transformation.”
Just how far Boeing extends the campaign beyond the Beltway is still up in the air. Riddle and Toulouse say no decisions have been made.
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