Russell Working reports in Ragan.com on how Boeing has used compelling stories from its own everyday challenges to humanize the workings of a multi-billion dollar global corporation and why that is important in projecting a supportive image in a highly competitive industry:
"Producing a catchy website might not seem like a major priority for an aerospace giant that competes for multibillion-dollar contracts from governments and airlines.
After all, a defense ministry evaluating various fighter jets isn't going to Google up a supplier in the way you'd locate a Thai restaurant or a discount flight to Las Vegas.
But the Chicago-based aerospace giant Boeing has embraced the practice of brand journalism, which uses storytelling techniques to highlight its work. The website is part of a broader communications strategy that makes use of a practice with its roots in newspapers and newscasts.
"It's all about reputation," says Todd Blecher, communications director of Boeing's corporate office and a former Bloomberg Pentagon reporter.
To be a successful global company in this industry, Boeing—whose 2010 revenue was $64.3 billion—wanted to strengthen its relationships with decision-makers among its customers and to be recognized as a good corporate citizen that people wanted to see succeed.
Not a link farm
The website used to be what Blecher describes as a "boring, bland link farm" that contrasted with several content-rich sites to which it was referring people through its advertising.
Following a reconsideration of its digital presence, Boeing relaunched its site last year to highlight what was going on within the company. Communications staff felt that the website—augmented by Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools—should highlight its successes for the public.
"We do so many things that people never hear about," Blecher says, "and it'll be so hard to get this story into the ever-changing traditional media landscape now."
At no point in its redesign did Boeing officials discuss the idea of "brand journalism," he says. But once it relaunched the site, it caught the attention of author David Meerman Scott, author of Real-Time Marketing & PR, who has been an advocate of the practice.
"This is a terrific example of brand journalism from a company whose products I fly in almost every week," Scott blogged, adding "The dramatic shift in direction brings what was a dull technology and product-focused site to one focused on brand journalism, with interesting stories about people."
In a company of 165,000 employees worldwide, there is potential for an array of feature stories. Boeing's current front page links to a story and video piece on the Phantom Ray unmanned airborne system, which saw its first flight tested recently at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Click to the archives, and you'll find a photo essay on the building of the Boeing 787 and video on the testing of its "quiet technology."
A refrigerated hangar
It has featured a design center where several thousand Boeing employees work in Moscow, and it covered the testing of the 787 in the world's largest refrigerated hangar, which can simulate temperatures as low as minus 65 and as high as 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
The stories are closer to news reports than to traditional press releases. The hangar story includes footage of snow falling indoors and a photo of an employee bundled up as if in a Siberian winter. Boeing isn't hyping products so much as highlighting interesting aspects of their development.
"Boy, you feel it when you first walk in and you take that first breath, and it first hits you," one employee says in the video piece.
Boeing seeks to update its site about once a week. But it has a battalion of experience at its disposal. A core team of about a dozen communicators who guide the website can draw on the writing and production skills of 300 external and internal communicators throughout the company.
Many have a background in print or TV journalism, Blecher says, and they have been eager to try their hand once again at their old trade. Former journalists instinctively understand the purpose of the content that Boeing is publishing.
"We're not on Boeing.com to explain to you the inner workings of flight in an airplane engine in the way that an engineer would," Blecher says. "We're here to show audiences what the men and women of Boeing are doing day to day."
Some advocates of brand journalism call for broader industry coverage and even greater objectivity, but Blecher says that's not Boeing's goal. Boeing and Airbus may exchange an occasional tweet congratulating their rival on a successful test flight (to the surprise of industry watchers), but Boeing isn't about to send a reporter to cover a competitor's press conference at an air show.
Not another Aviation Week
"We're not here to become a replacement for Aviation Week's portal," Blecher says. "We try to be something that presents the Boeing perspective from an interesting point of view."
Not everyone at Boeing saw the need for a new style of communicating. The culture of an aircraft company is risk averse—a good thing when you're designing metal tubes that fly people at high speeds miles above the Earth. But that tendency can spill over to communications.
In the past, the company didn't have to pay a lot of attention to nurturing aviation enthusiasts around the world. It wasn't easy for them "to tell us they loved us," says Blecher, and there wasn't a clear payoff for Boeing to spend a lot of time answering letters or, more broadly, reaching out to a fan base.
"Once the electronic and social communications tools enabled those sorts of interactions to be quick and efficient and global, a company like Boeing was presented with a different set of parameters or things to think about," he says.
The site serves a role in staff recruitment, touting the company to potential employees, but most broadly it attempts to illuminate Boeing for a general audience.
"I look at it as we're not really selling an airplane," Blecher says. "We're really selling the idea of the Boeing company."
No comments:
Post a Comment