Keith’s note: Earlier this week the Commercial Spaceflight Federation and the commercial space community held their annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, DC. True to form they seemed to be uninterested in letting the rest of the country know what commercial space is all about and nothing was webcast. NASA Deputy Administrator Jim Morhard spoke to the same old commercial space people inside yet another echo chamber.
In contrast, the day before this event, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and 2 staffers used a cellphone to livestream his comments to the World Ag Expo in rural California. Bridenstine told me today that he had 130,000 viewers for his live streamed remarks. Bridenstine has stated that he is overtly reaching out to new audiences. Using simple tools he did that. Meanwhile the usual suspects in Washington, DC would rather just be left alone to their inside-the-beltway choir practice sessions.
Oddly, one of the big things that the commercial space crowd wants to sell you these days is constellations of satellites that will offer communications and imaging to the same rural communities that Bridenstine reached out to. You’d think that these commercial space folks would want the broadest possible customer base to be aware of what is coming their way. Guess again.
Look at the net result of Bridenstine’s trip. He’s not on CNBC talking about commercial space. He’s talking about NASA and agriculture and how space technology aids the production of food and supports farms large and small. At the end of the day his cellphone webcast probably had more real Impact than the commercial space thing in DC.
Watch NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine’s full interview with CNBC from CNBC.
Is this a generational thing, an entitled region thing (DC/East/West coast vs the rest of the US) or just a lack of concern for who ultimately pays the bills?
I’m thinking entitled region which Bridenstine, being from a flyover state, may be somewhat resistant to.
I think it’s more a way of doing business they are used to. The launch vehicle companies don’t sell directly to the users. For example, they launch communications satellites for big telecommunications and satellite operators like SES. Then those telecommunications companies sell the services to the actual, individual users. ULA does not do business directly with someone wanting DirectTV at home.
It’s quite possible the commercial space companies are thinking in terms of putting up constellations of remote sensing satellites, and think of the companies who would own and operate them as the customer. The fact that the operators would then sell the information to farmers is one step removed from the commercial spacecraft and launch providers.
I remember several years ago Boeing was doing a lot of TV advertising, which at the time I couldn’t figure out. Yes we all fly on Boeing airplanes as well as their competitors, but who selects a flight based on who made the airplane? Frequent flyers may have their favorite airplane types but again that is unlikely to be influenced by a TV ad. Actually the advertisements were apparently designed to promote awareness that Boeing is involved in more than just airplanes. Well okay next time I need to buy a satellite or a defense system I will keep them in mind.
Per your comment the actual customers are the airlines and other purchasers of their systems. And yet when the advertising campaign was launched the VP of marketing and brand management for Boeing at the time stated “We are closing the gap between the public’s perception of Boeing and the true breadth of our business as a global aerospace company,” Again I was trying to figure out what difference public perception makes to Boeing’s bottom line.
The best I can figure is that they were actually trying to reach the decision makers that I am thinking about, who presumably watch television also, and this was just another (albeit expensive) way to reach them. Or maybe to also influence potential investors and shareholders. I guess I’ll never fully understand marketing (assuming anyone really does), but apparently the Boeing advertising campaign did have a positive impact on the company. So it seems there is something to be said for broadening your audience, which Bridenstine with his background as a U.S. Representative is probably more in tune with than the business as usual types who run the big space companies.
Me neither.
A local hospital likes to sponsor the Sunday morning shows, touting the different departments they have (new transplant facilities, as an example). Except for peculiar circumstances, though, you will wind up in a hospital chosen by your doctor (admittedly, doctor-hospital relationships are opaque).
Certainly, generalized, positive public perception of an enterprise can yield results, often in unforeseeable ways; this feels like a sort of ‘savings account’, at least to me, and perhaps analogous to the honeymoon period so important to freshly-elected politicians.
More to the point, examples that come to mind uniformly involve enterprises that rely on individuals using the service bt not actively involved in choosing it.
Where’s our resident marketing expert when he’s sorely needed? Living it up in Texas, no doubt?!
You also really want to end up on a hospital that’s in your insurance network. Most of the time that’s the same as the one chosen by your doctor, but it’s always good to double check.
There are a fair number of scary stories these days about hospital costs; NYTimes has been running an episodic feature, for instance.
Those TV ads for the hospital are meant to make the market aware of them and build their image. They then measure the image the local public has of them in surveys and use those surveys to get doctors interested in being associated with them and/or sending patients to them.
It’s a guess, but sometimes there is a public mood against big defense contractors ripping off Uncle Sugar. Some advertising to promote a positive image might reduce the number of angry letters voters send to their congressmen. But I have no idea what the going rate is. How many dollars is it worth spending on marketing per hostile letter to a congressman avoided?
Also, some of the aerospace industry marketing may depend on where you live. Keith has reported ads in Washington D. C. newspapers from (I think) ULA. In that city, a nontrivial number of the readers are congressional staffers, lobbyists, civil servants responsible for contract decisions, etc. So in that market ads are going out to the real customers.
But I do agree that many marketing decisions, especially by big defense and aerospace companies, seem to be made for odd reasons. At least, the logic behind them is opaque to me.
Actually those TV ads were to build the image of the firm and are probably aimed more at selling stock than airplanes, a round about way to get around laws about advertising stock. It’s why you generally see them on business news shows or other shows that individual investors watch. Remember, the executives all own stock or have stock options. They also justify them on the grounds they build public support for the government programs they are part of to influence public opinion polls.
Buy “selling stock” do you mean “increasing the stock price”?
Bingo. Creating a image that is more favorable in the public mind usually results in more individual investors taking an interest in your stock. And it probably has an influence on professional investors as well even though they may deny it. Remember investing in a firm’s stock is based on the “perceived” perception of the firm’s future success.
I would expect professional investors to influenced. A successful advertising campaign would affect individual investors and that would (probably) increase the price of the stock. That’s exactly the sort of likely trend professionals depend on. It’s there job to notice things like that and invest accordingly. It isn’t a matter of them believing anything in the ads, it’s a matter of realizing other people will be influenced by the ads.
Where the word ‘investing’ is akin to ‘gambling ‘.