Abstract
The Boeing Company is a global manufacturer of airplanes, aerospace and defense products. The company, founded in 1916 is currently one of the largest manufacturers of commercial and military aircrafts, with a product range consisting of large wide bodied jet liners such as the 747-8, 787-Dreamliner and 777, narrow body aircrafts such as the 737, military aircrafts, business jets and freighter aircrafts. The company also has product offerings for the defense and aerospace industries and is a major supplier to NASA. The Chicago headquartered company employs approximately 169,000 employees, has presence in over 150 countries and works with over 23,000 suppliers worldwide .
Boeing has always been perceived as a high value brand known for its innovation and contributions made to the airline and aerospace industries. Over the years, Boeing has built a formidable reputation as one of the most trusted and well-known brands in the world, featuring regularly on leading periodical such as Barron’s and BusinessWeek’ .
This essay tries to analyze the birth of the brand, the upkeep, the evolution and the challenges faced based on the ‘Dynamics’ competency as discussed in- “Brand Atlas Branding Made Visible”. This essay achieves its objectives by developing an understanding on the industry trends, customer preferences, geo-political updates and technological advances that has grasped the industry. The major factors covered in this report include Global Sourcing, Design Thinking, Word of Mouth, Social Networks and Crowdsourcing.
Keywords: Boeing, Dynamics, brand
Literature Review
This essay analyzes the evolution of the Boeing brand in its nearly 100 years of existence. From its humble beginning in 1916 to World War II, the jet age, jumbo jets and now with customers across the globe waiting for their deliveries including the latest Dreamliner, it has been an amazing journey for Boeing to build, upkeep and revolutionize its brand, enhance the visibility and make it one of the most respected brands in the world. Let us look into the major factors under the dynamics competency which has contributed to branding a product idea in Boeing.
Global Sourcing
For the purpose of analyzing this factor, let us study the case of Boeing’s latest product- the 787 Dreamliner. By developing this product, Boeing wanted to make itself visible as the manufacturer of the future by breaking away from the conventional methods of design, procurement, development and marketing. This was the first serious attempt form Boeing in many years to make the company visible as the brand of the future.
The supply chain methodology adopted for the development of 787 was a paradigm shift from the traditional models, which was meant to reduce the time to market and the associated development costs. The baseline of the new strategy was to categorize the suppliers and make the tier 1 as partners, thus reducing the supplier count (with whom Boeing deals with) to just 50 from thousands in the traditional model. The 50 tier 1 suppliers who are also the strategic partners will build sections for Boeing under risk sharing contracts. The supplier will work with Boeing in a high risk, high reward model, where the supplier will receive higher profit margin per plane than the conventional model. By implementing this strategy, Boeing was able to outsource approximately 70% of the components and will manufacture only the remaining 30%. Whereas it took 30 days for Boeing to perform the final assembly in the traditional model, it was reduced to just 3 days in the new model, thus speeding up the delivery.
The major disadvantages of this strategy were that Boeing had no direct control over the tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers. Also, there was an over dependency on the tier -1 suppliers and the delay and failure with any one of them held the risk of the whole process getting delayed. Even though there were many glitches initially in this model, the post stabilization scenario was bright and Boeing was able to meet its targets.
Design Thinking
Boeing is a large conglomerate; their whole operation can be categorized into five major divisions which spread across commercial airplanes, defense, aerospace, engineering and technology. Not very long ago, each of these companies operated like separate entities and there was no unity among them when it came to branding. Still a vast majority of the public believes Boeing as a company which is only into manufacturing and selling airplanes.
Things began to change for good when a brand audit was conducted in 2006 which revealed the weaknesses and lack of unity among the separate entities. The audit team headed by Jim Newcomb, Director of Brand Management and Promotion found that the various marketing collaterals and other exhibits appeared to come from completely different organizations and appeared dated, when compared to the competition .
Fresh efforts were launched in 2007 to align Brand Management & Advertising Organization, Creative Services, Marketing Communications and Customer Relations Organizations. The team was formed with a mission to meet three critical goals-
- An all new Boeing brand which is unified and modern
- Reduce the confusion among the customers in finding information about Boeing
- Promote Lean Design Principles to reduce costs and waste
Word of Mouth
The word of mouth publicity has a big role to play in the branding exercise. The company has done all the hard work and created the brand, it is the end user or the customer who is going to evaluate if the company has done a good job or not. If the job is good, the customers will appreciate it and the word will spread; if it is bad, the word will spread even faster. Hence it is the responsibility of Boeing or any other company to make sure that the hard work done in the branding exercise has actually reached the customers and they are appreciating it. Word of mouth publicity has the potential to make or break a brand.
Let us analyze this factor by bringing back the case of 787-Dreamliner. The Dreamliner is a unique aircraft, it uses more composite materials than any other aircrafts and is claimed to be the most fuel efficient and silent aircrafts of modern times. Widespread campaigns were conducted by Boeing to take this message to their customers and travelling public through various forums, social media, promotional activities, air shows etc. The customers were able to touch and feel the newness of the aircraft and the innovations and technologies enabling the modernity. The interiors of the aircraft are widely customizable with multiple seating configurations, options for mood lighting, efficient space utilization enabled by design expertise etc. The perception was created that this plane is the one for the future and customers appreciated Boeing for its investment in innovation and technology. Though the spate of battery on fire incidents affected the reputation, Boeing was quick to act and made the grounded crafts fly again in the quickest possible time.
Through Dreamliner, Boeing has won the confidence of its customers and was able to instill a sense of pride in them in getting associated with the brand. Once proven, there is no looking back and Boeing is currently sitting on a healthy book of 1055 orders from 58 customers worldwide as of November 2014.
Social Networks
Boeing has been one of the pioneers in adopting social media and social network technologies and has always used them to promote their branding. Boeing has taken care to customize its brand messaging in accordance with the latest technological advances and customer preferences. They have a dedicated Social Media Center which manages their twitter accounts, Flickr, You Tube, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. And their focus is not just on the social media networking; Boeing has also developed one of the largest intranets in the world. Boeing is a huge organization with around 170,000 employees across 5 continents, around 150 customers, 23,000 suppliers and sales and manufacturing operations spread across the world. Hence it is highly imperative for them to have a networking platform with major focus on social networking and as a mode of communication with the various stakeholders.
I will analyze the social media activities followed by their internal social networking portal.
Social Media. Boeing has a very strong presence in social media with them being very active in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, You Tube and the likes. They are so active in the social media which makes people think why a B2B company has to do this? Let me list out some statistics-
- Twitter (all numbers as of December 25, 2014)
- The Boeing Company Twitter page has 208,000 followers and 3,711 tweets
- Boeing Airplanes Twitter page has 206,000 followers and 5,213 tweets
- Boeing career Twitter page has 8,216 followers and 3,480 tweets
- Boeing Defense Twitter page has 78,100 followers and 4,635 tweets
- Boeing 777 Twitter page has 2,241 followers and 15,800 tweets
Similarly Boeing has got an impressive presence in Facebook and LinkedIn (388,985 followers). So why is it that they are so active in the social media? According to Gary Wicks, Director of Digital Strategy, “Boeing wants to position itself as a forward thinking thought leading driver of innovation in the industry”. And he believes that social media is the tool to accomplish this. It should be said that Boeing’s social media strategy has evolved along with the launch of the Dreamliner . Several of the new key initiatives like the evolution of digital strategy, naming contest and shortlisting the ‘Dreamliner’ name, all new digital content creation for the Dreamliner, seamless delivery of brand experience, resource strategy, digital media branding initiatives etc. were evolved during this time. And the strategies developed during this time laid the foundation for the further growth of their social media branding strategy.
Social Networking- Internal Portal. On the similar lines, Boeing’s social networking internal portal has been designed to enable the socializing of its employees, suppliers and customers spread across the world. The primary goals of this portal include knowing each other personally or professionally, form internal groups, teams sharing common interests, discuss on the work, communicate to others on the various events and news feeds, utilize it as a platform for learning, etc. Keeping an active internal portal facilitates the promotion of the brand and helps in getting more visibility.
Crowdsourcing
There are two prime examples of how Boeing smartly utilized crowdsourcing strategy to promote their new brand message. The first one is the Dreamliner story- Boeing wanted to bring back the culture of naming its airplanes and not just numbering them. The project at its concept stage in 2003 was named as 7E7 and Boeing conducted an online survey which gave customers four names to choose from and cast their votes on. The names in consideration were Dreamliner, Global Cruiser, Stratoclimber and eLiner. The survey was published on www.newairplane.com and it was made open to the public. More than 500,000 votes were registered which included public from over 160 countries and the name Dreamliner came on top with the Global Cruiser coming a close second. Whereas the name Global Cruiser was the most preferred name by the US residents, Dreamliner was choice of the rest of the world. And the plane, when it was ready to fly, did justice to this name, it was like a dream for many who saw the final product in flesh for the first time with super quiet engines, multi stage LED lighting, large windows, smart glass and a customizable cabin. Thus by adopting the crowdsourcing strategy, Boeing was able to give a big boost to the brand and the name Dreamliner became an instant hit, with a very high recall rate, comparable to the likes of Jumbo Jet.
Yet another example of how Boeing is utilizing the crowdsourcing strategy is its attempts to find technological and manufacturing solutions which add value to the company through its internal social networking portal. Ideas are invited on multiple topics and debates are conducted on shortlisted ideas finding solutions for difficult scientific problems. This also helps the company to access innovative ideas outside of the organization.
Conclusion
In this essay, the five major parameters under the brand landscape (dynamics) competency has been studied through which the branding strategy of Boeing, the brand evolution and how the brand has adapted to the changing technology and customer landscape has been analyzed. It can be seen that Boeing is a true innovator when it comes to branding and has been a great success in revamping their brand and projecting it as the brand of the future. Whether it be in adopting new strategies in global sourcing or generating out of the box ideas in design thinking, Boeing is constantly showing the industry that the brand can be promoted in ‘this’ way also. Truly, Boeing is a brand which deserves a unique place in the branding strategy text books and calls for a deeper research and analysis.
References
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Boeing. (2014, July). About Us. Retrieved from www.boeing.com: http://www.boeing.com/boeing/companyoffices/aboutus/index.page
Howard, C. (2009, February). One, for all. Retrieved from boeing.com: http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2009/february/mainfeature.pdf
Howard, C. (2009, February). One, for All. Retrieved from Boeing.com: http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2009/february/mainfeature.pdf
Joshua, C. a. (2009). Managing new product development and supply chain risks: The Boeing 787 case. Retrieved from eng.umd.edu: http://eng.umd.edu/~austin/ense622.d/lecture-resources/Boeing787-Outsourcing2009.pdf
Nigam, S. (2012, October 23). Interview. Retrieved from SimpliFlying: http://simpliflying.com/2012/interview-gary-wicks-shares-how-boeing-commercial-airplanes-takes-the-social-media-bull-by-its-horns/
Tinseth, R. (2011, March 28). Behind the scenes story on naming the Dreamliner. Retrieved from Boeing Blogs: http://www.boeingblogs.com/randy/archives/2011/03/behind_the_scenes_story_on_nam.html
