Boeing 777X
It’s not every day that you get to tell the story of a brand new airplane. Our goal for the 777X digital campaign was to show the entire journey of building a jet to demonstrate Boeing’s ability to execute development programs.
We used our digital channels to create favorable momentum within the industry and inform, excite and inspire.
live Streams
We used monthly live streams on Facebook to show the entire build of the first airplane from spar load to first flight. We decided on live streams versus recorded videos because it allowed us to interact with our Facebook audience and answer questions in real-time. It was also a lot of fun to ask our audience questions like where in the world 🌎 they were tuning in from and who they were - everything from airline customers to aviation geeks and engineering students.
On average, we had 1,000 concurrent viewers per stream and around 3.5K total live viewers. Post live, the videos would garner around 51K total views 24 hours after the stream with an average reach of 115,000.
Check out one of our Facebook Lives that CNN embedded into an article about the 777X here.
Instagram Live with GE
One of my favorite streams was when we used the ‘Live with a Friend’ feature on Instagram. This was our first time going live with another account and our partner, General Electric (GE), was a great sport about it. The stream featured our Boeing communications focal, Josh Green from the Boeing Everett, WA factory, and GE Aviation’s Chief Test Pilot Jon Ohman, and Systems Engineer Jay Gwinn from GE Aviation’s Flight Test Operations in Victorville, CA. They discussed testing and installing the world’s largest jet engine on the world’s largest twin-engine jet, Boeing’s 777X.
Overall we had 1200+ concurrent viewers during the stream, with nearly 3000 viewers at the peak of the live stream. We were able to send the recorded live video to our Stories after it ended and received 125K additional views of the content.
Check out a blog post that GE wrote about the stream here.
Augmented Reality
When it came to the point in our campaign to share a first glimpse of the cabin of this new airplane, we couldn’t think of a better way to do it than to take our audience onboard the jet. This was tough to do, considering we didn’t have a physical cabin to explore, so we worked with our agency to create an augmented reality experience.
Check it out on Facebook here.
Chat Bot
To further develop a more interactive experience for our followers, we created a Facebook Messenger chatbot.
We were able to gain about 3,000 subscribers for our two-month test run of the bot. Each week we notified our subscribers about a different feature on the airplane and led them to a specific post on our Facebook page or back to our website for further exploration.
Monthly emails
We sent a monthly email to over 55,000 777X Boeing subscribers inviting them to tune into our monthly live streams or recap interesting content from that month. Our emails received an average open rate of 47% and a 22% click-thru rate, both of these metrics beating industry benchmarks.
One of the most important learnings from these email sends was that shorter and more direct content always seemed to get the best click-thru rates. I also learned that we saw higher click-thru rates when we sent emails following a live stream, encouraging our subscribers to watch a recap video of the stream rather than trying to get them to watch in real-time.
WEB + Reveal Portal
We launched a 777X product webpage to provide helpful information for our airline customers, sales teams, and industry media and analysts.
Additionally, we also created a more passenger-friendly web experience with our 777X Reveal Portal, a central hub for all 777X content, including social media posts, videos, and interesting articles written about the jet.
From the start of production to the first flight, February 2018 - February 2020, we had over 2.5 million page views of our product page and over 1 million page views of the Reveal Portal. Our social content drove close to 20% of the traffic.
my favorite moments
Twitter Engagement with Airbus during the 777X First Flight
During our first flight for the 777X, our competitor tweeted us a congratulatory message. We could have just liked their tweet and sent back a simple thank you, but instead, we choose to have a little fun with the opportunity. We created a GIF of our folding wingtip, which is one of the airplane features that makes it so competitive, and sent them a fun note back. Not only was our competitor entertained, but so were our followers. Check out the interaction here.
360 777X Flight Deck on Facebook
My favorite social content takes our audience up close to our jets. The flight deck is truly special as it's something most people rarely get to see unless they're a pilot. We worked with our team to create a 360 render of the flight deck and uploaded it to Facebook to allow our audience to move around inside. Check it out for yourself and view the post on the Boeing Facebook page here.
777X First Flight Instagram Post
There is nothing out-of-the-world special about this post other than this was my favorite piece of content I posted on the Boeing Instagram channel. I like it because the picture tells such a great story on its own and shows our team and the product. This was also one of our top performing Instagram posts on our Boeing account in 2020 (no big deal 😉).