A year later: Does our new brand resonate? Why it matters.

 One year ago, we launched a new brand wordmark and visual voice to reflect Mercury’s growth strategy, evolution as a successful commercial business and transformation as a technology leader serving the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry.  Our new brand was designed to symbolize Mercury’s dedication to innovation, a people- and mission-centered culture, and a vision to make the world a safer, more secure place for all.

We followed our new brand rollout with a targeted 6-month digital campaign, called The Speed of Mercury, with examples of how we are delivering the latest commercial technology to our A&D customers and their customers. The benefits we aim to deliver include: investment in Innovation That Matters; delivery of that innovation at the speed required in today’s world; affordability based on a commercial model and, increasingly, digital transformation, such as model-based system engineering (MBSE) that speeds time-to-market and reduces costs; and partnerships with Silicon Valley leaders and our customers, to advance the best and latest commercial chip technology, applied to A&D needs.

It’s a year later. Time to ask the question, what have we learned?  How are we measuring success? Why does our brand matter and to whom? What’s next?

One measure of success is brand awareness. Today’s marketers must measure the entire customer engagement journey from awareness at the top of the funnel, ultimately to demand generation at the bottom, the latter our best proxy for driving revenue growth.

Who are our targets?  Customers, of course, primarily the Tier 1 A&D “primes,” but also their customers in the DoD, as well as industry and policy influencers.

We know that building awareness takes time, often years, to move the needle. But we believe we accelerated that awareness-building timeframe with our integrated and targeted marketing strategy, centered on our new website and brand voice, with engaging content, thought-leadership, social media and a small digital ad investment in our brand through The Speed of Mercury campaign.

The results exceeded our expectations: in one year our aided awareness more than doubled among influencers and grew 12 points to 56% among customers, well beyond our 48% target.  We even put Mercury on the board for the first time in unaided awareness and generated qualified leads for our sales team.

What’s next? We know that customers and influencers who are familiar with Mercury are also favorably disposed toward working with us. We will continue to build awareness and increase familiarity with Mercury’s capabilities and solutions.  We plan to do this with even more targeted messaging aligned with our customers’ – and their customers’ – mission needs and the next iteration of The Speed of Mercury campaign, coming soon.

Why does our brand matter? According to Edelman*, the agency who annually measures global trust in major institutions through the Edelman Trust Barometer, “Building brand trust is the most important factor that brands must keep in mind as they adjust to our new normal…The reality is, highly trusted brands are seven times more likely to be purchased.” For me, it all comes down to trust.  Trust that we are all-in with our customers and will do whatever it takes to help them succeed and achieve their missions. 

*From The Role of Brands in Pandemic Recovery, newsletter, 12.21.21 (Edelman).