Maxar's Marketing Strategy

Hi everyone! I'm Ari Lewis, the cofounder of Payload. Welcome to the seventh edition of Marketing From Space, my monthly newsletter on storytelling, comms, and PR in the aerospace industry.

Before diving in, let's run through some updates on the Payload front. We announced that we are on track to pull in over $1M in revenue in 2023. Payload hosted an event with 140+ attendees and a webinar with 180+ registrants. We also announced new deals with Satellogic and Flow Engineering.

If you're interested in reaching the Payload audience, chat with Brian, our sales lead. If you just want to chat marketing, book time with me.

Now, on to the main business...

In this month's edition:
💭 Maxar’s marketing strategy
🎙️ Webinar with the Italian Trade Agency
👩🏼‍🚀 Space marketing job board
🚀 Quick reads to help you do your job better

Maintaining a Strategy Through Acquisition with Colleen Campbell

Last month I hosted a webinar with the CMO of Maxar, Colleen Campbell, where we discussed Maxar’s marketing strategy post-acquisition and being a leader in EO. Here, I’ve pulled together the most important insights from the webinar:

Acquisition by Advent

• Maxar needed to have a unified communication strategy on why the acquisition made sense for all stakeholders, not just the shareholders.

• It was important for the company’s stakeholders to be confident both during and after the acquisition while considering their fiduciary duty to shareholders.

• Some aspects of the marketing changed, while some stayed the same.

Maxar News Bureau

• The Maxar News Bureau is a partnership with journalists to provide imagery, analytics and insights to complement good journalism.

• The program began in 2017 with 25 journalists and since then has expanded to over 1,500 projects, including topics such as illegal fishing and human trafficking.

• “Companies should focus on pitching stories to journalists that tie into a bigger narrative rather than solely promoting their own company announcements, as demonstrated by Maxar's successful approach,” Colleen said.

• Every week, Maxar rounds up relevant imagery that may provide value to journalists. This includes their own information and sometimes highlights their partner Umbra's imagery, resulting in an increase in inbound inquiries.

• Maxar works to assist journalists by providing imagery and data for investigative stories. For example, they were able to engage audiences and illustrate their capabilities through a 3D video of a Russian Convoy heading to the Ukrainian border, which was well-suited for both web and broadcast.

Why Marketing?

• “Maxar’s marketing's main purpose is to encourage market growth by retaining and growing customers, introducing new products and services, and capturing the right customer segments through proper analytics and customer feedback loops, with Maxar's focus being on providing the best customer experience and addressing their needs,” Colleen said.

• Marketing isn’t always easy to measure, and needs buy-in from other parts of the organization. There is “no magic bullet” for measuring success, Colleen said.

• Companies need to have multiple channels in order to maximize success. You can’t just rely on one channel.

The Benefits of Being a Private Company

• Being a private company allows for more flexibility in terms of marketing.

• There are no blackouts around earnings anymore.

• The company does not have to devote as much time to shareholder support as a private company.

And lastly, Colleen shared a bit of advice: “Stay curious, support your team as a manager, and show gratitude while recognizing that success and failure in business are not always your fault.”

Webinar with Italian Trade Agency

Next month I’ll be hosting a webinar with the Italian Trade Agency where we will be discussing:

• How Italy markets itself to space companies

• The challenges of marketing a country

• Why Italy

• And more…

When: September 7, 11am PT / 2pm ET

Curated Space Jobs

• Director, Marketing @ Terran Orbital

• Marketing Programs @ Kratos

• Communications Manager 3 @ Northrop Grumman

Ari's Top Links

• How Dave Portnoy bought back Barstool Sports—Be careful who you partner with. Partnering with a company with a different culture can affect your whole organization.

• Meta may launch a Threads web version early this week—Threads engagement has dropped more than 70%, but don’t count it out yet. It’s the same company that spent $15B on its Metaverse efforts.

• AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted, rules a US Federal Judge—If you generate images for your content via AI, just remember, it can’t be copyrighted.

Final Thoughts

As always, I'd really love to hear from you. Reply to this email to drop me a line with feedback, constructive criticism, or just to say hi.

Your input really helps me iterate and make this a better experience for everyone. If you have anything to contribute, such as a marketing job, link, interview, or article, email me and I'll work on including it in the next edition.