social media in defence 2012

Table of contents

Content

ABOUT THE RESEARCH…………………………………………………………………………….…. WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA? WHAT DOES ONLINE PRESENCE MEAN?................. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING … SOCIAL MEDIA SAAVY………………………………... THE BENEFITS………………………………………………………………………………………….….. THE CHALLENGES……………………………………………………………………………………….. How not to become a ‘nexus of hatred’…………………………….. Which other industries face similar challenges?.................... WHICH PLATFORM IS MOST EFFECTIVE?.......................................................... Dispelling myths about the word ‘social’…………………………... Breaking news…………………………………………………………………… DEFENCE CONTRACTORS RATED…………………………………………………………………. Listening: An alternative role for social media…………………... Counting the cost………………………………………………………………. Getting it right……………………………………………………………………. TAKING ADVANTAGE OF OPPORTUNITIES…………………………………………….…….. APPENDIX A………………………………………………………………………………………………… APPENDIX B………………………………………………………………………………………………… APPENDIX C………………………………………………………………………………………………… APPENDIX D………………………………………………………………………………………….…….. ABOUT DEFENCE IQ…………………………………………………………………………….………. DISCLAIMER………………………………………………………………………………………….……..

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About the research

This report explores the use of social media in the defence industry. It is primarily focused on the commercial sector, considering what benefits, if any, social media offers to defence contractors and organisations. Based on a survey of defence professionals, the report also examines the use of social media within a wider context, looking at how the defence media and journalists are utilising social media as a tool to learn more about the industry and engage with suppliers. The analysis of the survey data has been supplemented with proprietary interviews and desktop research.

The majority of survey respondents were from the commercial sector, accounting for 68% of total responses (Figure 1). This includes representatives from government organisations and prime contractors, 2nd and 3rd tier suppliers and other defence-‐related agencies. Defence media professionals (22%) and ‘other’ respondents (10%) complete the grouping of those surveyed.

68%

22%

10%

Figure 1: Overview of respondent by type

Commercial Media Other

Data: Appendix A

Figure 2: Illustration of respondent by country

Looking at Figure 2 (the data for which can been seen in Appendix A, page 35), the United States had the highest representation in the survey (30%) followed closely by the UK (29%). Other European nations – Germany (5%) and Sweden (4%) – account for a significant portion of

respondents with the remaining 29% sourced from around the globe, including Canada, Israel, India, Australia, Singapore and South Africa.

What is social media? What does

online presence mean?

Social media: “Media for social

interaction, using highly accessible

and scalable communication

techniques. Social media is the use of

web-‐based and mobile technologies

to turn communication into

interactive dialogue.”

Wikipedia, The social encyclopaedia

Before we consider the role social media plays in the defence industry, perhaps a short introduction to the concept is required first. What is social media, and how do you define it? Can you define it? A dictionary reference is usually prescient in these cases, but not here; there is no dictionary reference. Instead, and somewhat appropriately in this instance, we must rely on Wikipedia.

According to the open source encyclopaedia, social media is defined as “media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media is the use of web-‐based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue.” Social media platforms will not replace customer service centres or usher in the death of the telephonic conversation. They won’t replace face-‐to-‐face networking meetings and nor will they offer an alternative to lead generation. In a commercial context, using social media does not mean that marketing teams are permitted to talk to their friends all day. Social media tools allow users to create and converse in online interactive dialogues.

For the purposes of this report, social media platforms can include, but are not exclusive to, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. An ‘online presence’ can be considered within a wider framework outside of and in addition to social media. Keeping a blog updated with timely and relevant content can help establish an effective online presence. So too can producing technical whitepapers, participating in topic-‐specific webinars and being open to interviews with relevant industry publications.

The importance of being…

social media savvy

21%

40%

30%

9%

Figure 3: Analysis of how important it is for defence contractors to improve their

online and social media presence over the next 5 years

Essential Very important Somewhat important Not important

The majority (62%) of respondents believe that it is very important, if not critical, that defence contractors improve their online and social media presence over the next five years (Figure 3). Just under 1 in 10 respondents failed to appreciate that social media could benefit

companies in the industry. The advantages and challenges of this new media will be explored in greater detail later in this report, but it’s clear that Figure 3 demonstrates the defence industry is aware of social media’s growing significance as a real-‐world business tool as well as the need to embrace it more fully in future.

A key conclusion from the survey data suggests that social media should be used as a platform to increase brand awareness and for embracing outreach initiatives. It is more to do with nurturing a brand and less about generating new business. The top five responses in Figure 4 highlight this trend. All relate to brand awareness and thought leadership while the more ‘hard sell’ factors, such as lead generation and competitive edge, come much further down the priority list. Thomas Guest, formerly of the UKTI Defence & Security Organisation, said “social media is most important for improving PR and not as a means to drive new business, that will continue to be done in tradition manners.” One of the challenges of using social media to any length is convincing the accountants that there is an ROI. This can be difficult. However, one area where this distinction becomes clearer is when social media platforms are used as recruitment tools. A number of firms including Boeing, Raytheon and Thales have active social media outreach programmes dedicated to recruitment. With 59% of respondents indicating that this is one of the key advantages of social media it’s likely that others will follow this example.

But it’s not just the primes that can adopt online recruitment techniques. Any recruiter or headhunter will have a story where they’ve been bested by a shrewd employee at an SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) that advertised and recruited someone independently through social media. Do not expect these stories to become less frequent in the future. Towards the bottom of the list of social media advantages is that it allows companies to ‘keep tabs’ on the competition. However, as Figure 5 on page 14 shows, respondents felt that the risk of divulging too much information to competitors through social media channels was the key disadvantage to having an online presence. There is a paradox here. Contactors do not generally see social media as a useful means of gaining any form of competitive edge; it is not an effective corporate espionage tool. What we are seeing here is the unsupported and irrational fear of exposure being used as an excuse for online discretion to the detriment of the company’s brand and, ultimately, bottom line performance. The climate of suspicion that surrounds social media in the defence industry does not reflect the reality. If managed properly social media platforms do not leave companies open to risks relating to IP and corporate strategy; they do, however, provide an excellent forum to enhance brand awareness, as underpinned by the survey data.

The benefits

Keeping tabs on the competition

Increased brand awareness

Recruitment purposes

Chance to become a recognised thought leader in the market

Easier and freer relationship building with journalists and the media

It’s the cheapest form of marketing

Lead generation

For collecting customer feedback

To stay ahead of the competition

Other

There are NO advantages

34%

38%

55%

39%

28%

46%

56%

59%

68%

5%

11%

Figure 4: Overview of the advantages for defence contractors using social media

Data: Appendix B

“Social media is most

important for

improving PR and not

as a means to drive

new business, that will

be done in tradition

manners.”

Thomas Guest, Formerly of UKTI Defence & Security Organisation

While only 5% of respondents noted that there are no real-‐world advantages to using social media, it’s still 5%. Even those that have least bought into social media would be expected to have had some appreciation for what benefits an online presence can offer, however minor. For a respondent to underline that there are none is revealing. At the Farnborough International Airshow in July, the Defence IQ team undertook a straw poll to get some indicative insight on social media practice. One participant made an interesting comparison; he explained that social media today is much like Territorial Army (TA) service in the 1980s.

Up to that point, most of the people making the decisions at the corporate level had gone through the National Service programme whereby all healthy males between the ages of 17 to 21 years were signed up to the armed forces for four years. When a TA asked for leave from work to participate in exercises, the answer, since most managers and directors were proud ex-‐military personnel, the answer was often a resounding yes. With a hearty pat on the back too. However, following the demise of National Service in 1960 in the UK, by the time the 80s came around many of these leaders with military breeding had passed the torch on to a new generation of company management. The new generation didn’t understand the need for TA’s to have quite so much paid time off. So the ‘yes’ count dried up. The point is that there was a generation gap; a fundamental change had occurred from one generation to the next. A whole mind-‐set had shifted.

Likewise, when this generation of internet savvy children become the decision-‐makers of the future, not having a robust online presence with an engaging and spirited social media policy would be, at the very least, ignorant. Like it or not, in one form or another, social media is here to stay. The platforms we use will evolve – Facebook and Twitter may or may not be the tools of choice ten years from now – but the concept of connecting with more people, customers, brands and businesses online is unavoidable. As Douglas Burdett, a social media expert in the defence industry and author of the Fire Support blog, says: “Inertia is a powerful force in the defence industry. Some defence

contractors are having difficulty transforming their cultures … the need to be more open and communicative is not currently familiar territory for the defence industry, but it will be.” As Figure 4 highlights, there are significant benefits to using social media, regardless of industry.* However, there are of course challenges too and the full benefit of these social platforms cannot be realised until these hurdles are addressed, mitigated and eradicated.

* A comparison of how other industries face similar challenges to defence is presented on page 16

http://defensecontractormarketing.com/

“The climate of suspicion that surrounds

social media in the defence industry

does not reflect the reality. If managed

properly social media platforms do not leave

companies open to risks relating to IP and

corporate strategy; they do, however, provide

an excellent forum to enhance

brand awareness.”

The challenges

Figure 5 highlights that the discreet nature of the defence industry is a critical barrier for companies to utilise social media. One third of respondents stated that a lack of an active and relevant online community to engage with was one of the pitfalls for defence companies using social media. But to reframe that, 70% of respondents inferred that there was an active and relevant community.

Most of the top 20 defence contractors have active Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, so it’s clear that there is a ready-‐made audience. However, the extent to which these are being successfully utilised is explored in greater detail later in this report.

“Companies from all industries face

the challenge of not divulging

proprietary ideas, direction or

corporate strategy, so defence is not

unique.”

Steven Mains, PhD COO, TechMIS, LLC

http://special.defensenews.com/top-100/charts/rank_2011.php?c=FEA&s=T1C



There are NO significant challenges compared with other industries

Risk of divulging too much information (to competitors, enemy states etc.)

The discreet nature of the business

Limited internal understanding and lack of correct skill base

Inactive/irrelevant online community

Easy for detractors to air grievances

Other

10%

30%

14%

30%

47%

53%

58%

Figure 5:

Overview of the disadvantages for defence contractors using social media

Data: Appendix C

Respondents indicated that social media tools allow the public at large to easily and coarsely air their grievances and complaints. This is a very real issue. “A lot of companies set-‐up a Facebook page and just become a nexus of hatred,” Patrick Herridge, Co-‐Founder of corporate social media monitoring firm Social360 Ltd., said. “Without clear social media objectives all you’re doing is creating a public forum for people who hate your brand.” But this is true of any industry, not just defence. Last month, one of the UK’s largest mobile phone operators, O2, suffered a blackout. All of its customers lost connectivity – no calls, no texts, no email. The company’s Twitter feed was awash with complaints and criticism as hordes of customers vented their anger – it should have been a public relations disaster. However, O2’s social media team were prepared. They had a strategy to mitigate negative complaints aired on Twitter and managed, against all probability, to turn the network’s blackout into a customer relations triumph. How? First and foremost by being open and honest. Here’s an example of the sort of response O2 produced:

After being open and honest in response to reasonable and understandable comments, the social media team then went on the offensive, which is where the real success story begins. During the blackout some oddballs in the Twittersphere took the chance to send rude, unnecessary and often illogical messages to the mobile network provider. O2 responded with humour: It doesn’t matter that the social media team responded with humour; the key point is that O2 responded. It could have been with grovelling apologies or with parent-‐like disdain; the way in which O2 responded is less important that the simple fact that it actually responded. In doing so it exposed the members of that community that were uninterested in participating in a sensible interactive dialogue and, in turn, won the company a legion of new fans. Developing a detailed social media strategy is compulsory as it will be an effective tool when faced with online detractors.

How not to become a ‘nexus of hatred’

Which other industries face similar challenges?

Defence contractors will possibly receive disparaging messages and attract unwanted comments on social networks. But then so might any company, in any industry. “Companies from all industries face the challenge of not divulging proprietary ideas, direction or corporate strategy, so defence is not unique,” said Steven Mains, COO, TechMIS, LLC. When asked to detail other industries that faced similar challenges as defence, the most recurrent examples expressed by respondents included the alcohol, financial services, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

The negative perception attached to all these industries is what ties them together. Therefore, in addition to this you might add legal, oil & gas, tobacco, and even the fast food industry. One in ten respondents said there are no significant challenges that the defence industry faces that others do not (Figure 5). The nature of these industries means that there will always be those that disapprove. However, that minority should not be allowed to cloud what could be an active, appealing and valuable social media strategy.

Which platform is most effective?

Survey respondents from the ‘Commercial’ sector were asked: Which online medium do you think is most effective in increasing brand awareness and thought leadership? Whitepapers, LinkedIn, Twitter and hosted articles were identified as the key platforms (Figure 6). Taking the ‘very effective’ and ‘critical’ responses together from the graph below reveals that whitepapers and hosted articles are seen as the most effective platforms, followed by LinkedIn and Twitter.

This is important because it shows that thought leadership is regarded more highly by defence contractors than brand awareness is. Social media tools (LinkedIn and Twitter) are seen to be very important, but creating valuable content through whitepapers and articles is underlined as the most relevant and effective form of online presence by defence companies.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Whitepapers

Linked In

Twitter

Hosted article

Company newsletter

Blogging

Webinar

Hosted videos

YouTube

Facebook

Other social media (Pinterest)

Banner ads

Figure 6: Analysis of most effective platform for

brand awareness and thought leadership

Innefective Somewhat effective Very effective Critical

However, this belies what the defence media think. Figure 7 shows that LinkedIn is the most ‘critical’ platform, while Twitter is the most ‘effective’. Although this report seeks to distinguish social media from other forms of online presence, the disparity between the data in Figures 6 and 7 demonstrates that the two are inextricably linked. Both work hand-‐in-‐hand to present an overall picture of a company.

The conclusion is that a balance between producing informed, constructive content and effective social media engagement is fundamental to building and maintaining a strong brand, which is backed up by a robust online presence. Another critical point to understand here is that while no one thinks Twitter – and for the purposes of this analysis we can extract that out to mean social media platforms in general – is a ‘critical’ tool (Figure 7), it is the most effective for online engagement, as the majority (53%) indicated.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Linked In

Hosted videos

Facebook

Hosted article

Banner ads

Blogging

YouTube

Whitepapers


Twitter

Webinar

Company newsletter

Figure 7: Analysis of key platforms the media use for engaging with and

learning more about defence contractors


Facebook is a far more effective platform for informing and shaping people’s, and especially the media’s, perceptions about a company than the defence industry realises. Looking at Figure 6, Facebook is ineffective according to commercial respondents while Figure 7 shows that media respondents see it as a valuable learning tool. This is primarily due to an image problem, and it also underpins a deeper challenge: the word ‘social’ in social media. One commercial respondent commented: “Should grown-‐ups use SOCIAL media in business?” It’s a fair question, but a common misconception. Perhaps it is an unfortunate term but rather than having to call ‘social media’ by another less gregarious name, it is people’s perceptions of the phrase that will have to adapt instead. And in time, that will happen. “As social media becomes a successful, integral part of the fabric of defence contractor communications, the perception of social media as being an unnecessary marketing tactic will fade,” Douglas Burdett said. The argument that social media, while relevant for many, will never be necessary for the day-‐to-‐day operations of a defence company is not an unreasonable one. However, this approach is only accurate if growth is not on the owners’ agenda.

Diversification and flexibility, especially in an economy like the one facing industry in 2012, are vital characteristics for a company if it is to execute a successful growth strategy. “Many defence contractors are stepping up their diversification – to other government sectors, internationally and to commercial markets,” said Burdett. “This diversification is driving the need to increase awareness beyond the defence procurement community.” Social media can be an invaluable tool for this. Even if it was held that social media offers few benefits for the defence industry, that is not to say the same is true for all defence companies. Social media allows commercial enterprises to connect with people in far more subtle ways than ever before. Companies are now using content marketing, such as blogs, webinars, whitepapers, eBooks and videos, to provide useful information to attract and engage the people with whom they need to communicate, according to Burdett. Social media is an excellent forum through which to distribute that content. Social media channels don’t allow companies to connect with people on a social level; they offer a very real and effective form of inbound marketing that can add considerable weight to any forward-‐looking corporate strategy.

Dispelling the myth about the word ‘social’

“The urban myth of the social media world is

when the CEO’s daughter comes back home

and asks him why his company isn’t on

Facebook. Next morning the CEO tells his

marketing team to create a Facebook page

but with no understanding of what the point

of having one is … A lot of companies set-‐up a

Facebook page and just become a ‘nexus of

hatred’…without clear social media objectives

all you’re doing is creating a public forum for

people who hate your brand. There’s a real

negative ROI with outreach which I think

defence contractors have to be careful of.”

Patrick Herridge, Co-‐Founder, Social360 Ltd.

Douglas Burdett recommends that those companies considering using social media as a marketing tool ask themselves one question: Which groups would you most like to have a relationship with and what content can you offer that would be of interest to them? This will be the cornerstone of any successful social media strategy.

We still have telephones the same as we did in 1972, but in 2012 they now come equipped with music players, navigation systems and cameras too. Social media is to marketing what the iPhone was to the rotary dial.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Linked In

Twitter

Facebook

Whitepapers

Hosted videos

Blogging

Hosted article

Webinar

Company newsletter

YouTube

Banner ads


Figure 8: Analysis of which tools the defence media use to learn more about

industy news and issues


Breaking news

According to respondents, Figure 8 again shows that Twitter is most effective in helping users learn about and understand issues in the defence industry. The reason for this is that social media offers instant, up-‐to-‐date and, if you’re following the right people, reliable information. While blogging is also highly rated by defence media professionals, Twitter is the preferred option because it’s immediate. It also allows users to easily read a wide range of opinions and quickly appreciate many different angles on the same story.

EADS provoked a decent response from the survey participants (with 22%), but this does not fairly represent the quality of the European defence company’s social media outreach. This was demonstrable during the Farnborough Airshow where the EADS social media team, using the event-‐specific @EASlive Twitter account, gave a master class in how to provide informative on-‐site

updates. The EADS team shared exclusive pictures, insight from visiting delegations, chances to win (relevant) prizes in on-‐going competitions, as well as general event updates. The coverage was not aimed at being corporate propaganda and nor was it idle nonsense – it was balanced, helpful, and interesting.

Defence contractors rated

The company with the most outstanding social media presence is Lockheed Martin, according to survey data (Figure 9 – a breakdown of the data can be found in Appendix D). Boeing follows with 33% and BAE Systems with 26%, but with 44% Lockheed Martin is seen as a clear leader. However, the ‘other’ category offers a remarkable insight. While some respondents mentioned other companies – such as

Leonie and CACI – the majority used this to state that none of the aforementioned companies had an outstanding social media presence. Figure 13 at the end of this report shows that defence contractors need to significantly increase their social media and online presence over the next five years, which is supported by the response in Figure 9.

Special recognition

Figure 9: Illustration of defence companies with outstanding social media

Data: Appendix D

“We still have telephones the same as we did

in 1972, but in 2012 they now come equipped

with music players, navigation systems and

cameras too. Social media is to marketing

what the iPhone was to the rotary dial.”

Together with the survey data it is worth considering these responses in the context of what the specified companies’ social media presence actually looks like. Figure 10 shows the number of followers each company has on their main Twitter account, the number of likes they have on Facebook, as well as giving an indication of how frequently their Twitter accounts are updated (based on an average taken from three random samples).

Essentially, the higher the purple areas and the lower the blue bar, the better a company’s social media presence is. The companies identified by survey respondents are generally those that have active and established social media activities, although it’s clear that Booz Allen Hamilton should have been considered within the top group that included BAE, Boeing and EADS.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

40000

45000

50000

No. of h

ours since last post o

n Tw

itter

No. of p

eople

Figure 10: Analysis of defence companies social media presence

Twitter followers Facebook likes Last Twitter post

“I think the large defence companies

are failing miserably in this area. If

you go to a webpage, Facebook

page, etc. for one of these

companies, you can hardly tell which

one you're visiting. There is no

individuality or personality. The large

companies seem to benefit from

being perceived as a commodity -‐ a

concept that is inconsistent with

having an effective social media

presence; an effective social media

presence benefits from personality.”

Gregg R. Sypeck, Senior Vice President, Mav6, LLC

Lockheed Martin 68% 1. Boeing 72% 2.

BAE Systems 45% 3.

General Dynamics 46% 4.

Raytheon 69% 5.

Northrop Grumman 78% 6.

EADS 58% 7.

Finmeccanica 27% 8.

L-‐3 Communications 50% 9.

United Technologies 57% 10.

Thales 68% 11.

SIAC 73% 12.

Huntington Ingalls 61% 13.

Honeywell 55% 14.

Booz Allen Hamilton 84% 15.

Rolls-‐Royce 55% 16.

CSC 72% 17.

Oshkosh 54% 18.

Textron 53% 19.

GE 20. 67%

For further context, in his blog Douglas Burdett recently published a list of the top 100 defence contractors rated by the quality of their website.

Based on Defence News’ annual list, here are the top 20 defence contractors from 2011 together with their website grade:

http://defensecontractormarketing.com/2012/06/27/defense-news-top-100-defense-contractors-for-2011/

Listening: An alternative role for

social media

Up to this point, the focus of this report has been on outreach. But there is another element to social media networks too: listening. Companies can use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and thousands of other platforms to ‘listen’ to what other people are saying about them. Patrick Herridge co-‐founded a social media monitoring firm, Social360 Ltd., which has a number of defence firms on its books, to do exactly that. “Corporates want to know what investors are saying on bulletin boards, they want to know what staff are saying about what they’re doing, they want to know what

protestors are doing outside their offices,” said Herridge. Social360 aggregates all of the social data aligned to a specific company and then presents it in a format that the client can action. “The same way you used to get press cuttings every morning, we now provide a daily report on what is being said on social media,” Herridge explained. A number of other firms offer similar services which exploit the vast quantity of data flowing through these social networks. Social media platforms aren’t just for engaging with people – through this type of analytical feedback they can also be used as a tool to improve processes, avoid unwanted events and stay ahead of the game.

10% 10%

20%

26% 7%

12%

15%

Figure 11: Overview of what percentage of marketing budget defence contractors should spend on

social media (company perspective)

0% <2%2% -‐ 5% 5% -‐ 10%10% -‐ 20% 20% -‐ 30%

11%

21%

11% 47%

5% 5%

Figure 12: Overview of what percentage of marketing budget defence contractors should spend on

social media (media perspective)

<2% 2% -‐ 5%5% -‐ 10% 10% -‐ 20%20% -‐ 30% 30%+

Counting the cost

Although slight, there is a discrepancy between how much media professionals believe defence companies should be spending on their social media activities compared to what the companies themselves think they should. The majority of the media think that defence companies should spend between 5% to 20% of their marketing budget (Figure 12), while commercial respondents indicated that anything up to 10% was more reasonable (Figure 11). Social media is relatively inexpensive – the tools required are available for free or at negligible cost – all it requires is the human resource to manage the strategy. For any company of a decent size this resource should be absorbed relatively easily. But that is not to say a company should hire an intern or recent graduate to manage its social media strategy. The social media team will be responsible for the company’s brand – they are the company mouthpiece. Everyone in that team should not only be social media savvy but they need to understand and be comfortable with the technical aspects of the business too; they need to be industry savvy. Inc. magazine recently published an excellent guide to who should not be in charge of corporate social media accounts. Brett van Niekerk, who has completed a PhD at South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-‐Natal, offered a useful postscript: “As having a social media profile is often free, budget is less of a concern than actually getting it right.” That is the critical part: getting it right.

http://www.inc.com/hollis-thomases/social-media-dont-put-intern-in-charge.html

Getting it right

When a social media campaign goes right it can have a real impact. Perhaps one of the more obvious examples is Raytheon’s Hashtags for Heroes (#HT4H). This is how the company described it in a press release: “This innovative campaign takes advantage of what is, in effect, surplus tweet capacity. Of the total 140 characters that Twitter users are allotted for every tweet, many characters often go unused (according to one estimate, the most common tweet length is about 28 characters). The campaign enables users to download a special Twitter platform application to tweet from their computers or mobile devices and easily "donate" their unused Twitter characters in support of WWP [Wounded Warrior Project].”

The Twitter application powered by Raytheon led to the ‘donation’ of 335,013 characters to the WWP. This resulted in a huge surge in traffic for the WWP website together with an influx of (monetary) donations. Details of the successful campaign can be found overleaf.

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%

Not at all, there’s no benefit

We will continue to improve somewhat, butour current presence is good

It will probably increase organically, but we won’t be putting much resource into it

A little, it could be better than it is and we seethe benefit

Significantly, we need to make major changesto take advantage of opportunities

Figure 13: To what extent do you think you will be increasing your social media and online presence over the next 5 years?

Taking advantage of opportunities

When asked to what extent defence companies need to increase their social media and online presence, the top response was: Significantly, we need to make major changes to take advantage of opportunities (Figure 13). There are two important concepts within that sentence: First is the acknowledgement that companies need to do more online; the second, arguably of more import, is that respondents appreciate that there are distinct opportunities in doing so.

The benefits of social media have been discussed earlier in this report and it’s apparent that at least a third of survey respondents agree with the need for an online presence. While 7% still see no advantages, the top two responses in Figure 13, accounting for the majority (58%), show that defence contractors do see the benefit of social media tools and will be doing more in the future to increase their use of them.

“When this generation of internet

savvy children become the decision-‐

makers of the future, not having a

robust online presence with an

engaging and spirited social media

policy would be, at the very least,

ignorant. Like it or not, in one form or

another, social media is here to stay.”

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%

US

UK

Germany

Sweden

Australia

Canada

Italy

Israel

Netherlands

Norway

Spain

Ethiopia

India

Lebanon

Malaysia

New Zealand

Pakistan

Romania

Saudi Arabia

Singapore

South Africa

Switzerland

Analysis of respondent by country

Appendix A

68%

59%

56%

55%

46%

39%

38%

34%

28%

11%

5%

Increased brand awareness

Recruitment purposes

Recognised as a thought leader in the market

Relationship building with journalists / media

It’s the cheapest form of marketing

Lead generation

Keeping tabs on the competition

For collecting customer feedback

To stay ahead of the competition

Other

There are NO real-‐world advantages

Overview of the advantages for defence contractors using social media

Appendix B

0%10%

20%30%

40%50%

60%

Risk of divulging too much information

The discreet nature of the business

Limited internal understanding and lack of skill base

Lack of active online community to engage with

Too easy for detractors to air complaints publically

Other

There are NO significant challenges

Overview of the disadvantages for defence contractors using social media

Appendix C

Lockheed Martin

Boeing

BAE Systems

Other

EADS

Rolls-‐Royce

Thales

Raytheon

Northrop Grumman

General Dynamics

Saab

Booz Allen Hamilton

SAIC

Finmeccanica

United Technologies

Honeywell

Cobham

Oshkosh

RUAG

L-‐3 Communications

Textron

44% 33%

26%

23%

22%

21%

21%

18%

18%

17%

15%

15% 10%

8%

8%

8%

8% 5%

3%

3%

Analysis of defence companies with outstanding social media

Appendix D

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Andrew Elwell is the Editor-‐in-‐Chief of Defence IQ. He has previously worked as a survivability specialist for a provider of ballistic and blast armour systems. Andrew holds a BA in History and American Studies from the University of Nottingham. He can be reached on [email protected]. In the spirit of social media outreach: Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn Follow him on Twitter: DefenceIQ and @AJElwell

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