One of the talking points from this year's SXSW has been the presence and involvement of NASA which has been showing off its content creation skills. Nick Keegan, creative director of tech communications firm Blue Rubicon, caught one of the panel sessions during his first experience of the festival, and relays what he took from the space organisation's social and comms strategy.
It’s my first time at South by Southwest and it took me some time to acclimatise to the nerdy intensity of the premier tech-music-film festival on the planet. This means I still wince a little when people arch an eyebrow, and with a nod of superior knowledge refer to it as South by. This meant I had to leave the room during a seminar on creativity when the very intense but well-meaning facilitator asked everyone to stand up and shout ‘I AM AWESOME.’Like every other SXSW virgin, I also arrived in Austin with clear brief in mind: ‘I need to visit every single relevant event and as quickly as possible. Only then will I be able to look my CEO in the eye and use the words “money well spent.”’ But it quickly became apparent that such a packed programme would be both logistically impossible and rather pointless.Plenty of presentations given here – while informative – aren’t that revelatory. In many instances, they simply reinforce what the audience already suspects or knows while providing useful case studies. This is in itself a hugely useful exercise, but I naively expected to be dazzled by almost every speaker, to have a near religious moment of enlightenment in every meeting room.This led me to abandon my plan to visit only the most relevant presentations and instead decided to attend a few sessions based on the simple criteria that they might be interesting. Browsing through the list of events, my newly liberated itinerary could now encompass a range of subjects from everyday astrophysics to life lessons from a dominatrix. Which is how I found myself at possibly the geekiest gathering on Earth at one stag : a presentation by NASA on space exploration at South by Southwest.Billed as a live conversation with astronauts on the international space station, it was always going to attract a particular type of person. It was led by John Yembrick, NASA’s director of public affairs, who quickly mastered his audience.He was funny with a kind of ‘aw shucks’ all American charm, he was humble to the point of self-deprecation and talked with an everyday nonchalance to the astronauts orbiting the earth. With a display of consummate flair, he even handed out NASA stickers to the gathering of space geeks (me included) and made their inner seven year olds swoon. While we waited for the uplink to space to work, he also delivered an enormous sense about how organisations should interact with their public.Back in 2006, NASA realised that the media focus on their organisation was largely on the ‘bad stuff’ such as the terrible tragedy of space disasters and the return on investment for the federal tax dollar. Like many organisations and brands before and since, NASA also realised that the stories they wanted to tell were unlikely to reach the public if they relied solely on news media. As a result, NASA began to use social media in its communications.When it comes to social media, NASA, of course, has an advantage over practically every organisation on Earth: it has some of the greatest content ever created in its archives. It also has the potential to create awe on an almost daily basis. If NASA decides to share an image of Mars or a distant nebula that has never been seen before, then it will generate a huge amount of interest and engagement. However, the thing that struck me most in NASA’s approach wasn’t the beautiful content they share or the platforms they use to communicate. Their use of social media isn’t unique and doesn’t require moonshot levels of brilliance. As John Yembrick humorously and humbly admitted ‘I am not a genius.’That’s not to say there aren’t brilliant individual elements to NASA’s strategy. For example, linking science to popular culture (like the #realgravity Twitter conversation during the Oscars) and the creation of the best-in-class NASA Social, which gives followers behind the scenes access to their assets. But perhaps what’s most impressive about NASA is that they’ve embraced the approach so comprehensively.NASA isn’t a start-up with a 'move fast and break things' mentality. It’s a decades old government organisation with all the bureaucracy that entails. To evolve the way an established organisation communicates takes time and – often – structural change as the silos that house different marketing and communications teams need to be removed. It requires new tools such as social media monitoring software or content management systems as well as the skills and expertise to use them.When people look at NASA with a degree of envy and say ‘if only we had content like that, we’d be more engaging on social media’ they identify only part of the problem they face. Almost every organisation has something interesting to share or a new story to tell. They may even have someone like Commander Chris Hadfield to tell it.The lesson from NASA is that organisations need to be willing to innovate to communicate effectively in a world where communications technology is constantly changing. That can be as complex and challenging as rocket science, but if NASA can do it, then anyone can.
Important footnote: since I wrote this – and for the benefit of my CEO – I have been dazzled more times than I care to mention. This was definitely money well spent.Nick can be followed on Twitter @Keegan_Keegan
