Airbus is a global pioneer in the aerospace industry, with operations in commercial aircraft, helicopters, defense, and space sectors. As the largest aeronautics and space company in Europe and a worldwide leader, Airbus employs around 130,000 professionals and is at the forefront of the aviation industry.
The brand is renowned for its expertise in designing, manufacturing, and delivering innovative aerospace products, services, and solutions to customers worldwide. In fact, Airbus consistently captures about half of all commercial airliner orders, thanks to its deep understanding of changing market needs, customer focus, and technological innovation.
From cutting-edge commercial aircraft to state-of-the-art space systems, Airbus offers products that connect people and places via air and space. Its commitment to excellence has made it a leader in the industry and a go-to choice for customers around the globe.
Start date: October 2021
Geographic coverage: International
Weekly sample: High
Airbus’ influential position as the largest company in the Aerospace and Defence sector comes with a great deal of responsibility for setting the direction of how the industry develops going forward.
As the industry is becoming increasingly challenged on topics of sustainability, ethics, and relevance, Airbus saw the need to launch a revised purpose-driven strategy to pioneer sustainable aerospace for a safe and united world.
Today Airbus has a strong focus on its broader responsibility for society, placing CSR and ESG agendas at the forefront of its actions, and guiding its innovations to meet global challenges related to climate change and security.
To track the impact of the new purpose-driven strategy, and to bring more actionability to perception tracking of relevant stakeholder groups, Airbus partnered with Caliber and started using its real-time survey-based stakeholder perception data to inform and support brand & reputation management.
In coordination with the rollout of its new purpose-driven approach to communications, Airbus wanted to consolidate its brand and reputation measurement efforts and take an agile approach that identifies and optimizes the impact of global communications on the perceptions of the company.
The objectives of switching from periodic to continuous tracking were:
Internal alignment and agile planning of comms activities
To better inform global comms strategy, and increase agility in the planning of brand-led activities.
KPI-driven communication
Use ongoing perception measurement to establish Comms KPIs that improve efficiency and allocation of resources based on impact.
To deliver on the need for continuous, always-on perception data, Airbus chose Caliber’s Real-Time Tracker (RTT).
Airbus’ RTT setup utilized Caliber’s standard brand and reputation research model, with additional questions related to the company’s purpose-driven strategy, and custom filters to identify core audiences across professional, KOL, and talent segments within the Aerospace and Defense sector.
This multi-market daily-survey setup provides Airbus with real-time perception data on itself and five competitors.
Currently, the platform is used by Airbus’ Corporate Communications and Defence and Space division to inform corporate and divisional comms strategy and planning, globally and in each of the 11 participating countries.
The tracking has been incorporated into the following strategy and actions:
Alert systems are in place to warn Airbus platform users of sudden changes in perceptions, to ensure speedy mitigation or optimization. The data is correlated with media monitoring through API integration, to connect output with impact.
The data has helped guide and align comms activities and discussions across markets, and has brought concrete proof points to showcase the value of various comms activities.
Having a robust data set across stakeholder groups and markets helps Airbus adapt and design global communication tactics for target audiences, as well as in each market.
Having data points related to stakeholder perceptions has helped Airbus to define concrete annual KPIs for Comms and Brand teams. KPIs are included in quarterly reviews to inspire an uptake in the usage of the data and the platform.
Quick polls and sample boosts are used periodically to better understand the impact of selected events like airshows and corporate summits, allowing Airbus to draw conclusions, measure ROI and change planning and formats of future activities to maximize the desired impact.
The Caliber solution provides Airbus with constantly updated stakeholder perception data across 10+ selected markets, and gives users the possibility to filter the data by target audiences, compare data points to benchmark performance, and consider the development of perceptions over time cross-referenced with media-tracking and information on company events and campaigns.
The global multi-market cross-stakeholder tracking solution is bringing more efficiency and alignment to Airbus’ communication functions, allowing them to allocate budgets according to impact, and to shape brand activities that engage stakeholders in the company’s journey to deliver on its new purpose.
This has helped Airbus optimize the reputational impact of its announcements, external events, and media coverage, and inform important decisions on how to react or design future pre-emptive strategies.
Caliber’s work with Airbus was recognized at the 2023 DataComms Awards ceremony in London. Organized by Communicate magazine, the awards celebrate “the use of data in corporate communications whether that be through the measurement and evaluation or in communications strategies”.
Caliber and Airbus won four awards – Gold for “Best use of data to assist reputation management”, “Best visualization of data”, and “Best data insight from global communications activity (ongoing)”, and Silver for “Most innovative use of data”.
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