By nature, large-scale government programs are dependent on public support and funding to maintain long-term sustainability. Stakeholder buy-in is notoriously difficult, particularly in a politically divided landscape, with unilateral consensus a nearly impossible feat.

To complicate matters, government communications budgets pale in comparison to traditional media campaigns. With a tight budget and zero paid media, we were tasked with developing the brand awareness, visual identity and communications execution for Launch America, the media campaign for NASA’s return to human space flight.

The primary objective was to engage, excite, and inform the public about launching American astronauts, in American-made rockets, from American soil for the first time in a decade. Secondarily, we were charged with galvanizing target audiences and creating a groundswell of enthusiasm for space travel and exploration through positive media engagements to help ensure uninterrupted support of signature NASA programs: Commercial Crew and Artemis.

The strategic approach to developing Launch America was three prong: bring 60 years worth of NASA’s past achievements back into relevance through a cohesive branding exercise, firmly situate NASA in the present moment through an updated, modernized, and modular broadcast and social media package; and re-position NASA as a leader for future missions by developing broad awareness of the Commercial Crew and Artemis Programs and through targeted media engagements and collaborative strategic partnerships.

Launch America was positioned as a viewing experience that carried the weight and importance of national news programming with the enjoyment and participatory feel of a broadcast spectator sporting event.

The modernized broadcast was designed as a co-production between partners, with both NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk representing the entities front and center across multi-day events. Press conferences, interviews and broadcast coverage kept an upbeat, enthusiastic tone & engaged audiences and stakeholders openly.

Very few projects can claim a serious target audience of the entire planet, however this one did. NASA had not launched American astronauts into orbit to the International Space Station from the US in almost a decade, so it was critical to reach a broad cross-generational American audience while at the same time narrowly focus on the political stakeholders who determine the course of the space program's future. ?

Contrastly, missions to the ISS carry global significance and set the stage for a coalition of delicate partnerships between countries which underscore the spirit of what the International Space Station represents to humanity.?

We worked to create a media plan that walked a delicate balancing act of speaking to broad national and global audiences and at the same time specifically targeted individuals and organizations such as elected officials, other Space Agencies, & various Commercial Crew Partners.

Beginning with development of a tone and brand voice that spoke to a global audience and reached beyond social, political and cultural barriers was key to creating an inclusive, participatory identity. Careful attention was paid to honoring historic international achievements that alluded to the United States, but avoided heavy-handed patriotism.

Within sixty days, a cohesive visual identity and structured narrative was assembled that included branding, video, motion graphics, branding, social media and print assets, wardrobe, and on-site projection graphics as well as a 100-ft banner that not only holistically told the story of NASA accomplishments but positioned them as some of humanity's greatest achievements.

The approach was distributed across the widest possible channel strategy, pushing into new-to-NASA media landscapes (Twitter Moments, Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Instagram stories, apps, etc). Additionally, measured media outreach and public relations planning was implemented to build consensus amongst important stakeholders and broaden potential outreach.

The most-watched event NASA has ever tracked, with 198 million views on YouTube alone, and an unprecedented reach score of over 54 BILLION. Notably, this was achieved through 100% earned media (with estimated paid media value of $621million).

The campaign saw 547k mentions on social, 29k published news stories, 1850 news stories from top media outlets, 68 newspaper front pages, 12.3 million social shares, 1.1 million new NASA email newsletter subscribers, and 4 million new social media followers across NASA accounts. In addition, over 250 members of Congress offered messages of support.

Owing to massive public sentiment, reach and engagement, the campaign’s success is an anomaly rather than a norm: the Artemis program is the single area of the preceding Presidential Administration’s policy endorsed by the Biden Administration, the first major deep-space human exploration effort with funding to survive a change in U.S. presidents since the Apollo Program.