Lockheed Martin has been involved in virtually every American space mission since the early days of NASA. Yet, most people only know them as a defense contractor. As part of a full-scale rebranding of their Space business, Lockheed Martin needed to establish itself as a major influence in aerospace and, in doing so, attract the top engineering talent from across the country.

With new companies entering the aerospace industry every year - Space X, Amazon, etc. – the competition to recruit the best talent is only getting more intense. The space race of today is all about recruiting the brightest minds, and we needed to help Lockheed Martin get ahead of the competition. To do that, the brand had to be repositioned as a place where the most gifted students and engineers can contribute to humanity’s next giant leaps in deep space.

To unlock the possibilities of the universe, Lockheed Martin Space must recruit the top engineering talent. But that kind of talent is sought after by countless other companies, and the brand needed to gain an edge in the recruitment space race. So, we went to the top engineering universities and gave students something a bit more challenging than a job application: a box. But not just any box. A 14-ft tall puzzle box that can only be unlocked if you’re able to solve the toughest real-world engineering problems.

Those who were skilled enough to unlock the box opened the doors to a universe of opportunities. Once inside, they discovered a 360-degree audiovisual journey through the stars, culminating in a job offer to work for Lockheed Martin – where they can continue to unlock the possibilities of space, as well as opportunities for their careers.

While Lockheed Martin has enjoyed decades of success as the predominant destination for these types of graduates, they found themselves being drowned out of the conversation and overlooked in favor of more modern, flashy options within Silicon Valley.

“Think Inside the Box” was designed to instantly force students to reimagine the Lockheed Martin they thought they knew, and thrust the company back into their consideration set as an aspirational and innovative employer of choice.

To do this, we tapped into something that truly great engineers simply can’t resist: a challenge. And we landed that challenge in the middle of their engineering campus.

To find the most talented engineering students, we created the ultimate test: A box. But not just any box. A 14-foot tall lockbox that can only be opened if you’re able to solve real-world engineering problems. And we took the enormous puzzle box to some of the top engineering universities across the country.

The winning students who unlocked the box discovered something amazing inside – a 360-degree audiovisual journey through the stars, culminating in a job offer to work for Lockheed Martin. But before students could take on the challenge, we had our own puzzle to solve: How do we fit the universe in a box?

For this, we sought inspiration from static infinity rooms, which use a series of mirrors to create the effect of standing in an infinite space. However, this technique has never been used in combination with moving images and sound, so we had to invent a new approach.

Our solution was to transform the ceiling of the interior into a massive digital screen, which plays the animation and reflects the content off custom-fit mirrors, creating the sensation of traveling through an infinite space. To test how the animation would bounce and reflect, we created several small-scale prototypes to refine the angles and directions of the interior mirrors.

The box made its campus debut at Virginia Tech on September 18–20, 2018. It resided within the Institute of Creativity, Arts, and Technology, allowing for maximum foot traffic, while specifically targeting the university’s engineering talent. This same blueprint has been followed as the box continues to travel and reach students throughout the country, appearing at campuses and recruiting events in California, Texas and Maryland through 2019.

Continuing on to key campuses and recruiting events across the country, there have been over 4000 attempts to unlock the box. 486 students have unlocked the box by solving one of the four problems, and 6 remarkable students have won jobs by answering the nearly impossible problem. And this is exactly what the box was designed to do: to identify the absolute best and brightest prospects. On average, students spent 8 hours solving the hardest equations, which is 30X longer than the average time of engagement for similar events. This gave Lockheed Martin the opportunity to connect with thousands of qualified candidates at each location, not just the six students who went on to win jobs.