The goal of the United States Air Force is to reflect the nation which it serves. This means striving to become more diverse in its thinking, more diverse in race and ethnicity and more balanced in gender representation. Of the more than 200 career fields in the Air Force, female pilots are particularly scarce. Our objective was to leverage the upcoming film Captain Marvel to celebrate the amazing female pilots already in the Air Force and to inspire the next generation of young women with the pilots’ stories of perseverance and grit.

An amazingly unexpected opportunity presented itself as details of Disney’s highly classified Captain Marvel emerged. It was Marvel’s first solo female superhero with an origin story that begins as a pilot in the Air Force. Scenes from the movie were shot on Nellis Air Force base outside of Las Vegas. Female pilots consulted the star of the film to give her an idea of what it was like to fly fighter jets before she was taken for an intense flight in an F-16. We saw an exciting opportunity to join forces and align Captain Marvel’s origin story with the origin stories of real-world heroes, the female pilots of the Air Force.

The power of aligning with Captain Marvel was obvious. To get as close to the film as possible, we partnered with a media company to get the Air Force a 30-second pre-film placement in 3,600+ theaters across the U.S. Regarding the content itself, gathering a substantial number of female pilots without disrupting the Air Force’s mission is no small feat and required internal help and expertise, most of which came from female generals who rose through the ranks of the Air Force as pilots themselves. On a historic day at Edwards Air Force Base in California, more female pilots gathered together than ever before to be filmed, share their stories and to inspire a new generation, all in time to celebrate International Women’s Day.

We used content from our shoot at Edwards Air Force Base to create a campaign that compared them to the Marvel hero. Our 30-second spot ran in more than 80 percent of U.S. theaters before the film. We also created a series of short videos featuring the pilots’ stories and shared them across social media. The in-theater execution and all posts directed fans to a unique landing page at airforce.com/originstory, where they could learn more about female pilots and what it takes to become one. We then made sure that female pilots showed up in their flight suits on as many red carpets, and in as many talk show audiences as possible, earning goodwill from news organizations and entertainment powerhouses. With a little help from real-life Air Force heroes, and an international Hollywood blockbuster, we’re showing young girls that they can be anything they want to be.

“Origin Story” aired in over 3,600 theaters and received nearly 215M impressions across in-theater, TV, online video, paid social, Fandom.com and paid search. The paid media has collectively driven over 180K site visits to www.airforce.com/originstory, with an average time on page of two minutes and 31 seconds, and most importantly, over 500 Air Force applications have been completed at the time of this submission.