Why Communications Strategy is NASA’s Secret Weapon

Doug Downs (00:08):

In 2012, NASA's Curiosity Rover known as the Mars Rover was sent to explore the Gale crater on Mars. It was a way to investigate the planet's climate and geology, assess whether conditions were ever favorable for microbial life and gather data for future human exploration. But it was the landing of the rover on Mars that was known as the seven minutes of terror. Curiosity successfully landed on Mars using an innovative landing technique. It involved a complex sequence of steps that slowed the rover from 13,000 miles per hour to a soft landing. The sequence included a supersonic parachute, a sky crane for the final descent and rocket powered deceleration. NASA effectively utilized this suspenseful event for public engagement by streaming it live and explaining the difficulties of landing on Mars. Capturing worldwide attention and interest

Arik Karani (00:08):

NASA (01:12):

Separated where we found the ground. We're down to 90 meters per second at an altitude of 6.5 kilometers of standing by for batch all separation. We are in powered flight. Touchdown confirmed we're safe on Mars,

Doug Downs (01:43):

Equipped with sophisticated instruments, curiosity analyzed soil and rock samples, taking high definition images and transmitting data back to earth. One of its key discoveries was evidence that the crater had ancient conditions suitable for life, including water in the form of clay materials. NASA's handling of the mission's, public relations played a significant role in its success. The agency provided real-time updates, hosted live broadcasts of the landing, and used social media creatively to involve every one of us. The Curiosity Rover even had its own Twitter account, sharing updates from the surface of Mars, making the mission relatable and fostering a sense of direct connection between the public and space exploration. The 2012 Mars Rover mission was a scientific milestone and a captivating story that reached people across the globe cementing NASA's image as an innovative and inspiring organization in space exploration today on stories and strategies, stoking public curiosity for space exploration using solid comms strategies. My name is Doug dos. My guest this week is Brittany Brown, joining today from Washington DC Hey, Brittany.

Brittany Brown  (03:18):

Good morning. How are

Doug Downs (03:20):

Are things in dc? I was just there a few months ago. I love it. Love the

Brittany Brown  (03:24):

Area. DC is a fabulous place. Moving here is one of the best decisions that I've made personally and professionally.

Doug Downs (03:31):

Awesome. Brittany, you oversee NASA's digital ecosystem, which includes television programming, video production, photography, the web podcast, social media, mobile platforms, you name it. You've been in communications over two decades and have contributed to award-winning projects, promoting public engagement with NASA's missions and discoveries. So I'm going to start right at the top and the question that I wrote out was, why is public relations so important to NASA? But I suppose we should go at that. What do you mean by public relations? Do you mean communication strategy, your thoughts?

Brittany Brown  (04:06):

Yeah, so for me, working as a civil servant for a government agency, I would characterize our work as communication strategy. When I think of traditional public relations, usually there is some point of sale. And for organizations like NASA, we don't have a point of sale really. We aren't selling a traditional product. Everything that we do has already been paid for by taxpayers, and essentially as it relates to our communication strategy and our mission, it's to educate and inform the public about what we're doing using those taxpayer dollars. It actually has been a part of NASA's mandate since 1958 in our charter to reach the widest audience possible. So digital communications is just the latest chapter in that and the latest tools that we use to make sure that we're keeping the audience and the public informed about what NASA is doing.

Doug Downs (04:59):

Okay. The audience, and of course the world is sort of your audience, but as someone schooling, communication strategy, you can't put the world as your key audience, even if underneath it might be if you were to segment into three key audiences, and I know it's issue dependent, but who might be in those segmentations?

Brittany Brown  (05:21):

Sure. I do think sometimes we do approach our communication strategy. We have general messages for a general audience, but it's important for us to peel back those layers to your point of specific audience segments that we want to reach because we need to tailor our messaging, tailor our content to those specific audiences. A few of those audiences who come to mind, we have our fandom. I would consider that the NASA super fans. I mean, whatever we do, they're going to love it. They're going to give us all the likes and shares on social media as an example. They're our biggest advocates and brand ambassadors. So we already have those folks in the fold. While it's important to, again, share content that keeps them excited and speaking great things about NASA and helping spread the word, it's important for us to also have tactics and strategies to reach folks who are not within the fold.

(06:13):

And so I would consider that audience segment maybe untapped. And so those are audience segments, maybe those individuals who don't live near a NASA center, so NASA isn't a part of their everyday sightings, as an example. And so those untapped audiences, we have to and make intentional decisions to go out into explore where they are and meet them where they are. And that's where I find a lot of excitement along my colleagues is it's a challenge of figuring out, okay, who are these untapped communities? What inspires them? What motivates them? What are they interested in? How do we connect with them? So another audience segment that of course is really important, partners and stakeholders, right? Because everything that NASA does, we do as a team. We're working with other government agencies, we're working with elected officials, we're working with other commercial space partners. We're working with even small businesses.

(07:08):

And so that's an audience segment that we have to communicate. How do we work together? How do we shape our messaging to talk about that symbiotic relationship between NASA, this huge bureaucratic organization and those various partners and stakeholders. And of course, another audience segment that I think every government agency has is those influential decision makers, the folks who are deciding day in and day out, what our priorities are. And so for us, if our priority is going back to the moon with the first woman and first person of color as communicators, is important for us to develop strategies centered around this, to talk about the value and importance of why are we going to the moon again? Why is this important? What do we get out of this? What do we stand to benefit from going to the moon? And people who may say, we've already been to the moon, we don't need to go there again. But explaining to them in our calm strategy, Hey, we explored one portion of the moon, right? We're going to a place we haven't explored. And so those are just a few of the audience segments, peeling back those layers of specific people who we want to reach.

Doug Downs (08:16):

That's a great point. Imagine landing on earth for the first time, and all you see is the Caribbean. You'd think Earth was this wonderful, warm, tropical place. You didn't come up to Canada where I'm located, and it was cold and snowy that day. We got to see other parts.

Brittany Brown  (08:32):

Exactly. I love that analogy. There's so much to explore. Yes, absolutely.

Doug Downs (08:38):

Your industry is just a little bit complex. Brittany, I worked in utilities, electricity companies, so big transmission towers. I thought what I worked in was pretty complex because electricity is hard to explain. Yours is complex kind of on steroids. How do you deal with that with different scientific topics?

Brittany Brown  (09:01):

What we work our hardest to do is to bridge the knowledge gap knowing that we have some incredibly smart, the best of the best folks working at NASA. When we are engaging with our subject matter experts as public affairs and communications professionals, it's our job to have them bring down their content and that subject matter, bring it back down to earth and have them explain what they're doing, what their projects are, what the sciences that they're exploring. But then once they've maybe told us that story, challenge them to tell us that story the way that they would tell a five-year-old,

(09:38):

Or maybe tell their grandparents or their neighbor or someone who has no connection to NASA. When I think about our digital platforms in particular, we've kind of done some internal work and brainstorming of what is our persona, how are we speaking to people and what is the voice? And one of the beautiful things that we came up with as a team is the voice of NASA's digital platforms is that beloved high school science teacher, one that is super, super smart, super super knowledgeable about complex topics, but also can relate to students. They don't punch up, but they don't push down. And so depending on what your knowledge level is and how comfortable you are with that content, the teacher meets you where you are. This teacher also, in addition to being super geeky, and they may have some dad jokes that they're sharing, they're also hip and they know pop culture, so they can relate to those students. And so when we think about audiences, when we think about these complex topics, we have that as kind of our north star, like that teacher, how would they explain this to their students?

Doug Downs (10:45):

Perfect. You mentioned partnerships. Tell me about the role that partnerships play, and if you can mention some of them for me.

Brittany Brown  (10:54):

So there's a line that we have in bio in some of our social media platforms, and it says there's space for everybody.

Doug Downs (11:02):

Oh, nice.

Brittany Brown  (11:03):

And it sounds cliche, but we really mean it of like, we want to open the doors and welcome everyone into space. Right? There are no gatekeepers here. So when it comes to partnerships and collaborations, we aren't going at this alone. We need those partnerships and collaborations to reach, again, as I mentioned, people beyond the fandom. And so that's why we work with commercial space companies. That's why when commercial space companies are sending private astronauts to space, they may not be NASA astronauts, but you'll see us congratulate them and give them a shout out, right? Because they're also exploring, they're also doing science on these launches. And then we do also have some formal partnerships with commercial partners as well. And so again, it runs the gamut of these collaborations and of who we're exploring with. But that is something that's incredibly important to NASA. We realize that the space industry, that there are lots of folks excited who want to play in this space, and we embrace that because we can do so much more together, and there is space for everybody.

Doug Downs (12:11):

Can you walk me through an example of a successful comms campaign? What was the initial issue? Who were the stakeholders that you identified? What did you do? And then I'm really interested, how did you measure it in the end to know that you got it right?

Brittany Brown  (12:28):

Sure. Well, I'll give two examples if that's okay.

Doug Downs (12:32):

Yeah.

Brittany Brown  (12:33):

I would say for NASA, and this predates my time with NASA, but I think NASA's most recognizable comms campaign was related to Apollo 11, going to the moon, landing people on the moon. That was a significant milestone for us, that global broadcast where you have people literally glued to their TVs, watching that moment, seeing the first time someone took and put a step on the moon, that was a huge campaign that again, we use the tools that were available. Then traditional tv, TV as well as media coverage of that. And then we can fast forward to campaigns today that we have digital platforms, and everyone kind of has those small little devices on the go where they get information instantaneously and they can share with hundreds or thousands of millions of people. One of the first campaigns that I worked on when I came to NASA is a mission called Parker Solar Probe. Does that ring a bell for you?

Doug Downs (13:35):

Vaguely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brittany Brown  (13:37):

Okay. So Parker Solar probe was our mission to, and our tagline was a mission to touch the sun. And so we were sending a probe to the sun to explore the sun. And what I loved about this is that building out that communications campaign, we had that tagline, a mission to Touch the sun, because we realized to the point earlier about bringing space back down to earth, and some of the terminology, we can't assume everyone knows what the word heliophysics means. Heliophysics is just the study of the sun. And so Parker Solar probe, this probe is named after a scientist, Eugene Parker. We can't assume that folks who are not in the space industry know his name, but by developing a tagline, a mission to touch the sun, we made it relatable. You didn't have to know what halo physics is. You didn't have to know what the scientist is, his work at the University of Chicago and his history and all these notable things that he did. But we wanted people to walk away knowing that for the first time ever, NASA's going to the sun and we're going to touch the sun. And so I think that one of the ways that we measure the success of that campaign is just a message, penetration of mission to touch the sun. Powerful

Doug Downs (14:52):

Words too. Yeah,

Brittany Brown  (14:53):

Exactly. And so I love that. And so that communications campaign included content leading up to the launch from NASA Kennedy in Florida. It also included an event that we call a NASA social where we invite digital creators to come watch the launch, to talk to subject matter experts beforehand and to capture content and share it with their audiences. It included things like media relations campaigns, having subject matter experts talk to local media, so not just national media, but also hometown news, newspapers and news outlets, radio stations. And so we approached it also from the bottom up, but also from the top down because again, we want to reach the widest audience possible as we're mandated in our charter from 1958.

Doug Downs (15:38):

Okay. Let me kind of expand on that. You talked about the channels. How do you adopt your communication strategies to reach different audiences? And beyond demographics, the psychographics, you talked about messaging down to sometimes a grade five level, and I personally appreciate that because what I need, maybe even down a little lower, but you also need to communicate to Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. He doesn't want to read at a grade five level, he wants to read at the Harvard or the Caltech, fictional Caltech level, geographic, socioeconomic. How do you adjust your strategies and your channels to reach all those people?

Brittany Brown  (16:19):

Yes. And so we have channels for all of those folks across our digital landscape. If I'm talking about social media in particular, on social media, NASA has a massive following of more than 400 million people organically. And so while my core team, my direct reports, we manage the flagship at NASA, the big accounts, we also have what we call thematic accounts. And so for folks who are more generalists and they want that general messaging they can follow at NASA, right? Because we want to make it understandable that teachers speaking to them. But for folks who are in the weeds who are very technical and they want the specifics, that's where those thematic accounts come in. So if you're following us for a launch, we'll give you the main milestones. But if you want more in the weeds, it may be following the space station account. And so they're sharing things like telemetry data and milestones, and they'll use words like main engine cutoff. We don't assume that the general public knows what that is or even uses the terminology like payload.

Doug Downs (17:23):

And

Brittany Brown  (17:23):

So there's something for everyone. And our goal and our mission is to direct those audiences to those platforms who are delivering the content and the way that they want it. And to your point about the individuals who are super technical and they do want that in the weeds, we create content tailored to them too. Reddit is a perfect and one of our favorite platforms. We engage every day on Reddit by sharing news and information, making our subject matter experts available. And those very specific questions, again, our subject matter experts get excited of like, oh, this person's really passionate about my work. I can kind of geek out and get in the details and these very specific detailed questions. And there's value in that too because as we're educating them, they're educating their audience and their followers, their community.

Doug Downs (18:11):

I'd like the idea of the feedback channel too. How big is the team that you need to have to manage all those different feedback channels? I get it. There's a broadcast element to this. Push it out on the social channels, on Reddit, on podcasts, on YouTube, on television, traditional media. But the mechanisms needed to listen to the feedback because some of the technical feedback you're going to get, the questions would be incredibly intense and difficult to understand, let alone know how to answer. How big of a resource do you need to manage that?

Brittany Brown  (18:49):

Well, we can always use more people, but we're doing a lot with a small but mighty team. And I do want to pull on something that you mentioned about broadcast. This is something that I share with my team all the time, is that that is one of the things that annoy me to no end.

(19:07):

We should not use our platforms as a broadcast medium full stop. We are there to communicate with the audience, and that means it's a two-way conversation. Who wants to go to a party or get together? And you have this one person, they're just talking about themselves. It's like, okay, I don't want to let me go find someone who this is actually a dialogue. And so we set aside time to engage on our platforms. I have continued to stress to my team the importance of this. As an example, if you see us on Instagram, as soon as something's posted on NASA's main Instagram account, we're engaging in the comments for at least the first 20 minutes after that's posted. We have to workflows so that we make sure that we are posed to answer questions. Also, for our live events, let's say a launch, again, I'm not a subject matter expert in some of these highly technical things, but we work with our mission directorates or programs to say we need two or three experts who will be at the ready side by side with us, ready to answer questions.

(20:12):

They don't have to have an next account Facebook account, a LinkedIn ready or whatever, but we just need a way to communicate with them, whether that's a Google Doc or that's on teams. We'll give them the question, they give us the answer, we can go back and forth to make it plain language. And then we're giving those responses to the public. And so those workflows are in place for us to do that in real time, not just for the big missions and the launches and the landings and the space walks, but even on a day-to-day basis, social media engagement. And that engagement is happening. And I mentioned social media, but I want to mention that for the office communications, this is happening across the board. We have media relations officers who are responding to questions from media queries every day. We have a team who is responding to questions from the public.

(20:55):

That's our public inquiries team. And so there may be kids emailing them questions of, Hey, I need help with this homework. Can you give me an answer to this boys and girl scouts who are reaching out with questions? And so they will send us a letter, we will respond to them. We have dedicated team members who are being responsive day in and day out. And again, it's a lot of work. People are really passionate about it, but the long and short of it is that for NASA, communicating with the public is not a one way form of communication.

Doug Downs (21:30):

That's so good. Brittany, in our previous episode, Eric Karani, the president of the Public Relations Association of Africa, left a question for you

Arik Karani (21:40):

For our next guest. I really, really, really, really have been thinking about this. I think it's one of the things you start thinking when you get to a certain age and my age, which I'm not going to say, and I know Doug, you want me to say no, I will not tell you, and I will not say what age I am. But for my next guest, what's your biggest fear? And please don't tell me the darkness, cockroaches and stuff like that. No. As you grow older, what is your fear of life? I would love to hear and know that.

Brittany Brown  (22:19):

So to answer this question, I would say one of my biggest fears as it relates to communications is actually public speaking. It's something that is a challenge for me. Every time I have a speaking engagement of all the things I want to remember to say, and then afterwards I'm like playing on my head, oh, shoot, you forgot to remember to say this point, or You forgot to say this point. And then also sometimes hearing that playback, if I'm watching a recording of it, it's a little weird hearing my voice. So I would say one of my biggest fears that I'm trying to overcome is public speaking. I'm very much a behind the scenes kind of communicator and not the first to raise my hand to go up and speak in front of a crowd.

Doug Downs (23:01):

And I wonder, because you're a leader in this field, I wonder if you put additional pressure on yourself. I can't be good. I need to be great. I do that to myself all the time.

Brittany Brown  (23:12):

Oh, absolutely. I have a high bar, not only for myself, but also for my team. And one of the beautiful things about NASA is that you have a lot of the eight type personalities and folks who just want to be the best of the best. And so we always encourage each other. We're always learning from one another and pushing each other to be our best, the best that we can be.

Doug Downs (23:33):

Perfect. Your turn. Brittany, what question would you like to leave behind for our next guest?

Brittany Brown  (23:38):

For the next guest? I love to know your thoughts on AI as it relates to communications. Is AI something that you fear or something that you'll embrace and why?

Doug Downs (23:51):

Perfect. Perfect. And I take it you're embracing because it's new and it's cool, and you're probably on the early adopter side of the meter.

Brittany Brown  (24:01):

I am in a personal capacity at NASA. We're still exploring tools. We're still exploring approvals and kind of what our right and left limits are. With so much disinformation out there, it's something that we have to tread very carefully in that space, especially as it relates to generative content, whether that be imagery, because we don't want to put ourself in a position where people are questioning whether our content is real or if it's highly doctored. And so it's exciting place to be in. I am a part of a TIGER team for communications where we're learning about ai. We invited in guest speakers from industry. We had a summer of AI series where it help coordinate speakers to help educate communicators across NASA. And of course, we're working with our IT department to figure out our policy, which tools will be onboarded. And so they're currently evaluating tools that will onboard for use across the agency. So it's an exciting space to be in. It's somewhat scary for some folks, but that's why we can lean on one another and help mitigate some of those risks and educate ourselves so that we don't have missteps.

Doug Downs (25:05):

And your audience would scrutinize things so closely. It's got to be exactly right and perfectly, if not defendable, then a mechanism where you're listening in a serving and return kind of idea.

Brittany Brown  (25:18):

Absolutely.

Doug Downs (25:19):

Yeah. Brittany, I really appreciate your time. So good to get together with you.

Brittany Brown  (25:23):

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for this conversation today. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about NASA's comm strategy.

Doug Downs (25:32):

If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Brittany Brown, best way to do that is through NASA's contact page, and we've got that in the show notes. They also have a big Twitter account. What was the one with 400 million? Was it Instagram that you,

Brittany Brown  (25:47):

Well, that's across all of our platforms, yes.

Doug Downs (25:49):

Okay.

Brittany Brown  (25:50):

So Instagram is our most followed account. I believe we're at 97 million. So on Instagram we're, I think the number 40th most followed on X we're the number 10 most followed. We just beat Lady Gaga on X. So we're continuously growing across these platforms. I'm really proud of the audiences who continue to engage with us, and we take it very seriously, providing them with the kind of content that they want to see.

Doug Downs (26:13):

Well, Brittany, you feel free to repost this podcast episode across all your, I will send you a stories and strategies mug as a thank you stories and strategies as a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcast. If you like this episode, please leave a rating, possibly a review. Thank you as always, to superstar producer Emily Page. And lastly, do us a favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.