Iridium

Situation / Challenge

In 2016, Iridium began a series of eight Iridium NEXT satellite launches marking the beginning of one of the world’s largest “tech refreshes” in history. With the rollout spanning 18 months, Iridium was looking for a new way to narrate the story of their emerging capabilities, aiming to inspire innovators and investors looking to develop new market applications.

Identifying with the New Space voices of Silicon Valley upstarts, Iridium wanted to create a new corporate voice using aspirational messaging versus traditional satellite speak. They also wanted to elevate concepts from its story to appeal to wider business and human interests. Additionally, Iridium wanted to maximize the collateral visibility of launching with media darling SpaceX after the launcher’s most recent failure.

Approach

Sage developed a print and digital advertising campaign called “World Changing Connectivity”. Based on a series of social change and business evolution themes, the campaign elicited emotion with inspiring messaging and striking imagery, generating thought about new ways to use technology to solve problems affecting our world.

Results

Using web, social and digital advertising components, the campaign was initiated during the first three months of 2017, in concert with the company’s first successful satellite launch. The campaign initially focused on financial and emerging tech publications such as Forbes and Fast Company and proved to be Iridium’s most successful digital ad campaign to date. Seven more campaign concepts ultimately followed those first two.