What you need to know

• Once a highly secretive and hidden industry, defence contracts have emerged as a major sector spending big on marketing campaigns.
• The “future frigates” campaign and even the (ultimately doomed) bid that saw France’s DCNS picked to build Australia’s new submarines were longterm campaigns that leveraged journalists, targeted social media, and mainstream advertising to convince their audiences.
• The contracts are worth tens of billions of dollars and “noone wanted to leave the country not having put everything on the table,” former BAE Systems exec Chandran Vigneswaran says.
• Defence campaigns are complex, involving B2B, B2C and B2G – government – all at the same time. Contractors have historically hired a crack team for the duration of the campaign, Vigneswaran says.
• Journalist Tory Shepherd, who covered both the Future Frigates and submarines bids, says the media is one battleground for eyeballs.

The once secretive world of defence is increasingly entering the very public world of marketing, spending tens of millions of dollars on campaigns pitching for multi-billion-dollar high speed weapon, armoured vehicle, navy frigate and submarine contracts.

Ten years ago, defence brands spent roughly $1 million in Australia. Now, it’s estimated to be 30 times that figure, with some even building brand campaigns.

“I'd say 10 to 15 years ago, the marketing budgets of defence companies competing in Australia were primarily, or 80 per cent – if not even higher – focused on exhibiting their wares and allowing their people to engage with the Australian customer at these large exhibitions, both in Australia and globally,” says Chandran Vigneswaran, Principal of Chandran Thinc and a former executive at British defence contractor BAE Systems.

“Like the marketing profession has evolved, so has marketing within defence companies now, but at a rapid pace... I'm seeing the investment move more now to traditional forms of marketing like advertising, through to content marketing and social media, and very importantly, engagement with traditional media.”

Frigates and subs 

For a contract worth billions of dollars, companies will do a lot, including assembling crack teams to target messages to key people. But it’s only in the past few years the audiences for the information campaigns behind defence bids has come to include the general public.

“When I first started covering some defence stuff, I was in politics. State politics and then federal politics, and I'm in South Australia. So defence was important,” Tory Shepherd, a journalist for The Guardian who has covered defence for years, says.

“Defence was important on both those levels, but the way it used to be was would be you'd have a flurry around a white paper, for example, or perhaps a surge in interest because the Collins class submarines were having some issues a few years ago now. … And then I think as soon as we started talking about the future submarines and the future frigates, it just exploded.”

It was around 2015 when the Federal Government announced it wanted to start building its “future frigates” by 2020, at a cost of some $35 billion. By 2018, BAE Systems had been named as the winner ahead of Italy’s Fincantieri and Spain’s Navantia.

“For a $35- or $80-billion contract, no one wanted to leave the country not having put everything on the table,” Vigneswaran, who worked at BAE during the bid, says.

“And so mainstream advertising for the first time, I think in Australia, you're seeing defence companies do that, whether it's on TV or radio.”

Wooing journalists became a key campaign strategy

Defence contractors and businesses are increasingly seeking to educate and target journalists to connect with the general public and decision-makers, Shepherd says. The Adelaide-based journalist covered the – now obsolete – bid to provide Australia with new submarines, to replace the ageing Collins class. Japan, France and Germany put their hats in the ring to build them at a price of around $80 billion. France ultimately won the contract, before it was torn up in favour of US-made nuclear submarines, but it was the first campaign Shepherd saw the inner workings of a defence bid.  

“That was the first time I really saw the defence companies, defence industry launch into the big woo, wooing journalists, which is interesting,” she says.

“So I went to France, I went to Germany, and I went to Japan with the defence industry to see – all on their tickets. I feel comfortable because I went to all three. Not everybody did.

“Before the submarines, before the future submarines and the frigates, most of your reporters, unless they were specialising just in defence, they wouldn't know when you're talking about propulsion systems or when you're talking about blue versus green water or anything else like that.

The travel informed her reporting, and she spoke to key military people who otherwise would have been inaccessible – but it was also a “massive marketing opportunity”.

“What kept kind of popping into my brain while I'm flying business class to these countries is like ‘what I think shouldn't influence in any way the outcome this $90 billion project’. It just shouldn't. But because politics plays a role and the interplay between journalism and politics is there, you can't rule out some daft hack in Adelaide may be playing into the politics that eventually had some impact on the decision.”

Shepherd is a small part of the marketing puzzle. Defence companies are spending millions targeting journalists and key people with the right messaging, Vigneswaran says. That means social media – LinkedIn and Facebook, for example, as well as mainstream ads. It is a unique campaign that is B2B, B2C and B2G – business to government.

“I think it's probably fair to say that most defence companies who are involved in bidding for a big campaign go through a very diligent exercise of identifying everyone who could influence that outcome, and that's from the user of their equipment, say it's an Air Force piece of equipment or an Air Force project… I think a huge and quick advancement in the way they are using social media to target key advisers, key politicians or anyone on that stakeholder base that they're seeking to influence,” he says.

“Some of the companies who have been successful in winning big work in Australia have been very good at building those coalitions of support to help influence the ultimate decision maker … I'd say not just BAE Systems, but most companies competing in the defence space and large contracts, they actually put together a campaign team quite quickly that is in place just for a campaign. They'll recruit often some of the best and brightest people across the business, from engineers to finance people to HR, functional support to government relations and then marketing, the true sort of communications and marketing team.” Shepherd says she has noticed Out of Home spots in airports frequently promote defence businesses.

Local dollars in defence bid wars

As tens of billions of dollars have been poured into defence contracts, local businesses have emerged as a global force. Vigneswaran says start-ups are contributing to global contracts and are increasingly growing marketing budgets to compete with each other.

“Defence spending in Australia has been exponential over the last few years and will continue to grow over the next couple of decades,” Vigneswaran says.

“You're starting to actually see at the moment some really interesting small to medium sized Australian companies start to play in the defence space and start to create really interesting brands of their own, be it engineering capability that they're delivering or products like autonomous vehicles or autonomous capability.”

Likewise, defence contractors are opening up longer-term Australian offices.

“These companies that would have previously had very small offices in Australia, a small footprint, and we really just come in and sell their product and now starting to establish a bigger footprint here, hiring more people, investing in technology, investing in Australian companies,” he says.

“And I think it's another big change to the industry in Australia… You're seeing defence companies now actually start to have a view and position themselves on Australian issues, be it the economy, be it Covid, be it diversity and inclusion. They're starting to become more of a fabric of the Australian business community.”