HANDLING
ITAR-aware
Default information handling treats ITAR / EAR controls as the baseline.
SECTOR 21 — TECHNOLOGY & REGULATED
Aerospace
& DefenseProgram-led narratives and prime/sub positioning for aerospace primes, new-space operators, and defense technology.
New-SpacePrime / SubDual-UseITAR-Aware
21
Practice scope
Aerospace and defense buyers — programs offices, primes, government customers, capital markets — operate on long cycles and short patience for marketing fluff. We help A&D operators build program-led narratives, capture-grade pursuit collateral, and cleared-talent recruiting brands that earn position on the right SOWs and close the right contracts.
- Engagement
- 20–32 wks · avg length
- Audience
- Cleared-ready
- Disciplines
- Strategy · Brand · Build · Growth · Legal
- Adjacent industries
- Technology & Software · Telecommunications · Manufacturing & Industrial
01
CH · 01 / 10 — Snapshot
The sector in four numbers and a posture.
Every industry opens with the same four-cell read: regime, engagement length, audience structure, and the operating signal that determines how this sector buys. Aerospace & Defense is no exception.
AVG LENGTH
20–32 wks
Program cycles and capture timelines run long; we plan around them.
TALENT
Cleared-ready
Recruiting brand designed for cleared and clearable talent pools.
AUDIENCE
Program + capital
Program offices, primes, and dual-track investor / government audiences.
02
CH · 02 / 10 — Forces
Three forces reshaping aerospace & defense.
We don't open with claims about ourselves. We open with what's actually pressing on the operators we serve — the structural shifts that determine which kinds of brand and demand work compound this cycle and which don't.
FORCE 01
New-space rewrites the buyer
Government program offices now buy from companies that operate at commercial speed. The marketing has to make that operationally legible.
FORCE 02
Dual-use is the model
The most-funded A&D operators run dual commercial / defense models. Brand work has to support both without confusing either.
FORCE 03
Cleared talent is the bottleneck
Hiring cleared and clearable engineering talent at scale is now operationally limiting. Recruiting brand is a primary investment.
03
CH · 03 / 10 — Sub-sectors
Four families under one practice.
Aerospace & Defense isn't one customer. It's four — and the engagement scope, audience, and creative language we ship varies materially across them. The industry covers all four; most engagements pick one.
01
Aerospace Primes
Major primes and tier-1 suppliers. Program-led narrative and capture support.
02
New-Space & Commercial
Launch, satellite, in-orbit services, lunar / Mars operators. Dual-track narrative.
03
Defense Technology
Defense-tech operators across air, sea, land, cyber, space. SBIR / STTR through prime.
04
MRO & Sustainment
Maintenance, repair, overhaul, and sustainment operators. Program-customer-facing brand.
04
CH · 04 / 10 — Buyer-side
Who we actually work with.
Most marketing decks address an "audience". We address a person — usually one of three, with a budget, a quarter to defend, and a specific frustration with the marketing they've been shipped before. These are them.
VP MARKETING / COMMS
Program narrative
Owns program-by-program narrative and the corporate brand around them.
“Each program is its own world. The corporate brand is silent.”
VP CAPTURE / BD
Capture & proposal
Owns capture and proposal pursuit; needs collateral that wins position.
“We can win the work. We lose the position before the proposal.”
CHIEF TALENT / VP HR
Cleared talent brand
Owns recruiting at scale across cleared and clearable engineering pools.
“Every program needs a hundred engineers. We hire ten.”
05
CH · 05 / 10 — Problems
Six problems we solve repeatedly.
Industry-specific, not generic. Each of these has been the headline problem on multiple aerospace & defense engagements, and the work below is purpose-built for the regime, audience, and review cycle this sector lives inside.
P · 01
Program & capability narratives
Per-program and corporate-capability storytelling for program offices and capital markets.
P · 02
Prime / sub positioning
Brand work that earns the right kind of teaming relationships.
P · 03
Dual-use commercialization
Marketing for commercial-side businesses without compromising defense-side credibility.
P · 04
Capture & proposal collateral
Capture-grade pursuit infrastructure and reusable proposal systems.
P · 05
Cleared-talent recruiting
Recruiting brand for cleared and clearable engineering, technical, and operational talent.
P · 06
Investor / government dual-track
Brand and narrative for operators speaking to capital markets and government simultaneously.
06
CH · 06 / 10 — Engagement
Five deliverables we ship in this sector.
An engagement is a stack of these — chosen against your problem, your timeline, and the disciplines we need to bring. Most aerospace & defense engagements pick three to five and run them in coordinated phases.
BRAND
Capability statements & site
Program-customer-facing capability and corporate-brand digital surface.
STRATEGY
Program-by-program narrative
Per-program storytelling system aligned to capture and corporate brand.
STRATEGY
Proposal & capture enablement
Reusable, brand-grade pursuit infrastructure and per-program variants.
GROWTH
Recruiting brand & campaigns
Cleared and clearable talent recruiting brand and digital infrastructure.
STRATEGY
Investor / government deck
Dual-track narrative and deck for capital markets and program audiences.
07
CH · 07 / 10 — Blend
Discipline weighting for aerospace & defense.
Every sector pulls on our five disciplines differently. This is the calibrated weighting — the dosing we default to on a typical engagement, before we adjust to your specific brief.
The weighting reads left-to-right as the share of senior-team focus on a default engagement. This sector is regulated, so legal-and-compliance work is ranked first-class — not as a sign-off step. No discipline disappears entirely; the ratio is what changes.
08
CH · 08 / 10 — Outcomes
Four outcomes we measure on.
Numbers below are anonymized engagement medians from comparable aerospace & defense cohorts. Every one of them traces back to a named brief, a measurement window, and a method we'll walk you through in person before you commit to anything.
CAPTURE WIN
+24%
Median win-rate on shortlisted capture pursuits after collateral system.
RECRUIT TIME
−38%
Cleared-engineering time-to-fill after employer-brand work.
RFI POSITION
+1.7×
Position-on-shortlist rate after capability-statement system.
CAP. RAISE
+1.4×
Median round-size lift on dual-use operators after narrative rebuild.
09
CH · 09 / 10 — Sector FAQ
Things we get asked every intake.
A short list of the questions aerospace & defense buyers ask us before signing. If you've been here before, the rest of the process will feel familiar; if you haven't, this is a useful first read.
FAQ · 01
Do you do classified work?
We don't directly. Our team works on the unclassified, commercial-side, and corporate-brand layers of A&D engagements. Classified content sits with your in-house teams or specialized cleared firms.
FAQ · 02
Are you ITAR / EAR-aware?
Yes — default information handling, vendor relationships, and project tooling treat ITAR / EAR controls as the baseline. Specific export-control determinations sit with your trade-compliance team.
FAQ · 03
Can you support SBIR / STTR-stage operators?
Yes — early-stage defense-tech, SBIR / STTR-funded operators, and pre-Phase-III companies are inside scope as commercial-side brand and narrative engagements.
FAQ · 04
What about international primes and sales?
FMS and DCS-aware brand work, yes. Specific FMS contracting sits with your government-customer team; we work alongside it on the brand and capability layer.
10
CH · 10 / 10 — Adjacents
Other industries worth pulling.
Aerospace & Defense doesn't sit in isolation. These are the practice groups we most often run alongside it — operators who share buyer audiences, regulatory regimes, or commercial dynamics with the work covered above.
SECTOR 01 · TECHNOLOGY & REGULATED
Technology & Software
Positioning, GTM, and product-led growth for teams shipping software — from seed-stage SaaS to platform incumbents
PULL INDUSTRY →
SECTOR 14 · TECHNOLOGY & REGULATED
Telecommunications
Enterprise positioning, consumer funnels, and infrastructure-grade narratives for carriers, MSOs, and connectivity platforms
PULL INDUSTRY →
SECTOR 05 · PHYSICAL & INDUSTRIAL
Manufacturing & Industrial
B2B demand gen, channel enablement, and rebrand work for heritage operators and industrial-tech challengers
PULL INDUSTRY →
If your team operates in aerospace & defense,
this is what an intake looks like.
One 45-minute call with a partner, no slides. We use the time to map your problem to the chapters in this industry and tell you — honestly — whether we're the right team for it. The answer is sometimes no, which is part of why our clients send other clients.