First, The Walking Dead. Later, the Oscars. Now, Star Wars. Design and make software brand Autodesk is tied to an embarrassment of intellectual property riches, and its marketing is leveraging this to reach potential customers.
Autodesk software is used to design elements of high-profile pieces of entertainment, including at Lucasfilm and Disney to bring the Star Wars universe to life. Now, Autodesk is telling that story in its latest campaign, which kicked off on May 4, the unofficial Star Wars holiday, and will run through the debut of Disney+’s new show The Acolyte.
As part of the 60-second ad, Autodesk released never-before-seen footage of the development of Pip, the newest droid that will appear in The Acolyte. Ads for the campaign will air across Disney and Hulu, and will be supported with programmatic buys and paid social content.
Additionally, fans can design their own droids using a free trial to enter into a contest to get their droids displayed at Lucasfilm in San Francisco or Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif.
It’s part of CMO Dara Treseder’s plan to bring the B2B brand to consumers by thinking like a B2C brand, making genuine connections with consumers using pieces of culture its target audience adores. But once a potential customer is hooked, Treseder’s team has potential customer journeys mapped out, with content designed to move people through the funnel.
Treseder spoke with ADWEEK about Autodesk’s full-funnel marketing plan and how to gain the trust of her company’s stakeholders in order to build a marketing organization that services the business’s needs.
“The emotional investment that people have in B2B products is massive. The impact, not only for them, but for their teams and their companies is massive,” Treseder said. “Deepening that emotional connection is very powerful, it’s very important, and that’s been a big part of our strategy.”
Tapping into Star Wars culture
Reaching fandoms that intersect with a marketer’s brand is an effective way of building brand loyalists. For Autodesk, which has numerous IPs it can tap into due to its penetration in entertainment, that meant figuring out which shows or movies engineers and designers gravitate toward.
Star Wars jumped out, giving Autodesk a chance to “celebrate this audience by giving Star Wars fans a chance to design their own droids,” Treseder said.
When Star Wars fans land on Autodesk’s website, Treseder’s team has built out a content plan to capture emails and other information to gauge where someone’s consideration for purchasing Autodesk’s software might be.