Engaging customers with storytelling at 40,000 feet

Headquartered in Longueuil, Quebec, Canada, Pratt & Whitney Canada is a leading manufacturer of aircraft engines, and a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies. With over 60,000 engines in service in more than 200 countries by 1,100+ airlines, Pratt & Whitney has become a global leader for both commercial and military aviation needs.

While P&W have been successful at getting their products into planes in both the private and public sector, they haven't escaped the need to get the news out about their new launches and service offerings. For putting together effective, top-notch marketing campaigns, they've often turned to Valtech for help. 

With over 60,000 engines in service in 200 countries and an expanding aftermarket services offering, Pratt & Whitney Canada needs a way to reach and engage with engine operators and customers to talk about scheduled maintenance services, preventative maintenance such as oil analysis technology, real-time engine health analysis programs, and other innovative solution offerings.

In order to create a better dialog between its customer support and customers, strengthen customer relationships and increase brand awareness, P&WC needed a solid and unified presence across its digital ecosystem.

After performing extensive research on P&WC customer profiles, benchmarking the aviation community, and performing a deep dive analysis of customer service requirements, Valtech provided a digital strategy supported on an ongoing basis through content creation, community management and strategic advising.

We have developed platforms to build community, an effective social media strategy to better reach and engage with target customers, and to measure performance.

Valtech introduced the integration of three new communications forums to the Pratt & Whitney Canada digital ecosystem:

- Airtime: P&WC’s Blog to share technical tips, flying stories and expert advice
- PT6 Nation: Community digital ecosystem including a website and social media channels to bring together the aviation community around the iconic aircraft engine: the PT6A
- Ongoing Social Media Community Management & Campaigns Management: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Youtube.

Valtech designed and developed a robust blog for aircraft operators with a focus on delivering information about how new P&WC tools and technologies deliver preventative maintenance, and improve aircraft operations. The blog also became a forum for maintenance storytelling. The blog was sectioned into:

-Aircraft Maintenance Tips and Techniques
-Personal Stories from operators around the world
-Discussions with experts

Valtech provided blog platform design and development, editorial planning, editing, SEO optimization, and content production, including graphics, images, videos and reporting on performance.

Within three months of launch, the blog doubled its audience, and continues to increase traffic. The introduction of an email newsletter to support the blog further increased traffic and offered a new avenue to reach the aftermarket community and speak to them directly.

The blog provides high-quality content for P&WC's social media channels, and increases SEO. After one year of publication, the blog contained about 50 high-quality articles. These articles continue to generate traffic to the P&WC web site.

Whenever P&W come out with a new product, it's a big deal, but when a new take on a classic engine is released, it sends shockwaves throughout the industry. With the release of the PT6A engine, P&W knew they were changing aviation forever, and it needed a big showcase at launch. Only the industry's largest, private tradeshow was suited to host such an unveiling.

Taking a digital-first approach, Valtech helped organize and design every aspect of the PT6A booth at the tradeshow. From the video screen displaying the engine and visualizing the way data flows through it to give the operator a more detailed dashboard, to an informative app on a tablet at the booth that attendees could use for more information, Valtech helped create it all. 

The app was developed within P&W's Sitecore infrastructure so that we could leverage that integration to pull key information about the PT6A engine in a secure way. Sales reps were able to share insights about the engine and provide deep learnings to the tradeshow attendees through the use of the app. 

Given the importance of video and the app in this tradeshow, Valtech's focus was on creating a physical event that would also work well in a digital setting. Even though the show took place in the pre-Covid world, this focus on hybrid shows and webinars has proven crucial moving forward. But by focusing on creating content that would function both in the digital space as well as the physical, we were able to make sure the story about this revolutionary engine reached as many people as possible. And when paired with the PT6 Nation community platform, it's easy to see how focused P&W is on creating meaningful interaction on the ground, in the air and online. 

With a highly enthusiastic community around the PT6A engine already discussing stories and posting photos on web pages, social media and in community forums around the web, it was evident that the group needed a platform of their own. With a community manager on-hand to answer questions and assist operators that needed help posting, the platform not only successfully brought the community together, but also became a good forum for Pratt & Whitney Canada to post news, and talk to operators directly.

Valtech built the platform on Django, coordinated editorial planning and posting, and provided social media and community management for the platform.

Over five years, the platform amassed an extensive international community of PT6A operators, pilots, maintenance specialists and admirers. It became a recognized space to celebrate the PT6 engine.

Valtech continues to support Pratt & Whitney Canada with content strategy, curation, digital asset creation and community management on social channels, working side-by-side with P&WC marketing and digital content teams.

Relied upon for expertise in digital content creation, publication, distribution, and management, as well as strategic reporting and optimisation Valtech has an integral role in the digital ecosystem performance.

PT6 Nation engages 60 000 fans. Over 35 000 community members contribute content and share information on the platform

We see that Pratt & Whitney Canada customers are highly responsive when we offer technical tips and aircraft maintenance videos. We also see engagement peak when publishing aviation stories from the field. Rallied together by branded content, we see a vibrant online community gathering around the P&WC brand.

Lina Zarate, Digital Strategist, Valtech

Using a multi-channel, targeted approach to engaging with customers, Pratt & Whitney Canada has fostered community and reached hundreds of thousands of aviation enthusiasts around the world.

Through its digital ecosystem, with audience engagement rates higher than industry standards, Pratt & Whitney Canada has successfully built a community around its engines, brand and beyond.