Dream with Us Design Challenge 2023

Marketing Plan Guide

The 2023 NASA Aeronautics “Dream with Us” design challenge asks student teams to prepare a 

marketing plan. Marketing plans can take many forms, but this guide will help provide resources and 

ideas that will help you develop your plan. This guide is meant to help teams with their plan but is not 

all-inclusive. We encourage teams to also find their own resources and develop a plan that works for 

them. Be creative! We can’t wait to see what you develop.

Description

What is a marketing plan? Basically, a marketing plan is a way to show an audience the materials that 

will be used to reach out to a specific market. In this case, we are asking you to “sell” us your new, more 

sustainable aircraft. How will you do that? Well, that’s up to you. We need specific information, which is 

outlined below, but we encourage you to use your creative skills to figure out the best way to do that.

Getting Started

If you’re not sure where to start, it’s sometimes helpful to take a look at what others have done. This is 

part of market research, which means you need to gather data about people or companies (your 

market). This is done to better understand what people need. Since you probably haven’t sold anyone 

an airplane before, conduct a search for existing aircraft and find out what the manufacturers of these 

aircraft have to say about their aircraft and how they do it. What are their selling points? What 

information do they include? Don’t forget to look carefully at the styles they use –the images, videos, 

fonts, wording.

Consider your audience. What type of people, or organization will want to buy your aircraft? Why? We 

asked you to create a more sustainable aircraft. Who might be interested in buying this type of aircraft? 

Why might they want it? What are its benefits? And don’t forget to speak their language. If you are 

selling something to a group of teenagers, the language you use, the images you select, and even the 

font you use would be different than it would be for adults who are investing large amounts of money in 

a business deal. Spend some time learning more about your audience and what might interest them.

Also consider what your audience is going to want—for this design challenge they want an aircraft 

design that is more environmentally sustainable but they also need to make sure lots of people want to 

fly on these planes since that’s how they will make money to keep their airline in business. What will 

attract passengers to this plane compared to other aircraft different airlines might have?

Consider your competition. Can you find any other companies trying to sell sustainable aircraft? This is 

your competition. What does your aircraft have that others don’t? 

Get to know your airplanes. For this design challenge, we are asking you to create a new narrow body 

aircraft or single-aisle aircraft. What does this mean? Basically, these airliners have a single aisle for 

people to walk down when they enter the aircraft and there are up to six total seats in a row. Nearly all 

aircraft manufacturers make this type of aircraft, and they are one of the most heavily used aircraft 

types. 
Set a goal. Ask yourself why someone might want a marketing plan. Are you hoping to sell your airplane 

to a manufacturer (or to NASA?)? If so, think of your plan with your audience in mind and what they 

need. If your goal is to sell and airplane (or a whole fleet of airplanes), why would someone buy yours? 

What makes yours better? Make sure your audience knows what your goal is too.

What to Include

Marketing plans can look very different from one another and this design challenge does not have a 

specific template or even a specific way of putting together your “sales pitch” and we look forward to 

your creativity. A few ideas about ways you can present your marketing plan include, but are not limited 

to:

• Commercial

• Infomercial

• Brochure

• Website

• Radio ad

• Other

Your marketing plan might also be a combination of what is listed above, but again, you are selling your 

aircraft so we leave those decisions up to you.

No matter how you present your materials, these items must be a part of the plan:

• Image of new aircraft (logo and paint scheme)

• Data about current aircraft energy consumption vs new design

• Design Balance: Include how the new aircraft considers energy usage vs economy vs flight 

enjoyment (no one wants to fly in an economical, environmentally sustainable aircraft that is 

very uncomfortable and unenjoyable!)

• Impact: Must also address what impact this new aircraft will have on all of us (amount of fuel 

usage reduced, pounds of CO2 removed from atmosphere as a result, etc.) 

o Bonus points: explain synergistic technologies—how they work together (or conflict 

with one another or have benefits and drawbacks at the same time)