Tom Haas, a 20-year veteran at manufacturing company Siemens Corp. and CMO for the past 10 years, this year continued the evolution of the “Siemens Answers” campaign and focused on what he calls “agile marketing.”

“Answers” debuted in 2007 and shows Siemens providing global solutions in energy, healthcare and infra-structure. The campaign was created by Ogilvy & Mather, New York, and launched with an initial budget of $145 million. New executions this year included TV and radio spots, as well as print and online ads, and social media.

“We do a lot of great things. But sometimes I think we get caught up in producing a TV ad and we really need to be more nimble and agile with our marketing. So we are trying to do more real-time marketing, taking advantage of things coming up that are relevant to our target audience or important in the national discourse,” Haas said.

For example, Sie-mens created a “congratulatory” print ad when NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars in August. NASA used Siemens' product life cycle management software to help design the rover. The ad ran in The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, and Siemens also used a social media campaign to promote its involvement with the spacecraft and share images of the rover landing on Mars.

“It was a good way of getting involved in the conversation and reminding people what part we played—and engaging with our audience in real time,” Haas said. Siemens received more than 3 million Facebook impressions in the first two days of the social media campaign.

Another example of agile marketing was sponsoring TedMed, a healthcare conference produced by Ted Conferences. Siemens, which exhibited at TedMed, sponsored live video feeds and ran Facebook and Twitter campaigns during the event.

Haas also led more traditional marketing efforts this year, including two new TV commercials focusing on energy and healthcare, print ads, radio commercials and online marketing.