Defense contractors are built to win procurement battles, not advertising awards. The industry favors trade shows and low public profiles over flashy marketing campaigns, but defense tech startup Anduril is doing things differently. The startup "isn't hiding in the shadows," its marketing chief told Business Insider. Anduril, founded by Palmer Luckey and four others in 2017, is on a mission to disrupt and accelerate America's weapons manufacturing with its sleek, easily manufactured autonomous weapons.

"The founders are creating the type of environment where they expect the same boldness from our marketing and creative work as they do from how we approach contracts or how we think about product development," Jeff Miller, Anduril's CMO, said in an interview. He wants the brand to become the "next great American icon." Every campaign is underpinned by three criteria, Miller said: The marketing must be connected to the company's soul and executed with "clear craft."

Its current program, the AI Grand Prix, is a perfect example of that strategy — bringing recruitment and marketing together on a global scale, with a bit of added fun. Instead of simply posting an engineering job listing, the company is hosting an "AI Grand Prix" — a monthslong autonomous-drone racing competition with a $500,000 prize and a potential job at the $61 billion defense-tech company. 3,282 teams from around the worlded, including teams from South Korea, the Netherlands, Kazakhstan, and China, said Miller.

Miller spoke to Business Insider on the day of the final qualifying round for the AI Grand Prix in September. Fifteen teams remained at the start of the day; only 10 would advance to compete in the final this December at Anduril's newly built 5 million-square-foot factory in Ohio. To make it to the final, they had to race the same make of autonomous drones through a series of gates in a timed trial.

The only variable is the software: teams cannot modify the hardware or take control once their lap begins. Using the Grand Prix to fill one position sounds like a drawn-out recruitment process, but Miller said it was effective and had an "extremely high hit rate" in terms of the talent concentration. The company is seeing wannabe employees' skills demonstrated in real time, he added. Anduril also timed the event to align with campus recruitment cycles, meaning that whether or not students are competing, they're brought into the Anduril world.

Anduril is growing fast and hiring thousands of engineers and manufacturing technicians over the next two years, said Miller. In another recent recruiting push, Anduril ran a reverse-psychology campaign under the slogan "Don't work at Anduril." The accompanying video ad mocked nap pods, distant leadership, and the supposed lack of mission synonymous with modern tech jobs. But it goes further than recruitment.

An undertaking like the drone race provides a "huge halo" effect for the overall brand, said Miller. "Campaigns like this or 'Don't work at Anduril' — it has such a clear way of defining who Anduril is, bringing broader awareness to that." Anduril does most of its marketing in-house with a team of roughly 12, who work closely with the startup's design team. Anduril's leadership team understands the value of brand marketing and meets with Miller every week, he said.

They recognize that having a broad audience understand the mission has long term-value, not only in recruiting top talent, but in building a "great, durable brand that is trusted by and understood by the broader audience." The idea for the AI Grand Prix originated with Luckey. He stopped Miller in the hall at work one day and said, "Jeff, I want to create the world's pre-eminent drone race." "Okay, tell me more," Miller recalled saying in response.

Miller's career before Anduril included stints at PepsiCo, Snap, and the autonomous-car company Cruise.

Moving from consumer products to defense was a challenge, he said. That included understanding what could be said publicly, learning the technical side of Anduril's work, and adapting to faster timelines. In previous jobs, Miller said he's had a clear line of sight to the road map months ahead of a campaign, or at least weeks out. At Anduril, things will change by the day. Figuring out how to approach storytelling for defense contractors, US government departments, and allied nations, as well as investors and potential talent, was another challenge.

Miller spoke to Business Insider two weeks before Anduril announced plans to build a $6.6 billion shipyard in tandem with the US Navy. "It's really important for us to make sure that it's not insular and just talking about Anduril, but that it's always done through the customer lens, the war fighter lens, and that requires us taking that extra step to make sure that we have their point of view factored in," he said. While they "have so much respect" for the traditional defense companies, Miller said transparency is important to Anduril.

US taxpayers have a vested interest in where their dollars are going, he said. "We're being clear about why we're doing this."