Greatest Space Ads - Telstra Provides Rocket Fuel for Smartphones

Australian telecommunications company Telstra has chosen an agile little rocket vehicle (complete with hover capability) as a mascot for the roll-out of its 4G network.

Rocket fuel is a well-known symbol representing speed and power. The rocket vehicle showing the shape of the letters "4G" zips around the screen of a TV ad (we will try to find online link to the video) and can also be seen in the background of the magazine ad below.

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Greatest Space Ads - China's Lenovo Stakes Claim in Commercial Space

Chinese electronics giant Lenovo has entered the commercial space race with a space-linked advertising campaign. Lenovo is supporting the YouTube Space Lab, a competition for teenagers to design experiments to be conducted in space.

Two winners of the competition will attend astronaut training in Russia and have their experiments performed aboard the International Space Station, and streamed to Earth. YouTube also joins the party by streaming the experiment down to Earth.

This is a keen marketing move by Lenovo, linking its brand the to dreams of today's youth while placing itself in the high-tech frontier of spaceflight. It should come as no surprise that Lenovo is interested in space since the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is a major shareholder. The chief scientist of China's lunar exploration program, Ouyang Ziyuan, is in fact an academician at CAS (see here).

Budget Comparison: Global Brands vs Space Agencies

Can advertising by global brands finance ambitious space exploration missions like our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission?

This chart compares the budgets of various space agencies with advertising budgets of global brands.

The global brands shown in the chart were selected from industries with the strongest opportunities for brand linkage advertising on our GLXP mission, namely: Automotive, Electronics Technology, Telecommunications, News & Entertainment and Finance.

Any of the companies listed in the chart could finance our complete mission with less than 10% of their annual advertising expenditure. More likely, our mission will be sponsored by a number of different brands, and development costs will be spread over a number of years.

Sources:

• Wikipedia Space Agencies Budgets
• Ad Age Global Marketers 2010

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Greatest Space Ads - Renault Staff Prepared for Mars

In 2010 Chevrolet's ad compared its newest model to the golden time of American rocket science. In 2011, on the other side of the Atlantic, Renault is training its scientists for Mars!!



Although the video is in French, below is very good description of the add provided by the website EnjoySpace;

"The French car manufacturer Renault has already used the space exploration theme by showing its Megane on the Moon, not to mention a Clio that attempted to blast off like a space shuttle. This time, it promotes the merits of its special offers for March by showing that its employees have undergone training for Mars (a play on words as the word for the planet and the month are the same in French!). In the advertisement ... you will notice the numerous allusions to well-established stereotypes from the space industry and, more particularly, the training with a centrifuge, a pool for spacewalks and a simulator. Worthy of note towards the thirtieth second of this commercial is the clear allusion to the great classic “The Right Stuff” with the men and women from Renault walking towards the camera against a white background just like the astronauts from Mercury in the 1983 film. Then, in the next shot, don’t miss the Renault building obviously inspired by NASA’s symbolic VAB at the Kennedy Center in Florida!"

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Samsung Success - High Altitude Paper Planes Descend on Germany

Earlier this month we blogged about the Samsung-sponsored Project Space Planes, which among other things, was a low-budget attempt to show that SD Samsung memory cards are tough enough to survive the environment at the edge of space.

Well, as you can see in the picture below, the mission was successful. The balloon was launched from the German town of Wolfsburg and reached an altitude of 37,339m, where it burst and a specially designed bag automatically released its payload of 200 paper planes.

Each plane carried a memory card with user-generated content uploaded via the web during the lead-up to the mission. Some of the paper planes have already been found across Germany.

The balloon and its attached equipment for video, GPS and telemetry was recovered by the launch team shortly after in a forest. The structure holding the equipment was made from foam, glue and duct tape, and thus did not cause a safety risk.

People who find planes are invited to report their find on the project's website at; http://projectspaceplanes.com/ask

Project Space Planes is led by Joel Veitch, a freelance producer of viral web content based in London and owner of the rathergood.com website.

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Greatest Space Ads - Samsung Sends Free Samples From Edge of Space

Using some of the latest paper airplane technology, Samsung is backing Project Space Planes, a scheme to launch 100 paper planes from a high altitude balloon. Each plane will carry a Samsung SD memory card with a payload of data submitted by users on the web. See the embedded YouTube video below.

Project Space Planes is led by Joel Veitch, a freelance producer of viral web content based in London and owner of the rathergood.com website. You might have already seen Joel in the Bacon Rocket Project, an innovative attempt to mix tasty food with rocket science.



Although not technically in space, high altitude balloons give some pretty cool views of Earth and are high enough to excite people about space. Thus, we are very happy to include such endevours in Greatest Space Ads!

See also our previous piece about the Toshiba Space Chair.

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Greatest Space Ads - Blackberry Brings Space to the Public

"Bringing the Space Age to the public using space age technology" - that's the message that BlackBerry gives in this ad featuring Neil Milburn from Armadillo Aerospace.

This ad is a straight-up technology brand linkage. Note also the more female-friendly segment of the add showing how the smart phone can be used for more everyday (but equally important) things.



Thanks to the X PRIZE Foundation for spotting this ad which is a great example for GLXP teams.

Greatest (Inner) Space Ads - Rolex 50 Years of Underwater Heritage

Rolex released this video to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of the deepest undersea voyage to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The 1960 deep sea mission by Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard included a specially designed Rolex watch called the "Deep Sea Special" strapped to the outside of the vessel. The depth reached during the mission was 10,915 meters (35,810 ft). At that depth the watch was subjected to over a thousand times atmospheric pressure.

But the dive was far from just a simple advertising stunt. Rolex engineers spent about ten years and suffered many setbacks to develop a watch design that could function at that extraordinary depth. The trials of the Deep Sea Special were also a central feature in Rolex's advertising campaigns for its Rolex Submariner product line (watches which incidentally have appeared in eleven James Bond movies!).



It's probably fair to say that that those efforts were a key building block of Rolex's elite brand image that has lasted till today... but what's next Rolex? Fancy taking a watch on a mission to the moon?

More details about the Deep Sea Special HERE.

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Greatest Space Ads - Chevrolet Builds a Rocket Like in the Apollo Era

Chevolet has released this simple but effective ad linking their new 2011 Chevrolet Corvette with the heyday of American rocket science around the Apollo program.

The ad's slogan, "It's nice to know that America still builds rockets" is a clear reference to the current political debate about NASA's role in building the next generation of rockets (the types of rocket that fly into space that is). Timed to coincide with the signing of NASA's Reauthorization Bill, this ad is almost certainly attempting to go viral by bootstrapping on the publicity associated with this important point in NASA's history.

Greatest Space Ads - Coke and Mentos Rocket Propulsion

Coke and Mentos have teamed up to produce this video showing a bunch of rocket scientists using their respective products as propellants for a human-carrying vehicle. Although the specific impulse is not as high as other more common rocket propellants this approach certainly gives impressive visuals! There is also a nice shot of the scientists looking up at the Moon at the end of the video.

Marketers are increasingly looking to these kinds of viral video ads as a cheap alternative to traditional media. Video sharing sites like YouTube make it possible to reach a very large audience at no cost beyond the production of the video itself.

At White Label Space we have also been looking at how we can use the new media approaches to fund our activities for the Google Lunar X PRIZE. We aim to provide our sponsors with unique advertising opportunities that convey fresh and exciting messages at a competitive price.

Greatest Space Ads - SONY and INTEL Launch the Rocket Project

Linking the themes of space and education, SONY and INTEL are sponsoring The Rocket Project. The basic recipe of the project is to take a bunch of smart secondary school kids and put them together in a team to design, analyze and build a high altitude sounding rocket capable of reaching an altitude of 160km (528,000 feet). A YouTube video about the project is embedded at the end of this post.

Of course the students are assisted in their work by SONY VIAO notebooks powered by INTEL processors.

The leader of the project, also acting as teacher/mentor for the students is Thomas Atchison, a high-power rocketeer and founder of the Association of Rocket Mavericks. Tom also has strong links with the technology industry from his 25+ years of experience as an executive and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.

It's interesting that these major global brands are recognizing the public interest in challenging space-related projects. Our team of space professionals plans to harness similar types of public interest to held us achieve our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission.



The ad agency behind the project is 180 LA.

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Greatest Space Ads - Yava Gold Strikes Back for Russia

After the fall of the communist system in the Soviet Union, Russian consumers were suffering an 'invasion' of higher quality western products marketed with slick modern advertising, a new phenomenon in Russia. Local brands were in rapid decline and profits were rapidly disappearing to the West. Then in 1998 the newly launched Yava Gold cigarette brand decided to 'strike back' by launching an ad campaign that brought back national pride to Russian consumers.

The ad pictured was part of the campaign. It shows a patriotic Russian cosmonaut painting the Yava Gold logo on the US Space Shuttle. The text at the bottom of the image reads "retaliatory strike".

In the 1990s Russian space missions were frequently being used as advertising platform for western brands (many of which are reported in earlier posts on this blog). Having cashed-up foreign brands using your nation's space hardware and cosmonauts as advertising billboards must have been quite humiliating to Russia's national psyche - a nation's space program is major symbol of pride after all!

"Yava" was the oldest cigarette brand in Russia and the "Yava Gold" brand was built upon that strong heritage. Ironically however, the financing for the development of the new brand actually came from British American Tobacco. In that era tobacco companies were finding it harder and harder to make profits in the west due to the heavy restrictions being placed on advertising as well as high taxes. Russia, the world's fourth largest tobacco market, was an ideal region of growth, and British American was quick to seize the opportunity in this formerly closed market.

This video is a documentary about the Yava Gold campaign.



References:

• http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/5245.html
• http://www.tobacco.org/News/98.03_webnews.html
• http://www.takingontobacco.org/addicted/main.html

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Supersonic Parachuting: Red Bull Stratos vs Le Grand Saut

Two teams are currently competing in an unofficial race for the first human parachute jump to reach supersonic speeds in the descent.

The current record height for a high altitude jump is 31.09 km (102,800ft), achieved on August 16, 1960 by Joe Kittinger, a retired United States Air Force Colonel. During his drop he reached a top speed of 988km/h (614mph), just below the speed of sound. But it looks like we are soon going to see the first parachute jump that breaks the sound barrier 1083km/hr (690mph).

Red Bull Stratos

In the Red Bull Stratos effort Felix Baumgartner (pictured left) plans to jump from a balloon at 36.58km (120,000ft). The team boasts a very nice website and an all-star project team. Oh, and don't forget the sponsorship of Red Bull, a brand well-known for associating itself with high-profile sports, extreme sports and record-breaking efforts. Another well-known brand, Nokia, is also providing a special application for its handsets that will enable the public to watch the event in real-time, even showing Baumgartner's pulse rate!

Le Grand Saut

In parrallel, another effort by a team consisting of French and Canadian members is preparing for Le Grand Saut (The Big Jump). In this effort, Michel Fournier (pictured right), a former colonel and paratroops instructor in the French army reserve will attempt to jump from a balloon at 40km (~130,000 feet). Le Grand Saut doesn't appear to have any major sponsors but it also has some quite impressive members from the medical sciences.

Le Grand Saut is planned for May this year whereas Red Bull Stratos has not announced the date of its attempt.

Parachute jumping from extreme altitudes is not just a publicity stunt. It also has important benefits for many other fields including medicine, science and technology. These types of extreme altitude parachute jumps can also simulate the ejections of astronauts from a high altitude rockets, quite important in this age of human sub-orbital spaceflight.

Scroll down this post to see a promotional video of the Red Bull Stratos effort as well as a nice picture and two CNN news pieces about a previous attempts at Le Grand Saut.

Greatest Space Ads - ArcelorMittal Boldness Changes Everything

This 2007 advertising campaign by the world's biggest steel manufacturer, ArcelorMittal, used the theme of lunar exploration to convey a powerful brand message. The ad shown below consists of two images, one with a man observing the Moon from Earth, and another with an astronaut observing the Earth from the Moon.

The advertising campaign's central theme was "boldness", which like the company's main product steel, has the capability to change everything. The advertising agency behind the campaign was TBWA.

Similar brand assocations are available for our mission in the Google Lunar X PRIZE.

Virgin Student Space Trip Planned by Otaku Purple Cow

Adriaan Rijkens, Business Management & Technology student based in Amsterdam, plans to be the first sponsored student to go into space. He wants to raise $200 thousand from sponsors to pay for his sub-orbital flight with Virgin Galactic . You can read more about his plans on his website, which also includes a nice sponsorship proposal page.

Adriaan's approach is similar to our White Label Space plans to send a sponsored robotic mission to land on the Moon and rove across its surface.

But why is he an otaku purple cow?

A "purple cow" is an advertisement that is remarkable enough that people literally stop and look, or in some cases even make a long journey to learn more about the product! People who notice such an ad are curious, and will study it in detail for a short time. This window of time is an ideal chance for marketers to diffuse their message or idea.

But idea diffusion has changed in the digital age.

Seth Godin's TED talk about standing out in the post-"TV/Industrial Complex" world is a good explanation of the evolving battle for consumer attention. The image to the right (from his TED presentation) shows the changing number of consumers using a product during its life-cycle.

In the past marketers targeted consumers in the centre of the bell curve, because they were the largest group of potential customers. In the modern web-connected world, marketers often target the small minority of people at the left of the curve who are called the innovators or early adopters. If you can make that small group of people like your product, they will tell their friends in the rest of the curve, spreading the idea with almost no extra cost to the advertiser.

The Japanese have already invented a word for this - Otaku.

To a marketer, otaku is the desire of an obsessed consumer who is desperate to try out the latest new, fresh or trendy product and tell everybody about it. Otaku-centric marketing targets that key group using unique product features (like a purple cow) and/or advertising gimmicks.

So how can the principle of otaku-centric marketing and purple cows help Adriaan fly to space, or help White Label Space build and fly it moon mission?

The answer lies in linking the otaku communities. The key challenge for Adriaan and White Label Space is to identify and connect people who suffer (sic) from space otaku with otaku people who have more mainstream interests, particularly in areas where large amounts of advertising money are available. By making these connections, our white label brandless missions can be the right purple cow for marketers who want to diffuse their message to just the right audience.

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Advertisements From the Dawn of Human Spaceflight

This post on io9.com shows a number of interesting advertisements from the dawn of human spaceflight. (Click on the "Next" link at the right of the post to scroll through the images.)

The images are featured in a new book by Megan Prelinger called "Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962" (book cover shown on the right).

Blast Books has a good description of the book.

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How Many Super Bowl Ads would a Moon Mission Cost?

With the Super Bowl coming up tomorrow White Label Space did a quick check on the price that advertisers are paying this year for a 30 second timeslot during one of the most watched sporting events in the world. According to the CBS news piece embedded below, the answer is $3 million. (Note also the interesting discussion about trademark ownership at the end of the news piece.)

Wow! It costs $1 million per 10 seconds of superbowl air time.

Now, our team's cost engineers have predicted that our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission will cost around $50 million. That's equal to 500 seconds (8.3 minutes) of Super Bowl ad time, or about 17 standard length ads.

Of course, just like the Super Bowl and other high profile international competitions, our Mooncasts will clearly show the logos of our sponsors on our Rover and Lander as they go about their business on the field of play.

May the best team win!

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Greatest Space Ads - Toshiba Space Chair

This ad by Toshiba shows one very adventurous armchair volunteering for a high altitude balloon flight to the edge of space. The imagery is fantastic, but look out for the dramatic ending!



The video was created by JP Aerospace, a volunteer-based organization in the United States, that already has quite some experience with advertising stunts on the edge of space with its "Your ad at the edge of space" program.

Check out this video from the Austrian Space Forum of a similar high-altitude balloon flight experience with their Passepartout balloon system.

Thanks to SpaceFellowship.com for publishing the article with this video.

Paint Your Ad Message on the Moon with Shadows

This video by MoonPublicity.com shows a concept for displaying advertising messages on the Moon's surface with the imprints created by a rover with special wheels using the patented Shadow Shaping Technology.



The MoonPublicity.com business model is best summarised by this paragraph on one of the pages of their website:

"Let’s suppose it would cost a billion dollars to create and send a fleet of Shadow Shaping robots to the moon, the project would pay for itself in less than 3 years after completion. Over the next 50 years it would generate 18 billion dollars worth of advertising. And since there is no atmosphere on the Moon, the image could last for thousands of years."

I'm not sure how they will deal with all the craters, not to mention the lunar conservationists!

See also the interesting comments on the Gizmodo article about this project.

Greatest Space Ads - Irresponsible Astronauts Lose Bridgestone Tires

This space advertisement played on TV during the superbowl features a pair of fun-loving astroanuts enjoying their stay on the Moon but when they come back to their rover, they find that there is a little surprise waiting for them.

Superbowl advertising is the most expensive in the world. In 2009 a 30 second advertisment slot cost $3 million (see USA Today article). We are happy to see that this Superbowl ad included two themes quite close to the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) - rovers and Moon exploration.