I recently visited EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. Walt Disney’s original conceit in the 1960’s was in reaction to the Urban Crisis, where city infrastructure could not humanely support the mass of carbon-based units which in turn caused living conditions to deteriorate. Ironically, EPCOT itself was bursting at the seams with people devouring everything in their path, unmercifully straining resource in the process from monorails, to Bratwurst, to the loo. If we are to extrapolate the community of tomorrow, to tomorrow, we are in for a snug existence.. unless we figure out a way to blow this popsicle stand.
The population of Earth in 1960 was 3 billion. It is now 8. By the year 2100, we’ll have tacked on another 3B. Exploring the galaxy may be in our DNA but soon, will be in our best interest. The Moon, being our closest celestial buddy is the most likely place to test whether we are truly a spacefaring civilization, or just a bunch of cool monkeys that are destined to die trying to become one. So, the question becomes, what are the smart, bold marketers of tomorrow going to do about it!? Well, California startup Astrolab for example has inked a deal with the creative-professionals network, Group of Humans, and they’re offering brands a chance to test and advertise new products on the lunar surface before NASA sets up a permanent presence there. “You’re exposing your products to all sorts of extremes that will help you learn, while proving to consumers that it’s really strong,” says Group of Humans founder Rob Noble. I guess that really depends on the product. Like I don’t think that babies should be on the Moon until we determine it’s safe, so no need to advertise Diapers that can withstand the harshness of a solar flare, for example. But ultra-UV max-comfort photochromic anti-radiation goggles – yes… Rad! Marketing / Beat says it could open an entirely new frontier in the battle for human attention”. I guess we’ll see.
If there’s one brand that’s already rockin’ lunar-palooza, its Krispy Kreme. You may be familiar with the popular ‘Total Solar Eclipse Doughnut’ campaign, which was recently offered for a limited time during the eclipse. But did you know that Krispy Kreme also served fresh Original Glazed doughnuts at the launch viewing site of NASA’s Apollo 11 Mission to the moon? One often overlooked cosmic coinkydink which allows for an Eclipse to be possible in the first place is that the Sun is the same magnitude bigger than the moon as it is far from it, making them both appear the exact same size in the sky. I suggest Krispy Kreme leverage this phenomenon during the next Eclipse by encouraging consumers to snap a pic of their favorite Krispy Kreme doughnut held up to the totality so that the suns corona illuminates the perimeter of the doughnut, #TotalDoughnutEclipse! Effective – but perhaps their lawyers would determine a bit too risky given the chance fried dough may inadvertently aid in frying some retinas.
Interestingly – the protective visors worn during an eclipse which help avoid a life spent using a white cane remind me of the 3-D glasses we wore as kids while watching “The Revenge of The Creature”. For all of you non-Gen X’ers, TV history was made during the summer of 1982 with the first ever 3-D broadcast. Just to give you a sense of how long ago 1982 was, the instructions for “3-D TV Glasses” noted that they would not work on a black and whiteTV set. The glasses were distributed at your local Pizza Hut with each purchase of a medium pizza. While there, you could drop a quarter in Pac-Man, a nationwide fixture in Pizza Hut restaurants at the time, and later (in 2021), the centerpiece of their ‘dots’ marketing campaign featuring Craig Robinson. “Man, me and Pizza Hut go way back! I’ve been playin’ this game since ’82 !!”, Robinson exclaims joyfully as he dodges a ghost (Blinky, I think). Pizza Hut was able to leverage an emotion that evokes strong feelings of longing, comfort, and warmth: nostalgia, by using augmented reality as a portal through which fans could project the game onto limited edition Pizza boxes with the Pac-Man maze.
Next stop on our galactic marketing tour – Mars. What is it with doughnuts and astronomy? In Feb 2021, the Mars rover Perseverance completed its 293 million mile journey to the red planet and Krispy Kreme again was there to mark the occasion by offering a delicious Mars doughnut and making them available outside the live stream viewing area of NASA’s visitor complex. The rover has since nestled into its landing base, the Jezero Crater, and is looking for signs of ancient life. If you were standing in the Jezero Crater 3.5 billion years ago, you’d have to first purchase a scuba tank at divers-supply.com. It is just one of the many geographic locations on Mars that had deep rivers and oceans of liquid water. Here on Earth, dry river basins are teeming with fossilized microbes that once flourished in H2O (the chemical formula for Evian). There is a real possibility that Perseverance will discover the same thing on Mars, strongly suggesting that the Universe is likely infested with more media consumers than we can count.
New life means new markets – and should there be trillions more status-seeking primates that worship material items, then us marketers are in for a boon not seen since programmatic advertising! The effect that this potential new audience will have on Branding will be a game changer. Therefore, it’s prudent that we begin doing deep dives into hypotheticals such as how an alien race might be receptive to certain persuasion tactics. By running sophisticated modeling that combines exoplanet Biologist research on the hypothetical chemical makeup and cognitive ability of extraterrestrials with Nielsen Buyer Insights and comScore-TV Solutions Outcome data combined with prebuilt syndicated audience segments from IRI, Mastercard, and Datalogix, we should be able to come up with models that closely approximate that which may resonate with the Alien cohort. With the right mix of digital, social, and traditional Marketing, Brands should be able to influence any Martian society with an average IQ above 71.3, extending their influence well beyond Earth.
But don’t assume that all life is a natural, biological process. What if Aliens turn out to be Digital Lifeforms? Virtual environments much like the ones we create today, could potentially, with millions of years of evolution, spawn self-replicating software that triggers complex behavior. So who’s to say that process has not been well underway in an ancient universe? New tools may be needed to reach this viciously intelligent and valuable segment because if aliens are indeed cut from ‘digital DNA’, they will likely be advanced enough to circumvent any digital marketing tactics that are common practice today.
We have always been like intergalactic orphans, ceaselessly pondering our origins and harboring a nagging sensation that there’s more to all this than being splats of plasma on a space rock. Our ancestors would look UP for any clues, then back at one another, shrugging their shoulders before inventing countless customs and rituals in response. They built monuments to worship our roots hidden in the void. But we moderns don’t have to deal with the inconvenience of piling giant stones up to the heavens. We can simply drown out those nagging voices in our head with Podcasts, Netflix and more.. Our ancestors used an evolutionary hack, the opposable thumb, to make tools which netted more meat that in turn grew us bigger brains, which we now use to tap out all the self-absorbed social media jabbering we can indulge in, reversing the process!
Thanks Mark…
