Today 2/18/21, the Mars Rover ‘Perseverance’ will complete its 293 Million Mile journey to Mars. It’s packed with AI, is self-aware and its mission, should it choose to accept it, is to boldly go where no probe has gone before!
Well, not really. It will however land in the Jezero Crater, which 3.5 Billion years ago was one of many geographic locations on Mars that had flowing liquid water. Here on Earth, dry river basins which were once wet are teaming with fossilized microbes that flourished in H2O (for all of you morons that’s the chemical formula for Evian – which spelled backwards is naive). There is a real possibility that Perseverance will discover the same thing on Mars, proving once and for all that the Universe is most likely filled with zillions more idiots like us.
As a marketing maven and lover of Doughnuts, I’d like to point out that this event will be sponsored by your local Krispy Kreme. “NASA’s Perseverance Rover makes it’s epic landing on Mars Thursday, February 18th. For Krispy Kreme fans, that won’t be the only monumental landing of the day! In celebration of this out-of-this-world occasion, a delicious Mars doughnut will land in Krispy Kreme shops on 2/18, for one day only While Supplies Last”, according to their website. Additionally, the Mars Doughnut will be available just outside the live stream viewing area of NASA’s visitor complex.
But the big question is not whether there is life “out there”, but what are the other bold, smart marketing leaders of tomorrow going to do about it??
New life means new markets, and should they be insecure, egotistical, status seeking primates that worship material items in order to avoid being depressed, the sky’s the limit!! “It’s an exciting time for CMO’s because we are right at the dawn of intergalactic marketing” said Cal Seslow of the extraterrestrial marketing think tank Warp Dive. “At Warp Dive we take seriously the implications of inter-species networking and even cohabitation. The effect that this potential new paradigm will have on Branding will be a game changer. We do deep dives (Warp “dive”, get it?) into hypotheticals such as how an alien race might be receptive to certain persuasion tactics”. By running sophisticated modeling which combines exoplanet Biologist research on the hypothetical chemical makeup and cognitive ability of extraterrestrials with Nielsen Buyer Insights and comScore-TV Solutions Outcome data sources including credit cards, app downloads, first-party data, point-of-sales data, loyalty cards, CRM systems and digital conversions with prebuilt syndicated audience segments from IRI, Mastercard, and Datalogix, Warp Dive has come up with some eye opening results that should be on every marketers radar. “The predictive power of these models should not be underestimated. With a high degree of confidence, we’ve concluded that the right mix of digital, social, and traditional Marketing may be useful in influencing any Martian society with an average IQ above 72.3. Furthermore, any Brand seeking to extend their influence beyond Earth might benefit from a test and learn approach in these new environments”, said Mr. Seslow.
But 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. New tools may be needed to reach this viciously intelligent and valuable segment. As former Pepsi Digital Innovation and Foresight Director, Ryan Spalding points out, a wait and see attitude may leave some marketers in the dust. “Don’t assume that all life is a natural, biological process. If aliens are indeed cut from ‘digital DNA’, likely they will be advanced enough to circumvent any of the digital marketing tactics that are common practice today. At a big company … there’s great resistance to reinventing something until it’s time to reinvent it, and then of course it’s too late,” he added. “Of course since we can not predict how they will react to implicit marketing tactics, we could poke the proverbial sleeping bear and risk a war with an advanced civilization. That might not be a winning strategy”.
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