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Pizza Hut Pays $2.5e6 for Rocket Advertising
Kartoffel writes "The Pizza Hut company has agreed to pay the Russian Space agency 2.5 million dollars for permission to paint the Pizza Hut logo the side of a rocket.
The Proton rocket was originally scheduled to carry the Zvezda service module to the international space station on 12 November, however NASA today announced (finally) that the 12 Nov date is completely unrealistic and will slip until January 2000.
BBC News has a funny article about Pizza Hut's advertising scheme.
There is also a CNN story about the slipped launch date.
"
So when is Andover gonna spring for /. to put a logo on a rocket? "Geeks in Space" indeed.
... Untill you think about how many pizza eating Russians are out there.
I can see it now:
Mission control, we can't go EVA as the light is not right for the Pizza commercial.
ISS, that antenna needs fixing now. We'll have LOS in 30 minutes without this EVA. It's critical that you get out there and fix it.
Mission control, no can do. The sponsor is telling us to wait until two orbits from now when we'll be over Kansas. The background should be just right then.
-- please continue this....
What happens if the rocket explodes?
I don't mind this, it's really good funding for the space program and it's advertising that's easy to ignore. However, a big friggin' picture of Jar Jar on the side of a rocket would be crossing the line.
--
Win98 sux without these 1337 toolz !!
I'm pretty sure Pizza Hut is owned by Pepsi,
Nope, Pepsi spun off all of its resturant operations (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC) a couple of years ago. The company that runs those places is called Tricon.
Thanks for playing.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
"Yes, yes... I'm sure it looks like possible evidence of a past civilisation to your scientists. However, your times up. My client thinks this 'evidence' looks like a pile of scrap metal and he would much rather drive over to where they're planning on projecting a laser advertisement. He likes to give his progects that 'personal touch'..."
I'll buy products from any company who will make "humorous additions" to that image. ;)
Get a rocket to deliver the pizza to any place in the world within 30 minutes or your money back.
And best of all, when the pizza reenters the atmosphere, it will heat up and be freshly cooked.
Can't wait ...
Err, since I drive for Pizza Hut I'll respond...The Thin & Crispy pizza at Pizza Hut is in my opinion far superior to anything offered by the other chains. Is it as good as a sit-down brick oven place or your local Vinnie's where you can get a slice for a dollar? Probably not. But for a supposed "fast food" place it really is of decent quality.
We actually make every pizza individually as we get the order (which takes a lot of extra time and expense), and we do place emphasis on keeping the ingredients fresh...if you have ever worked in a restaurant or supermarket you know the kind of horribly disgustingly nasty things that go on behind the scenes, but I've never seen anything like that at my current job. Just my two cents. BTW this does not apply to our pan dough which is too oily for my taste.
-W.W.
What? You mean like that "Real" logo?
Where do you live out of curiosity? We don't charge anything for deliveries here, if we did we'd probably be out of business. -W.W. P.S. Reducing a driver's tip is a sign of pure evil and will probably not do anything anyway since drivers have no input in Pizza Hut policy. You're better off writing to the company.
>But if they did do this-how much would it cost? And who really "owns" >the moon? Would it fall under the GPL? ;-)
Actually, I think the moon would fall into the same legal catagory as Antarctica. I doubt it'll ever be possible for someone to actually claim ownership of any territory on the moon. At best you'll be able to lease it through the U.N.
I second that motion. I'm thinking about boycotting Pizza Hut simply because they THOUGHT about it.
-matt
I believe the article said the objective was to get publicity and to have the footage of a rocket launching with the logo to use for future ads.
since a vast majority of the universe is just a big, friggin waste of space, time, matter and energy. May as well put some of it to good use, like boosting the ol' bottom line!
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
There is a mention in the CNN Article that there is a propellent leak in the OMS (Orbital Maneuvering system, helps the shuttle stay in the right orbit) There is a possibility that the problem is not isolated, and if thats the case, "You can kiss shuttle flights goodbye for this year"
-[ World domination - rains.net ]-
is how much it would cost for someone to get russia to make their rocket look like doctor evils escape pod in austin powers 2(in case you didn't see the movie it looked like a male sex organ).
char *stupidsig = "this is my dumb sig";
I wouldn't be suprised if they used this rocket imagery in a Super Bowl ad. Talk about spending a lot of "dough" on a commercial!
The article talked about a huge promotional campagin associated with the launch:
The Proton launch will now be the centrepiece of a major space-oriented ad campaign, including commercials featuring the blastoff and in-store promotions.
No one will care if they don't care, but I'd like to see their lasers-projecting-logo-on-the-moon scheme. It's not like I can watch the rocket go up and think about pizza...but a moonlit night, pizza on my mind...
The Good Reverend
What it accomplishes is all kinds of secondary publicity in newspapers, TV shows (I can imagine Conan O'Brien riding this one to death), and the Web. The ad on the rocket won't even survive the trip, and they know it. That's entirely not the point of this whole situation.
Companies spend thousands of times more cash than that on 'regular' advertising each year. How is this one event so much more disgusting than the rest?
And exactly what would the 'betterment of society' entail? I wouldn't mind having a whine-filter to weed out non-thinkers like yourself, maybe it could have been spent on that.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Sorry man. I can't believe I'm saying this but, "i'm in th biz". And if you think about how much money they spend (think this summers episode 1 promotion), then it could be a worse deal.
Pete
I can see through time- Lisa Simpson
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
Forgive my lack of knowledge about lasers, but this is absolutely impossible, right? Lasers being parallel lightwaves, they don't diverge like white light, so I guess that means that they'd need an array the size of Texas to paint an image the size of Texas? The story didn't really make it clear. Can someone just assure me that no money-grubbing marketing-obsessed corporation can ever do this w/today's technology? :) It just seems so ... perverse.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
...now, can they get it to DELIVER?
01101100 01101001 01101110 01110101 01111000 01110010 01110101 01101100 01100101 01110011
Yep. It's called mindshare. You'd do well to listen to Negativland's album _Dispepsi_.
I remember when The Last Action Hero did this (for far less money) and nobody even noticed as I remember. This is a hell of a stunt but they better do better business because of it than TLAH did.
Although I think it's really sad the extent that advertising has permeated our lives (Everywhere we go, there's ads pouring in from all directions, and it's only going to get worse), I think it's even more sad how NASA never seems to have quite enough funds. It'd be horribly tacky if NASA decided to put ads on the rockets, but it's quickly becoming something that will be necessary for them.
Or who knows, if NASA decided to do ads, maybe suddenly everyone would get a upwelling of patriotic spirit and decide to support space exploration farther, so ads wouldn't be needed.
Yeah right.
This is good for Russia since God knows they need the money. So far they've been less than diligent in keeping up with their end of the ISS.
This is potentially bad, because if you keep up with your Mir history (I recommend reading _Dragonfly_, it's by the same guy who did _Barbarians at the Gate_, it'll get you started) - the Russian cosmonauts had to film ads for various companies while on Mir, sometimes distracting them from real work they should have done instead (like fix Mir).
All we'd need is a big-assed auto-laser that blows the crap out of anything that gets too close, (and doesn't know the Password) Ohh ohh, and it could run Linux! (And yes, it would be a Beowolf cluster :-)
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Reminds me of the Red Dwarf book where stars were going to be blown up at the right times to spell "Coke adds life" in the night sky for years.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Me too! That story was the first thing I thought of when I heard this story, except I couldn't remember it's name (been years...). I think the company was 3c Cola, tho. BTW, I'm absolutely opposed to any sort of advertising on the moon that is visible from Earth. We've already trashed the Earth in the name of Capitalism, do we have to trash the sky as well?
From an article:
The company announced Thursday it would pay the cash-starved Russian space agency about half the price of a 30-second TV ad during the Super Bowl -- currently up to $2.5 million -- for the right to paint its logo on a Russian Proton rocket.
So, if the $2.5million price tag is correct, Pizza Hut's cost is $1.25million for the Russian rocket ad.
I'm still waiting for that big banner ad in orbit that you can see at night. I forgot who was planning that.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
I wonder what the reaction would be if they had stuck with original plan of drawing their logo on the moon, using lasers? (Of course this is pretty damn impossible, but I'm ignoring that for the sake of discussion.)
Would crowds of irrate people, sick of seeing Pizza Hut imposed in red letters on the moon, storm the Pizza Hut headquarters?
What else could you put on the face of the moon? A clock for GMT. "I wonder what time it is... hmmm... 5 AM, minus 8... damn! I'd better get home!"
Perhaps a stock ticker. You'd have crowds of Wall Street geeks out in the streets with telescopes shouting instructions to their lackeys.
And what would happen if hackers got into the works? "34rtH |z 0wN3d!"
As the reach of humanity increases, we're going to have to put some limits on who can put what where, or else we'll be creating supernovas in distant galaxies that spell out "BUY COKE".
How horrible would it be to have the first people on Mars be advertisers?
-- I can't think of anything witty to put here. Sorry.
why bother--for anyone to see it you have to pay for a commercial anyway--why not have someone add it in with the GIMP in postproduction!
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
Anybody ever notice that pizza hut's new logo looks like a Red Hat instead of a roof???
I am personally going to resolve, right now, to permanently boycott any company that has the audacity to paint its own image on the Moon.
Thank God[?] that Pizza Hut didn't go through with those plans.
Who says this isn't News for Nerds.
-- Dave Aiello
Are they doing this under the GPL?
From someone with too much time on his hands and the letter Q.
Blade Runner, Starship troopers.. you notice these movies have little to do with governmental control in the future? all the major advances are fueled by industry and coporations.. i mean really.. they already run the world anyways.. it makes sense that they will be the ones to push our lives forward. Star trek is cool.. but.. starfleet? i doubt very much that a governmental agency can be that efficient.. blade runner and starship troopers are probably more correct, everything with a logo, and a logo with everything. It's the way of the future! And i don't mind it. Hilton Hotels, Pepsi, Pizza Hut - these companies have already started this push.. there will be no government to stop them in space.. i am suprised bill hasn't jumped on this bandwagon yet and built his new empire on the moon.. away from US govt. control. -bastard
For $1.25 milion, I'd go on every talk show in the world, advertise for them till they were bored of me, then have it removed. I'd still have a million dollars.
The Good Reverend
I know that companies spend much more than that per year on multiple campaigns but doesn't blowing it all in one shot on such a lame concept seem a bit odd? Personally I'd prefer to see a much more creative Super Bowl commercial.
As far as the betterment of society, I think donating money to a worthy cause, for example victims of the recent earthquakes, and those who were ran out of house and home due to the hurricaine and other natural disasters are in need of some help more than people who can't decide which brand of pizza they like the best.
"Calling EMACS an editor is like calling the Earth a hunk of dirt" - Chris DiBona
Gotta give Pizza Hut some credit though. I mean, look at the way they're taking the initative. Rocket advertising, and a large burned logo on the moon! Sure there may not be any life on the moon, but Pizza Hut can't be bothered with such trivial details when there's a vast untapped moon market out there that is just waiting for fast food pizza!
Seriously though, wtf does Pizza Hut hope to accomplish with this. Even scarier is the simple thought of defacing a whole heavenly body just for advertising purposes. That kinda stuff is supervillan material (though I suppose todays corporations are the current equivilent). Besides do they really expect people to be walking around at night, look up and suddenly see a giant Pizza Hut logo staring down at them, and develop an irrisitble craving for Pizza. Here's a thought Pizza Hut, spend the money improving your food and service. I don't give a crap if you have a logo on some random Russian rocket, I want a pizza that actually has more than a drop of pizza sauce on it and I want it delivered before I start gnawing on my limbs to satisfy my hunger.
Gotta give Pizza Hut some credit though. I mean, look at the way they're taking the initative. Rocket advertising, and a large burned logo on the moon! Sure there may not be any life on the moon, but Pizza Hut can't be bothered with such trivial details when there's a vast untapped moon market out there that is just waiting for fast food pizza!
Seriously though, wtf does Pizza Hut hope to accomplish with this. Even scarier is the simple thought of defacing a whole heavenly body just for advertising purposes. That kinda stuff is supervillan material (though I suppose todays corporations are the current equivilent). Besides do they really expect people to be walking around at night, look up and suddenly see a giant Pizza Hut logo staring down at them, and develop an irrisitble craving for Pizza. Here's a thought Pizza Hut, spend the money improving your food and service. I don't give a crap if you have a logo on some random Russian rocket, I want a pizza that actually has more than a drop of pizza sauce on it and I want it delivered before I start gnawing on my limbs to satisfy my hunger.
But if they did do this-how much would it cost? And who really "owns" the moon? Would it fall under the GPL? ;-)
Personally, I think a really good cause would be to further the sapce program.
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -- Thomas Jefferson
You mean painted up like this?
-Brent--
brooklyn pizza 0wnz joo. word!
it was only a matter of time before somebody took advantage of that huge billboard in the sky...just waiting for ads! i mean really, our highways are cluttered with advertizements already, it's about time someone took it a step further. imagine that lost civilization in the amazonian rainforests who will create a new god when they see "PIZZA HUT" written on the mysterious rock in the sky.
arghh! i cant take it anymore.
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
Finally! An explanation for those zits around uranus!
I think a bit of self-regulation could be accomplished if, say, the first few companies
.50 caliber sniper rifle should have no trouble 'correcting' the corporations behavior.
to do this had their CEO picked off by a sniper (not a suggestion, just an idea I'm throwing out to anyone who is good with a deer rifle).
Hmmm, an interesting idea. I'm sure that the CEO of Nike would be a much easier target than most politicians. Sure they'd have bodyguards to protect against kidnapping. But not a 1 mile cordon to prevent snipers. Someone with a nice
It reminds me of a comic (Spirou et Fantasio: Z like Zorglub)in which the bad guy was kind of hypnotizing people to make them work for him.
At the end of the comic you find out that he didn't want to destroy the world or things like that but he wanted to use the moon as a big advertising area.
The only problem was that he trained is troops to talk from right to left (ex: tfel ot thgir morf) and because of this when he tried his first launch he wrote aloc acoc on the face of the moon instead of coca cola.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Payload delivery in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed, or you get free breadsticks. Oh, and there's a $1 delivery charge (not bad, eh?!)
No such thing as free delivery. You pay for it even when you pick it up. It is built into the price. I wonder about some places that advertise "Free Delivery get $1.00 off if you pick it up " or 2 for 1 and the prices are different if you buy 2 rather than 1 - misleading
Pizza Hut pizza has become nasty as of late. I wish they would use some of that money to improve the quality of their product.
Advertising indeed has great power. As you mentioned
wonder how many times the words "Pizza Hut" have come up in this discussion alone. Multiply by thousands of people talking about it around the water cooler, a story on every local news station's "...and now, something funny" segment, and kazillions of kilobytes of discussion elsewhere on the 'net.
, even the discussion of upcoming promos, etc, is advertising, so the effect is exponential. Even for people who, like me, think that a vast majority of adds are stupid, and a good number of them play down on the public, as if we were morons who are as gullible as a robot (which might not be _that_ gullible, I just couldn't think of the right noun). My point is, it's getting Pizza Hut noticed. Whether or not that's a good thing for us or them is another matter, but they're getting a hearty helping of publicity.
Insert mind here.
OK, who remembers the episode(s) of The Tick where Chairface Chippendale tries to burn "CHAIRFACE" on the moon with an enormous laser, but only gets as far as "CHA"??
Or the segment in the first "Red Dwarf" novel, where Coca-Cola sends out a hundred space missions to carefully chosen solar-systems, each one launching a missile to cause the star to go nova... all meticulously timed, so that for years afterward, you could look up at the night sky from Earth, and see the light of a hundred exploding suns spelling out the phrase "Coke Adds Life".
"Hundreds of planets were destroyed, and the ecological damage was horrifying... but it certainly sold a lot of cans of a certain fizzy beverage."
--Riff
Sure to folks like you and me, it seems like quite a bit, but it's nothing to a corporation.
Case in point, I recently read that one of the area high schools found a way to offset the cost of a new stadium. They switch to selling coke exclusively and they get $2e6 to help offset the costs of the stadium. This is at a high school which only has around 500 students/class.
I think the fact that we're talking about it proves that it was money well spent for the pizza hut execs. Granted, I wouldn't touch a Pizza Hut pizza with a 10 parsec pole, but it did make me think about Pizza Hut, and the fact that they just helped out science. If they made good pizza, I'd buy some.
The scariest part about this article:
Pizza Hut marketers first considered burning a billboard into the moon with lasers, Chief Executive Officer Mike Rawlings said. But astronomers and physicists advised that the image would have to be the size of Texas to be seen by earthlings more than 238,000 miles away.
Marketing is a department I avoid.
I think this is the biggest waste of money out there. There are a lot better ways spend this money from a media standpoint. A few examples (not the best, hey its the end of the day):
:30 spots on ER (~$400m each)
Advertise in Money Magazine 20 times (~$120m an issue, not the best vehicle for the hut but I know the cost offhand)
Adveritse in Wired Magazine 62 times (~$40m an issue)
Buy 6
Put together a complete media plan for 1 year for most of out clients (who would kill to have that much money to drop on advertising)
But this assumes that the Hut has a finite budget. In reality any enitity that spends $200MM+ a year in advertising has to try new and different things to get noticed. And this is definitely different. To all of you that think no one will see this, I can pretty much guarentee that this will be picked up by local news stations (maybe even network if it's a slow news day, but after Japan who knows).
Pete
Dyslexics Untie!
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
Injured software engineer wins against Mattel!! Ain't it swell?
The first thing I thought of was that this was an April Fools joke. Hey, it really *is* halfway in between April Fools making this a half April Fools day. Sort of like a half birthday. Some editor was having fun today. Pizza Hut really *didn't* have ideas of advertising on the moon.
Besides this should have been posted under, "It's Funny. Laugh" and not "News"
-Brent--
Man, next you will complain that they *charge* for the pizza.
Hmm, delivery charge, or no more delivery's? Although there is "free lunch" in the software world, you'll never find that buying pizzas. You have to pay for what you get.
Perhaps if you don't like paying a delivery charge you could consider going out and picking up your pizza yourself, so that those of us who *do* appreciate getting a pizza delivery can get the quality service we pay for.
-Brent--
As far as putting Pizza Hut logos on rockets for $$, well, no big deal. It goes up, it splashes down. Sold for scrap, smelted, re-used.
... I toured a bunch of the robotics labs at Carnegie-Mellon a few years ago. The researchers said that since a lot of DOD funding had dried up, many labs were being approached by big entertainment firms (you know, like the one with big ears) to sponsor space shots and space robotics/teleoperation. The plan for one moon rover was that the scientists would get to use it for 50% of the time, and the remaining time would be available for said yuk-yuk provider to sell to overly-rich yahoos, who could tele-drive it around for my yearly income per minute. or maybe hour. In return, the entertainment firm would fund half the moon shot.
But if only that were all
Pretty sad. Maybe the economy is good enough now so that the scientists can get the funding they need. I don't know.
M. Selene, where have you gone? We need you.
Or was a for-real idea?
Stuff like Pizza Hut wanting to laser their logo onto the moon just muddles my brain into not knowing which of these hairbrained ideas are real and which aren't...
In any case, I think if *any* company went so far as to actually use the moon as a big billboard, the public backlash would be so horrendous that no company never do it again. Or at least, I would hope so.
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
I bet it won't get there in 30 minutes...
The people interested in space are usually a little bit smarter, and less swayed by advertising stunts
I'm sure that's true; but on the other hand when you advertise during the superbowl you're doing nothing to further the cause of football; you're just paying a network a wodge of money.
If you give the Russians a load of cash to help them boldly go where no Russian has gone before you're furthering the cause of exploration.
This is a Good Thing.
Am I the only one who thought that said "Pizza the Hutt" when they first saw the headline of this article?
Maybe I've just seen too much Spaceballs.. =P
~ Kish
Who pays attention to rocket launches when everything goes right? OTOH, if it goes KABLOOM then it will be seen on every news show.
Then, months and years later, it continuously appears on Fox's "World's Scariest Launches".
But I agree -- this crosses the line. Being able to get the heck away from the world every so often is something I value more than I can easily express. While regulating this sort of thing would be about as easy as regulating the internet (because there is a growing number of money-hungry countries with launch capabilities),
Actually, many of the more technically adept nations in the world with a military industrial establishment, including ,of course, the U.S., have some kind of anti-satellite weapons. In fact in the late 80's the U.S. was going to deploy an inexpensive anti-satellite missile that would be launched from the belly of an F-15 and could destroy satellites in low-earth-orbit. If a country like North Korea launched one of these abominable space advertisements, maybe a bit of public pressure in the U.S. or France or the U.K. or any other country with ASAT weapons could convince the military to act.
Actually, Pepsi and some other companies have offered high school students free tattoos of their logos, and some of the students have accepted. I saw this on the AdBusters website at http://www.adbusters.org , but they seem to have taken it down since then. I'd find out about it but this thread will be gone before then and no one would probably ever see it. You can ask them yourself if you want.
I see no harm in advertising pizzas on flying saucers, but rockets are the wrong shape!
Now what can I think of that is compatible with the shape of a rocket: big, long, thusting... Nope. can't thing of anything like that.
deer rifle? i don't think such a device exists anymore. after all, hunting today's genetically engineered super animals like the "rabbit" or "duck", one couldn't make a successful kill with anything less than a Charleton Heston signature model AK47 or other similar "small" armaments from the NRA gift catalogue.
"Pizza Hut chief executive officer Mike Rawlings said the company is paying about half the price of a 30-second TV ad during the Super Bowl - currently up to $2.5 million - for rights to put the ad on the rocket." This is called reading comprehension(or math skills?). I wonder what Kartoffel got on the SAT? Hehe.
Deus yes, I remember that! I also seem to remember that in subsequent episodes, you could still see the letters burned into the moon. Brilliant!
Hm... Blue, white and red flag topped by a red Pizza Hut roof painted on the side of a rocket...? Why not?
Mrow?
Windows is the Acme of computing -- in the Wile E. Coyote sense.
Is it just me or is a laser way too uneconomical? They would be better off making a huge projector out of the sun. Place it in a stationary orbit, synchonrous with the Earth, so that there is always one HUGE pIzaa Hut ad hanging there in the sky. Even better, if the focused light on it, aliens would be able to see a huge Pizza Hut logo on the surface of Earth! Wooooo advertising!
Here's a couple of other possibilities if this works out. ;) http://www.reston.com/nasa/humor/shuttle.ads.html http://www.reston.com/nasa/commercialization/iss.a ds.cooke.html
Anyone remember the LinShuttle project... seems like http://asylum.inaxx.net/linshuttle was a pretty similar idea. Figure Pizza Hut saw some marketability where we didn't.
Dunno about the Pizza Hut <=> PepsiCo angle, but I do recall reading something in the article about the fact that they were planning on videotaping the launch, and putting that in their telly adverts, or some such.
:-)
That's probably a bit closer to their target audience
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
It would give global coverage and it's actually relatively affordable (compared with the huge amounts companies spend on ads for events like the superbowl). No companies have elected to go for it, however, because they're afraid of public backlash.
Picture this: You're just finishing up a week-long canoe trip in Minnesota's boundry waters with your SO. You've been unplugged from everything related to your job or your worries or the real world in general for days now. You and your honey cuddle up in a sleeping bag that night next to the smoldering embers of your fire, look up at the stars at see...
A Nike swoosh.
Would you respond positively to the ad? Go out and buy Nike for your next "roughing it" trip? More likely, you'd make it your life goal to see the Nike Corporation destroyed and Phil Knight's children out on the street selling pencils. This is why I'm a bit shocked that Pizza Hut actually considered engaging in a form of enviromental advertising.
But I agree -- this crosses the line. Being able to get the heck away from the world every so often is something I value more than I can easily express. While regulating this sort of thing would be about as easy as regulating the internet (because there is a growing number of money-hungry countries with launch capabilities), I think a bit of self-regulation could be accomplished if, say, the first few companies to do this had their CEO picked off by a sniper (not a suggestion, just an idea I'm throwing out to anyone who is good with a deer rifle).
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
What if the tobacco industry follows this lead? Will there be major campaigns and other foolishness directed at NASA, a la NASCAR, to prevent the corruption/addiction/brainwashing of the various adolescent aliens whose parents depend on our space-race to keep their kids entertained?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
This reminds me of something that made the news when I was living in the Bay Area in the late 80s/early 90s. Some company got the idea to somehow project an ad onto the horizon, I believe with lasers. A sky billboard, if you will. Except it could only work at certain evening hours when the weather was just right to be visible.
Anyone remember this? I think it was Coke or Pepsi. There was a substantial uproar and nothing every came of it, as far as I know. While I was nauseated with the idea, I was fascinated from a technological stand point.
Or maybe it was an April Fool's story- my memory from that period is definitely hazy (college!).
-h3
And I promise to buy products from any company that has the audacity to paint my image on the Moon. Provided it's not permanent - more of a performance art piece.
...
They can use watercolor if they want, provided they find water on the moon
Will in Seattle
Yes. Pizza Hut does it because it gets them coverage. I could use a nice slice of Pizza Hut pizza about now, too. Maybe I'll stop and get one on the way home. Or one of those tasty Personal Pans.
Thanks, Slashdot. I was hungry, now I know what I'm gonna get for dinner.
Yes, footage.
Now they can have footage that has "It's REAL Kids!" in big friendly letters at the bottom of the screen, instead of a tiny "Simulated Image" caption nobody can read.
Why doesn't this sound that important a reason for them to spend their million?
i bet this would make for a sweet beowolf project involving multiple rocket launches
In the late ninties we have seen a drastic decrease in Pizza Hut awareness, and that is not just a national problem, but a global one. I'm personally hoping that this tremendous humanitarian effort will at least partially remedy the problem. All national Pizza Hut awareness indices have dropped sharply in the last year, especially since the rise of subversive gourmet/micro-pizzarias in our crime infested inner cities. So Pizza Hut has been chased back into the wilderness of small town strip malls and Wal Mart co-locations. They've given a last ditch effort with the ingenious all-you-can-eat-buffet idea, but it's too little, too late.
Not enough people over the world know of Pizza Hut. Imagine the decrepitude of third world and communist countries who know nothing of double crust, butter crust, extra thick or pan pizzas? What about the grease? Do they get enough grease? My God, haven't they ever questioned whether or not they need Pizza Hut? Has it ever even occured to them? Finally they're getting the chance, and I can't believe the decidedly unpatriotic and totally un-american views of some of our more liberal panty-waisted limp wristed slashdotters. It's disgusting.
I'm holding in my hand a list of twenty nations that do not have Pizza Huts. When this rocket ship fires, the people will have truly spoken! We need a global, unified, subsidized pizza distribution, delivery and point-of-purchase (POP) infrastructure. The time is now!
support gun control: take guns from cops
I use a nice rifle I inherited from my granddad when he died. So far, I can brag that I've never missed, which means I'm nail a whole two deer. It kind of scares me to go out again; I don't want to lose that kind of bragging rights...
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Hold on there a bit. I really doubt that Pizza Hut would have "defaced" the moon with its lasers.
I mean, you don't have lasers now that can burn through materials very well without being aided by off-camera explosives (see the "Star Wars" defense system development scandal a few years back). Do you think they're going to shoot a beam from here to the moon that burns an image into it?
I believe they would have been talking about laser projection, like the red dot you see when you beam a laser pointer at something. Use lasers to create a reflected image from the moon that people would look up and see.
I mean, think about it. If the public got wind of them trying to permanently deface a celestial object, don't you think there'd be a hell of a lot of an uproar about it from environmentalists everywhere?
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
hmm.. completely covering ships in ads..
the new form of dazzle-painting?
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
see the whole neato thing about being a consumer is that im right and they are wrong. no questions asked. Papa John's pizza does not have a delivery charge and I got here more often that pizza hut. do you just troll around trying to seem smarter than people?
Two points, actually.
:-)
First of all, a lot of the folks here are complaining that this is just a pointless publicity stunt. Well, yes. And the point of a publicity stunt is to draw publicity, which is also (mostly) the point of advertising. Even if only a few people ever actually see the rocket with the Pizza Hut logo on it, many, many more will hear or have already heard the news reports about it. Pizza Hut has been in the news more in the past few days than any other time that I can remember, and I'm sure we'll hear even more about it when they actually launch the thing. Hell, they even got Slashdot talking about them!
Second point: Pizza Hut isn't necessarily just looking for publicity, at least not direct publicity. This rocket is carrying components of the ISS; PH can now legitimately claim that they are "sponsoring" the ISS, and space exploration in general. I doubt that they can write it off as a charitable contribution on their taxes, but I for one am willing to give them credit for helping to advance science. It seems to me that big corporations used to do this sort of thing a lot... Westinghouse scholarships, for example. (A bad example, but I can't think of any others.)
Oh, one more little thing... Some posters have reacted with horror to PH's supposed plan to "paint" their logo on the moon with a laser. Assuming this story is true at all, I'm sure they didn't plan to carve their logo into the moon, but rather to project it, probably only for a minute or so. (Think of the power required...) While I'm not sure I like this idea either, it's not as patently evil as it seemed at first.
While I'm on-topic... Seeing the price tag in the headline written in scientific notation really gave me warm fuzzies. Slashdot rocks.
MSK
Oh, it wouldn't be on the Full Moon. It would be best during the NEW moon, where more dark surface would be available to reflect the laser at a higher contrast.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
hey, brainstorming. No bad ideas.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
>But if they did do this-how much would it cost?
;-)
Compared to the annual advertising budgets of some multinationals, probably not that much... One would just have to get their act together and forgo all other advertising for a couple of years, I suspect. Of course, with a permanent advertising source like that, any other advertising will lose significance quite rapidly. And once proven to be possible, other companies will try to emulate. Frightening prospect...
>And who really "owns" the moon?
I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that it is theoretically owned jointly by "all the people of Earth," or some such. Some nice warm fuzzy agreement that no-one will try to assert control over it for themselves.
Of course, as soon as some company tries to place advertising all over it, I have no idea how well said agreement will be able to prevent them, whether it'll be able to hold up, be enforceable, or even apply. Of course, IANAL.
>Would it fall under the GPL?
Don't be daft!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Lennin and Marx spinning in their graves.
(okay, I know Lennin isn't even in a grave, it's a figure of speech. Alright?)
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
So NASA is going to allow advertising. Next thing you know the Pope will have a swoosh on his vestments, and maybe Reform Jews will have Addidas on the Yamakas. I heard that MacDonalds is planning on painting their logo in red on the asses of every rat in San Francisco, since the last census found there were more rats than people in the city (politicians included). The other day, there was a small article tucked away in the newspaper which said some advertising agency is planning on having huge illuminated ads on the surface of the moon that can be seen from earth. Kind of takes the romance out of things, what with giant condom ads staring you right in the face just when you get ready to kiss someone. And now we have Pepsi and Coke fighting over who is going to put their machines in school cafeterias, so it all goes to prove one thing, as Rosanne Rosannadana use to say: "If it isn't one thing, it's another . . . . " ---nedy "Puto deus fio." (I believe I am turning into god" ---Giaus Suetonius Tranquillus (Suetonius) from De Vita Caesarum, Divus Vespasianus XXIII, 4. (as said by Vespasianus jsut before dying).
Since I don't ever watch the Super Bowl, I'd rather they spent it on the rocket. It would be really cool if the rocket crashed. Think of the coverage the ad would get then!?!
Our forefathers would say that whomever first set foot on the moon and stuck a flag in it owns it. This would be the USA, although I hardly think the rest of the world would stand for the USA claiming they own the moon.
-B
...to turn the ISS into a billboard. I just hope Coke has the dignity to merely supply the station with drinks.
The real problem I have here, is that a completely non-related squatter company gets to buy ad space on something. Sports or Space, the concept is the same. The Kellogg's Winston Cup car? You gotta be kidding me. Next, we'll have companies posting ads on military aircraft. We'll have the "McF-16" and the "Ford Apache". Don't forget the new Pokemon class of frigates.
For the rest of history we'll have to look at the Pizza the Hut logo on the side of the rocket, whenever we watch the replay.
see title. Maybe they can put energizer bundy on one side and duracell on the other.
Reminds me of the Asimov short story: Buy Jupiter
The first thing I thought of when I read the article was if Taco Bell would fork over the money to send up their chihuahua mascot on a mission. Think of the possibilities for post-production editing! Along the same lines, I remember seeing on Discovery/TLC/PBS that one of the normal foods that work in space is Tortillas; better than bread, as less crumbs. This seems like a natural tie-in to me.
So, by spending millions on the ad they get a free thread ad in Slashdot (known to be a place where people who order pizza hang out). So as we all post about Pizza Hut, our minds become engraven with the words Pizza Hut. And we order Pizza more and thus they pay for the ad.
Ingenious, Scully!
Will in Seattle
Why not? They all did it too (I claim this land in the name..): Spain, England, France, Russia... to name but a few. Glass houses, etc.
We won the race; the medal, therefore, is ours. =)
We could make it the 51st state, just to piss off D.C.
Seriously, tho, I don't think a company would have advertising on the moon for long, before an 'unfortunate accident' rendered their machinery useless. That would just be too much of an advantage for a rival corporation to have.
[Warning: not for consumption by the humor-impaired]
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Would it fall under the GPL? ;-) Yep, and you should see what a woodie it gives RMS to think about it.
(apologies to Wierd Al)
But we can see it from webcams in orbit, no?
It's all about getting geeks who like Pizza to think Pizza Hut.
And it appears to have succeeded, since we're commenting on it.
Will in Seattle
> I seriously think the US should ban even the IDEA of advertising on the moon...
When they ban IDEAs, they'll have to pry that idea out of my cold, dead, brain.
Oh, wait.
That might be how they'll enforce it. Especially if I'm in Texas.
Will in Seattle
..to get that damned space station operational, I'm all for it. Let all the Russian rockets be decorated like NASCAR stock cars (or Formula 1 cars if you prefer). At least they'll have some dough to participate (no pun intended...no wait I guess it is intended).
-- "Words are lame and words are crap" - Bouncing Souls
OK, who remembers the episode(s) of The Tick where Chairface Chippendale tries to burn "CHAIRFACE" on the moon with an enormous laser, but only gets as far as "CHA"??
But seriously, I honestly don't have a problem with Pizza Hut's advertising. After all, national governments put their logos and symbols on rockets all the time. The Russian Space Agency is really strapped for cash needs all the help they can get. Kudos to Pizza Hut for the donation!
They mentioned in the article that PepsiCo paid to have a soda can float outside the space shuttle earlier. I'm pretty sure Pizza Hut is owned by Pepsi, so this is really the same company paying again to get more space-exposure. Interesting, because I'll bet the money would have been better spent on that Super-bowl ad. The people interested in space are usually a little bit smarter, and less swayed by advertising stunts than those who watch football games. Before you football fans jump down my throat, I love football as well, and I'm planning to watch the game. :) I just don't think that the side of a rocket that none of their target audience will actually see in person seems like a waste of a couple million bucks.
If you need to point-and-click to administer a machine,
At this price, and with the amount of collateral publicity it generates, the price they're paying is a bargain.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
So now that Pizza Hut is on this big space kick, does this mean I can finally get some Tang to go with my pizza?
I've always wanted to go someplace incredibly remote, like the top of everest, and order a dominos pizza with an iridium phone. :-)
It might be cold, but it should be free!
Umm, last time I checked, I couldn't read the site of rockets in orbit. Perhaps my eyesight has just gotten really poor because I use the computer too much. If you ask me this is the biggest waste of money I have heard of in a long long long time. I am reminded of a great lyric... "Strictly Commercial" (Frank Zappa). If you have that much money it's disgusting in my opinion that you waste it on an ad that nobody can see, why not use it for the betterment of society. Oh well, it could be worse. (scary thought eh?)
"Calling EMACS an editor is like calling the Earth a hunk of dirt" - Chris DiBona
IIRC,
These ad execs are either on drugs, or they read too much of "The Tick". Of course it has to be as big as Texas. And I bet if it was dirt cheap, they'd do it too. I can't imagine the horror of gazing up at the Moon every full moon and seeing the bloody Pizza Hut logo. That would be a nightmare.
Let's hope no one thinks of something so stupid ever again. Leave it to Chairface to design large lasers to etch his name on the Moon. ("Cha?")
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Spoooooon!!!
The things we'll do to deliver a warm pizza.
Cut to a scene of the pizza boy sitting directly under the main booster with a bewildered look on his face
FWOOOOSH!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
One of the most tried-and-true advertising strategies in a marketroid's playbook is to get the brand name into your consciousness, usually by repeating it over and over again. Next TV commercial you see, count how many times the brand name is said aloud. Contrast that with how many times you'd expect it to be said aloud in normal conversation.
I wonder how many times the words "Pizza Hut" have come up in this discussion alone. Multiply by thousands of people talking about it around the water cooler, a story on every local news station's "...and now, something funny" segment, and kazillions of kilobytes of discussion elsewhere on the 'net.
The fact that only a few people will actually see an image of the Pizza Hut logo on the rocket is far overshadowed by the fact that people will be talking about the act, over and over, and using the words "Pizza Hut," over and over.
I think the advertising is working on me - I want a pizza.
I'm calling Papa John's right now :)
I think it would be a lot of fun if we could scrape together some resources as a community to have :)
"Powered by apache" written on the side of one of the Russian launch modules.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
I don't think Pepsi does this, but I remember reading an article in the newspaper once about how some restraunts would give you free meals for life if you got a tatoo of their restraunt name/symbol on your forearm. Some of the designs were actually pretty good, for a tatoo, and they got quite a few people to get them. I would never do it though.
I don't mean to jinx things, but has the pepsi company figured out a backup plan should the rocket launch and explode.
Or worse, should launch and explode in such a way that kills thousands? This is the kind of marketing that has to make you wonder who is behind it.
Chris DiBona
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
This all reminds me of the Heinlein book, The man who sold the moon. Where a rocket trip to the moon is financed in part by soda company hoping to get their logo splashed across the face of the moon. Or was it their rival, hoping to stop the same from happening. Have to read that one again to jog the memory
file:
If we are going to compare burgers to pizzas, clearly Domino's would be the McDonald's of Pizza, no?
I'm OK with the US owning the landing sites where they went. But not the whole planet. That's not how it ever worked on earth either.
Sadly enough you're absolutely right...a Pizza *does* sound very good right now...
:/ It's gone up. Can't believe more people watch that Super Bowl (of crap) than vote.
I think I'll go to Arby's instead =)
--DranoK
BTW, I was wrong at the cost of a 30-second spot on the Super Bowl.
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
I think it is brilliant, and I LOVE PIZZA.
I definitely would have to secede from the union if a rocket went up with "Pokemon" on it. Hey, but if Pokemon gets us to Mars...
ms is not the kind of company I want investing or taking interests in space.... one planet should be enough. heh
Actually Pepsico spun off its fast food businesses several years ago. They're called Tricon I believe.
They were thinking of using a laser to draw the pizza slut logo on the moon? Wasn't that an episode of the Tick?
I'm simultaneously reminded both of Chairface Chippendale (CHA), as well as Dr. Evil (``All I want is sharks with... laserbeams on their forheads!'' or something to that effect.)
My Freakin Blog
That wouldn't have seen it on TV?
My point is, its only redeeming value is the "oh cool, it's on the rocket" factor. Other than that, it's an image just like every other logo they put on TV, so it enters into my conscience with the same impact as say, a Union Carbide ad, i.e., hardly at all.
Of course, you could paint the Pizza Hut logo on my neighbor's house and car, and I still wouldn't eat there. Take n' Bake til I die, I guess I am.
So if they want to throw $1.25 mil at the Russian space program, I'm OK with it. That's certainly a better place for it to go than your friendly neighborhood Congressman.
_____
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
I wonder how much Pepsi Co. would pay me to tattoo a pepsi logo on my forehead, in big, bright and bold colors.
Seriously.
Anyway, IIRC PepsiCo spun off Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell into a new entity (Tricon). See www.triconglobal.com for info.
Since congress seems to want to cut the budget for the space program, I think NASA should allow advertising.
For example, we should send a replacement for the Mars Climate Observer, but there is no money in the budget. They said IIRC, that it cost ~125Mln USD, so we can hit all of the tech companies up for it. I bet it would be easy to get at least a few million each from, say: IBM, SUN, AOL, MS, DELL, Compaq, Boeing, Martin Marietta, etc, etc. Let 'em each have a spot on the device to stick a logo, let em use it in advertising..they would get the PR value, and we would get the science.
I can't belive the McDonalds of Pizza would spend so much money on a worthless ad campaign like that.
Am I right in saying Pizza Hut has the worst pizza this side of the planet (har har)? Do you think that spamming the atmosphere with their logo will help "redefine their image"? Is there consensus among the Slashdot crowd that Pizza Hut sells not what anyone who has had real pizza would call pizza?
Instead of find new and cheaper ways to sell machine-made bread with bland sauce and Real(r) cheese, wouldn't the world be a happier place without this corporate slop? I would rather see $2.5e spent sending a real rocket at their headquaters.
I think it would be cool if the moon said "P I Z". The Greys would wonder what the hell was going on next time the stopped by....
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We all take pink lemonade for granted.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
How much does the normal advertising campaign cost? Just with TV ads and such? Because they know (if they dont, pity on them) that nooone can see it from outer space. So this is all in the hope the media will pick up on it and cover it with great enthusiasm. So, would this be cheaper than the normal TV advertisements?
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"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
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Maybe it would be approprate to put a huge cheese advertisement on the moon.
This reminds me of the Heinlein science fiction story in which the hero used every method he possibly could, from selling real estate on the moon to selling the (unusable) advertising right to the moon's surface, all so he could go. (His advertising on the moon gambit was a classic and might have wide applicability in this case - he sold the rights to a soft drink company (I think it was "Moke") with the proviso that they never be used - that is, that their competitor would be barred from buying them!)
I would think most science fiction buffs would love something like that to happen - especially since it doesn't look like we're going to the moon anytime soon without something like that happening.
D
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Let's see: it was in the papers; on CNN; probably on the 5:00 news; oh yeah Slashdot...
but bad for 2.5M if you ask me...
then again, you didn't
Pork is not a verb
I used to work at McDonald's. At the time, I did not have a television. We were selling a particularly unpleasant (IMHO) burger at the time, called the McBarbeque or something like that. It involved barbeque sauce, and, IIRC, some other not-usually-on-a-hamburger substance. One day, McDonald's began advertising this burger on television, with Michael Jordan as its spokesperson. As I said, I had no TV at the time, but I instantly knew this, because a suprisingly large number of people began asking for "that Michael Jordan burger". Ever since then, I have never doubted the power of advertising.
"This opportunity has so much credibility and so much excitement for people, and we're real excited about making it happen," Mr Rawlings said.
Credibility? What the hell is he talking about?
There's a photo-illustration of what the Pizza Hut rocket will look like at Pizza Hut's page.
I'm not sure exactly which aspect of this is more depressing:
1) That Pizza Hut paid 125 times my annual sallary to pull a publicity stunt that, other than a few newspapers, nobody will actually *see* (Well, very few.) I mean, even a 30 second spot on the Super Bowl is only about $1 million.
Or 2) That $2.5 million dollars worth of customers will read about this and say, "Screw Domino's, let's go to Pizza Hut!!!" Sheesh.
Don't blame the advertising companies too much...Remember, it's the customers who really pay for these ads.
--DranoK
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
I think if they started doing that I would kill myself. That would be the last straw - the Great Combine will have officially rolled over us, shredding up the last of our humanity, dignity and consciousness.
Who cares? Really, it's just paint (or whatever) on the side of a rocket. I hate ads as much as the next guy, but it's just an ad on the side of a rocket. As a result, the Russian Space Program gets money, Pizza Hut gets an ad and life goes on. No one will probably even see or hear of it besides this article. Besides, at least Pizza Hut makes better pizza than most places..
The part that SHOULD worry people, for obvious reasons, is this
"Company officials had wanted to use lasers to shine a giant logo on to the surface of the moon, but they started looking for an alternative promotional idea when they learnt that the image would have to be as big as Texas to be seen by earthlings more than 380,000 kilometers (238,000 miles) away."
But an advertisement on the side of a rocket? It doesn't hurt anyone and it helps the space program, so why complain?
--
Reject
--
Reject
reject@metaphorcity dot com
This must be what the new delivery charge is paying for.... Is this going on everywhere? $.50-$1.00 delivery charges? I just take it out of the drivers tip in hope that the complaints from drivers will get it lifted...