Slashdot Mirror
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.
"
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....
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. ;)
What? You mean like that "Real" logo?
...now, can they get it to DELIVER?
01101100 01101001 01101110 01110101 01111000 01110010 01110101 01101100 01100101 01110011
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 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
In that case ... you can't miss this.
-Brent--
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.
You mean painted up like this?
-Brent--
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.
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--
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!
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
"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.
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.
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...
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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
..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?
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."
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 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....
----
We all take pink lemonade for granted.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
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
----
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!
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
If you let them put ads on rockets, they'll have more money...and to me, NASA having more money is a good thing.
Werd.