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. "

Comments

Enviromental Advertising

[Skyshadow]

The idea of putting an ad or a logo where everybody can see it isn't a new one. There's a company (I forget who) which offers a satellite-based banner. After launch, the satellite would unfold a thin banner which would end up being the size of several football fields. In LEO, this could be easily seen at night and even during the day. It would orbit for a few weeks or months, then fall out of orbit and burn up.

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).

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