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Capitalism Wins: Russia Takes the Lead in Space Age Advertising
By Todd Halvorson
Cape Canaveral Bureau Chief
posted: 07:00 am ET
31 May 2001
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russia_space_market_010531 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- If you haven't seen it yet, a heart-tugging commercial will be popping up on your television soon. Look for visiting Russian cosmonauts to float through a spacecraft hatch with a Radio Shack shopping bag, delivering a Father's Day gift to International Space Station (ISS) commander Yuri Usachev. Surprised, the station skipper opens the bag and finds a talking picture frame with a photo of his 12-year-old daughter, Evgenia. The frame then plays a 10-second message recorded at her parent's apartment in Star City, Russia: "Hey Dad, we are wishing you good fortune and success in your job and good relationships with the crew." | More on Product Placement That's Out of this World | | A Brief History of Space Marketing: The tradition of flying commercial products to space is not new - in fact, it can be traced to the early days of the manned space programs. Heres a brief history of space marketing in the making: [more] | 
Now on SpaceTV - Putting Pizza Hut in Orbit: We take a look at the making of the Pizza Hut video news release onboard the International Space Station. [activate] | Beaming, Usachev gives a "high-five" to cosmonaut colleague Talgat Musabayev. "Then he puts the picture frame on the bulkhead next to his sleeping bag and the camera pans out to look at the blue Earth below," said David Gump, president of LunaCorp, a Fairfax, Virginia company that helped pull off the first TV commercial filmed aboard the new frontier outpost. "It's pretty cool." It's also the beginning of a new space race, one in which the Russians have once again taken an early lead over their American counterparts. In what amounts to an orbital battle of "me-first" product placement, advertisers in the U.S. and Europe are scrambling to get onboard Space Station Alpha, which is being raised some 240 miles (384 kilometers) above Earth. In may, four major corporations -- Radio Shack, Popular Mechanics, The LEGO Company and Pizza Hut -- paid to have cosmonauts promote consumer goods aboard the outpost. Meanwhile on Earth, U.S. federal government regulations have relegated NASA to the sidelines as the cash-strapped Russians are rocketing off into a new age of high-flying advertising, marketing and promotion.Said Jay McGill, publisher of Popular Mechanics: "Anything can be done for rubles." Call it crass commercialism, or call it the savvy commercialization of space -- during a six-hour sprint on May 3, Musabayev, Usachev and Yuri Baturin turned the space station's crew quarters into a makeshift stage, filming commercials or conducting photo shoots for the four companies. Baturin looked dashing and diplomatic as he posed with a Popular Mechanics banner and a recent copy of the Hearst Corp. magazine publication. And he also fared well as an "on-air personality" during the filming of an educational experiment with a LEGO Mars Planet Protector, one in a new series of toy robots that the Denmark-based company unveiled in January. Musabayev scored big, floating the Radio Shack Father's Day gift into the station, and Usachev got rave reviews for taste testing the first pizza ever delivered to space from Pizza Hut, a division of Tricon Global Restaurants Inc. 
A Pizza Hut logo appeared on the side of the Proton rocket
that launched the Zvezda service module; part of Russia's
commercialization of its cash-strapped space program.
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"He was just so personable on film that we said, `Oh, he is just a doll. We like him,'" said Pizza Hut Director of Public Relations Patty Sullivan. "He's got some fans at Pizza Hut." The Radio Shack marketing troops were just as pleased with the cosmonauts, who provided both steady shots and exuberant facial expressions during the Father's Day surprise. Said Gump: "They staged it very well for professional space travelers who were taking a detour into filmmaking." Next page: NASA's bureaucratic conundrum
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