THERE ARE NO BILLBOARDS IN SPACE

THERE ARE NO BILLBOARDS IN SPACE

Last week the Cassini spacecraft beamed photos back to earth speeding 898 million miles away from the surface of our planet.  The spectacular images show the Earth and our moon as tiny specks in the distance beyond Saturn's rings.  Like people around the world, I marveled at the beauty of the pictures and the emotional power of viewing the earth from this new perspective.

But at the same moment, I felt that something was missing from the composition.

Then the answer hit me with a one-two punch of astonishment and embarrassment.  What I wanted to see in that historic photograph was a logo.

Get past your outrage for a moment and consider that our space program embodies desirable qualities sought after by advertisers worldwide.  It represents boldness, audacity, precision, grand ideals, technical excellence, virtuous objectives and has global appeal.  These are all qualities that can be marketed successfully by NASA while maintaining total autonomy for their mission.

Art museums were long thought to be bastions of artistic freedom that shunned corporate dollars for fear of undue influence on artistic decisions.  Today, museums around the world seek out corporate sponsorship as a way to defray costs of blockbuster exhibitions and help secure financing for ongoing operations because public funding is inadequate.  A current trend takes that one step further with corporations creating curated museum shows that are sent to arts institutions around the country at nominal or no cost to the museum in return for appropriate branding opportunities.  Although the fine art/corporate sponsorship relationship has in some ways realized the worst fears of arts purists, overall more quality art that would otherwise never be accessible to the public is able to be seen and appreciated.

Today there are several private commercial firms operating in space like SpaceX handling the now mundane and conventional task of hauling satellites into orbit.  Advertising is certainly a part of their marketing plan.  NASA is different because it concentrates on projects that would otherwise never be commercially viable -- the pure scientific pursuit of knowledge about our planet, our origins and the unknown.  That is an opportunity for the very few global corporations that would compete for the exclusive rights to market certain images with NASA being the direct financial beneficiary.  Click here to start the bidding for these planned future NASA missions.

So you would still be able to see the incredible image we saw last week.  And also another one of the same image with a small Redbull banner protruding from the fuselage in the corner of the picture.  Properly managed, the benefits to our space program would far outweigh any potential cost.

Over and out.

ONE BIG IDEA FOR SUCCESSFUL SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING

ONE BIG IDEA FOR SUCCESSFUL SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING

I was taking a walk around my new neighborhood last Friday when I found myself in the parking lot of the strip mall across the street.  It was around 9:00 p.m. and in my neighborhood, they roll up the sidewalks around an hour earlier.  The mall has two restaurants open at that hour as well as a frozen yogurt shop called The Working Cow. 
The three food establishments are located close together and as I walked towards them I heard music playing outside.  Getting closer, I saw tables and chairs placed all around the restaurant store-fronts and approximately 80 people filling the seats. 
None of them were eating dinner.
The music I heard was live, played by a keyboardist with a decent voice and a good conversational patter between songs he cued up on his laptop.  He was set up beside the yogurt shop and mentioned the entertainment was courtesy of the Working Cow.  Everyone had a cup of yogurt in their hands or on the tables.  There was a line of people outside the door waiting to make a purchase.
The restaurants were empty.
The Working Cow provided a reason for people in the neighborhood to venture out Friday evening to listen to music and to, oh yeah, "let's get some yogurt."
Normally, the restaurants have the room and the furniture to promote themselves with live music.  But compared to the Working Cow, they were just chewing their cuds.
I bought a cup too, in deference to their small business making a risky decision that provides a financial return far greater than their investment.

"DUMB WAYS TO DIE" MAKES RAILWAY SAFETY POPULAR

"DUMB WAYS TO DIE" MAKES RAILWAY SAFETY POPULAR

A few weeks ago I heard a song playing on my ten-year old daughter's iphone from the back seat of the car.  It's my job to determine 'appropriate' content for Shelby.  As soon as I heard the first part of the chorus, with a female voice singing "Dumb Ways to Die" to a catchy upbeat melody, I told her to shut it off.

Shelby told me she heard it first at her friend's house.  "It's funny," she said.  Curious, I asked her to play it again so I could hear the entire song.  When it finished playing, I was smiling too, because I realized the song is a brilliant breakthrough in public service campaign marketing.

Take a look at the first verse of the song:  "Set fire to your hair. Poke a stick at a grizzly bear.  Eat medicine that's out of date, use your private parts as piranha bait."  The rest of the lyrics are equally bizarre.  At the end of the tune, however, the dumb ways to die center around railway safety:  Stand on the edge of a train station platform.  Drive around the boom gates at a level crossing.  Run across the tracks between the platforms.  They may not rhyme but they’re quite possibly... (Chorus) Dumbest ways to die.  After the music ends, there is a tag line.  "Be safe around trains. A message
from Metro."

A little research brought me to the website of http://www.metrotrains.com.au/ Melbourne, Australia's metropolitan train network.  "Dumb Ways to Die" was commissioned by Metro to draw public attention to railway safety issues.  Uploaded to youtube last November, this little public service ripple has grown into a mammoth viral tsunami of awareness with a total of nearly 53,000,000 views to date.  Written by Australian musician Ollie McGill from the band The Cat Empire and performed by Emily Lubitz of Tinpan Orange, Dumb Ways to Die was made available for sale on iTunes and reached the top 10 in the global iTunes chart within 24 hours of its release.   And to follow up, the Dumb Ways to Die game app recently launched:  Dumb Ways to Die iphone app game.

The success of this small campaign is a superlative example of creative problem solving.  Traditional public service pieces concerning safety rely on fear to motivate the public:  stop smoking, don't drink and drive, etc.  Instead in this case the subtle use of humor and music achieves the desired result with powerful and lasting effect.  

Powerful, because youtube doesn't broadcast to everyone.  Almost 53,000,000 people have searched out the song and voluntarily chosen to play it.  It's not background noise in a television commercial or on an outdoor billboard.  Each person is a dedicated viewer and listener for the duration of the song.  Lasting, because many listen several times over a long period, making the shelf life of this campaign almost indefinite.  And industry recognition is building.  The campaign won Direct and PR Grand Prix Awards at Cannes 2013.

The most impressive benchmark for Metro's success is something that was unimaginable ten years ago:  a ten-year old girl riding in a car in the US listens to a popular song commissioned by an Australian train company to inform their local riders about railway safety.

If Metro's trains are as good as their marketing, then all of their seats must be first class.

Listen to the song here:Dumb Ways to Die