Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Fuck You, Pepsi, and Your Sky-Advertising Satellite Plans
jalopnik.com: If you’re like most people, at some point in your life you’ve lain on your back on the grass at night, and gazed up into the inky, never-ending blackness of the night sky, and marveled at all the stars. While you were losing yourself in vertiginous gazing, I’m sure you were probably thinking “Damn! I sure wish someone was trying to get me to buy something right now!”
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The big question that jumps out to me after reading this is, what determines whether or not this is even allowed. When it comes to standard billboards, someone owns the land and then builds a billboard and then either puts what they want on it or has someone else pay them to put what that person wants on it. No one owns space, so it is more complicated to determine who would be able to allow or ban a satellite billboard. Separately, while I think this technology is cool, I agree that a billboard in space is in exceptional poor taste. I think something more like an art installation could be cool, and it could be sponsored by a company who makes sure to thoroughly brand their association with the project without plastering their name in the sky. Even so, there is something that bugs me about putting something man made in the night sky, no matter where you go. I don’t like the idea of something so inescapable.
First of all, the title of this article is hilarious. It immediately drew me in, so kudos to some seriously good marketing and web writing. On the subject of what the article is about, I find this a little ridiculous. First of all, consumer products and trends change so often that it would hardly worth it to spend the money to set up what is essentially a space billboard. Another problem that it would run into is that advertisement would be viewable from several countries at the same time. How would you determine who to cater to (interests, values, language) as the exigence for selling a product is different for every person. This technology is very impressive, but it seems impractical right now, especially when we live in such a digital age where one Instagram add is going to hit harder than any other form of advertisement no matter how cool a space billboard would be.
Dang this technology is really crazy. I think it is impressive that we have the ability to do this kind of thing, but I do not think that means we should do it. This would be really crazy to see come to fruition honestly. I do not think it is really that practical or likely to happen, but who knows. I guess it is possible. I would hope that there is some kind of international law preventing this kind of thing from happening right? Like some international space treaty… Maybe that does not exist, but maybe it should! I do not think people should have unlimited access to things like this, and they should not be able to force everyone on Earth to partake in viewing it. It just feels so invasive honestly, like Pepsi is forcing themselves on everyone on Earth whether they like it or not. I am not a fan.
The title of this article is hilarious and immediately made me think of skywriting and the planes that fly up and down beaches with banners behind them. But space writing, I can not believe that this is something that people are actually developing and thinking is an actual form of advertisement. Right off the bat, I can see myself hating this. It sounds EXTREMELY expensive and INCREDIBLY intrusive. Not that I go stargazing all that often, the last thing I want is for a massive billboard to be blocking my view and ruining landscape photographers pictures with a massive Pepsi logo in the middle of every picture of the night sky. While I can see why this would be an exciting form of advertisement for corporations, I think they would receive an astronomical (pun intended) amount of push back from the general population. The last thing I want is to point up at the night sky trying to show my kids a constellation and having to see an advertisement glowing at me.
Honestly from a marketing an technological standpoint, I must give Pepsi a hand for this concept, even though I don’t really want to live in a world where my sky is filled with light pollution of literal advertisements in the atmosphere when there is already enough light pollution as it is. I also think that the logistical side of this design makes it not worth it, and adds copious amounts of debris that is just swirling in our orbit, with the ability to come crashing out of the sky at any moment. The fact that it only has a life span of a year and could not be changed over the course of that lifetime without significant financial intervention, in my mind, makes it out of the question for a usable concept. The idea, while brilliant, is costly, short term, wasteful, and, honestly, distasteful. The intentions are strong, and maybe in the future we will find a way to make this into a reality, but that is certainly not now.
I really thought this article had to be an april fools joke. It is bizarre that very possibly, someday if our planet makes it to then, we will look up and see man made things clearly in the sky. Even now, we can see satellites occasionally, however messages brings about a whole other conversation. I am glad NASA did this testing but It would be ridiculous if that research was used to benefit marketers. I also agree, that weird art would be created using these satellites, however even then, the artist would be subjecting everyone to what they want to say. There are few people I ever want to have that power, even for myself. This will change humans relationships to the earth around them, and what it feels like to never be alone with your thoughts. This plan may also very likely increase traffic in space, and is just contributing to the eventual interstellar trash clean up we will be subjecting our grandchildren, just because pepsi wanted people to be thinking about their beverages when I’m on a hike.
Truly, nothing is sacred to people who want money. The idea of using the sky as a billboard for an energy drink, or honestly for anything really, is abhorring. Every year this planet literally becomes more and more in line with the movie Wall-E, and it is terrible. I knew of the physical pollution in Earth’s orbit, but I was not aware that 10% of 20,000 objects floating around the planet are active. Why shove more things up there and force people on Earth to constantly stare at an advertisement. Leave the sky alone - it should not be somebody’s advertising tool. This idea is so incredibly intrusive, and for the money they are spending and the backlash they will receive, it does not even seem worth it. The title of this article pretty much says it all. This idea is really, really bad in a number of ways and for a number of reasons.
As I die hard coke fan this article's title drew me in right away and I loved it. This article however got even more absurd to me as it went on. I kept thinking that this article would turn out to be some sort of joke or some so far of theoretical idea. This seems like just an absurd idea to be advertising and clouding up the night sky. Just the legal questions alone are enough for me to go mad but the idea that we can populate our already polluted night sky with advertising for a energy drink is absolutely absurd. Clouding up traffic in space for advertising and big corporate corporations is stupid. This may seem like a cool idea but I don't think that it should go any farther then that an idea. Just stepping forward on the execution of this idea makes me mad and upset for what our future holds.
WHY!?!? This article is so very sad. Literally the concept that we are smart enough as a human race to create this kind of technology but not smart enough to step back and see what it is actually doing to our planet is appalling. The article clearly states that’s there is already 20,000 objects cataloged in the Earth’s orbit, and only 10% are active!!! Why would we continue to make this work with new, and don’t get me wrong, impressive, technology that is not needed? Yes, this concept is very cool but extremely unnecessary. If normal marketing concepts like commercials and billboards are not enough for your product, maybe it’s just a bad product. Maybe people are just realizing that energy drinks are bad for them. Instead of literally putting ads in unavoidable places like the EARTH’S ORBIT, MAKE BETTER PRODUCTS THAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT TO BUY. Sorry, but this is dumb.
As others have mentioned, the title and writing style of this article are fantastic and really draw the reader in and keep it interesting. The content, less fun. I was really really hoping this was some kind of joke. Advertising is already so present in our daily lives, with people devoting their life to coming up with better strategies to subtly convince people to buy things they don’t need. I hate the fact that companies large enough can just do things like this that clearly no one wants and everyone would despise with no repercussions. Do the people in their advertising department not enjoy looking up at the sky as much as the rest of us? This is an interesting gimmick from an advertising standpoint but honestly I feel like it would make me even less likely to want to buy Pepsi products just out of spite. This idea should have stayed an idea and hopefully they give up on it before it comes to fruition.
I am completely enraged by the prospect of having commercial advertisements invading our skies, and utterly confused as to why such a thing is necessary. In such a consumerist society, is it not enough to see logos and ads on every billboard, TV, and phone? What could there possibly be to gain from displaying an ad in the night sky for the company? How would this unique form of advertising generate any kind of different appeal of the product itself? Who asked for this kind of high-tech expensive endeavor to begin with? This entire concept of placing artificial, man-made images into the sky is puzzling to me, not just from a (nature-loving) consumer perspective, but also from a marketing perspective. Maybe-- just maybe-- if there was some artful component for such satellite images, I could justify the intentions of its makers. But ads? I just don’t understand.
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