Advertising in space: A giant leap for mankind or a step too far?

One of the oldest known printed advertisements in the world was found in Song Dynasty China from circa 960-1279 CE. It was a copper printing plate advertising "Jinan Liu's Fine Needle Shop”. Later forms of advertisements have included verbal advertising, town criers and sandwich men (men wearing two pieces of ad boards on their front and back and walking around on streets much like mascots). 

These town criers and sandwich men would have thrown their heads in disbelief if someone were to tell them that their descendants would be doing logo and product placements in space. 

Space advertising is an exciting yet controversial new reality for brands in the advertising world right now. It’s not just an idea on the drawing board that finds a mention in this article but actual adverts in outer space that have blurred the difference between idea and execution. 

It may seem like advertising in outer space is a late 21st-century phenomenon, but the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) did it back in 1990 by having its logo displayed on the launch vehicle of a Russian spacecraft.

The agency reportedly paid $10 million to also make sure that its journalist, Toyohiro Akiyama, becomes the first non-astronaut personnel to go into orbit. Needless to say, their brand value skyrocketed after this stunt. 

Other brands, such as Pizza Hut and Columbia Sportswear, have had the honour of getting their logos placed on a Russian Proton rocket and an intuitive machine's lunar lander, respectively. Pizza Hut was also in the news in 2001 for delivering a six-inch salami pizza into space.

There are more than a dozen examples of successful advertising campaigns in space. Tesla sent its Roadster to space aboard the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in 2018. Under Armour partnered with Virgin Galactic to create space apparel for astronauts in 2019, and Estée Lauder propelled its Advanced Night Repair Serum to the International Space Station for a four-and-a-half-hour photoshoot in 2020. 

However, one of the biggest events in the advertising space race was marked on August 22, 1997, aboard the International Space Station. Tnuva Milk, an Israeli company, set a Guinness World Record by filming the first-ever TV commercial in space. The 95-second video cost the company 9 months of planning and $450,000. 

All the innovative advertisements mentioned above have been examples of non-intrusive space advertising, though. There is another form of space advertising that happens to be more intrusive, with the potential to cause more light pollution and space debris. 

ALE, a Japanese start-up, is working on creating artificial, on-demand meteor showers in space for amusement, much like fireworks. Space Marketing Inc. was developing a ‘Space Billboard’ project before it went out of business. It was to be a kilometre-long billboard in low Earth orbit, which would be visible as big as the moon from the Earth with the naked eye. 

Dubbed as advertising on the final frontier, space advertising is here to stay. However, the scientific community's opposition to obtrusive space advertising remains. 

Astronomers have protested capitalism in space by pointing out that the light pollution caused by the proposed billboards and sails would hinder scientific research, especially because such advertisements, once in space, can never be turned off, adding to the space debris as well. 

Ethical opposition comes from the notion that the clear night sky is a shared heritage enjoyed by the people of the Earth, who do not deserve to be bombarded with this perpetual visual nuisance. The jury is still out.