The brand new movie Fly Me to the Moon starring Scarlett Johansson & Channing Tatum is a romantic comedy set within the 1969 race to the moon. Johansson performs a advertising and marketing strategist planning a pretend moon touchdown video in a NASA warehouse.
I’m thrilled my guide Advertising and marketing the Moon co-written with Wealthy Jurek was an essential inspiration for the movie.
In our guide, we researched how NASA bought the lunar missions to the American folks. We interviewed Apollo astronauts together with a number of who walked on the moon. We spoke with public relations professionals at NASA, reporters who coated the missions, and to entrepreneurs at contractors like Boeing.
The previous couple of weeks have been tremendous thrilling because the detailed historical past of the advertising and marketing and PR points of the Apollo program that we wrote about in our 2014 guide have abruptly been thrust again into the highlight due to the movie’s launch.
Because the specialists within the advertising and marketing points of the Apollo program, Wealthy and I’ve achieved media interviews, and our guide has been talked about in dozens of stories tales.
Establishing Authority
How cool is it whenever you set up authority in a topic, even an obscure one like what we wrote about, and abruptly your experience is in demand!
As I stated when our guide initially got here out a decade in the past, I’m satisfied the Apollo program is essentially the most profitable advertising and marketing and public relations marketing campaign in historical past. Our guide Advertising and marketing the Moon: The Promoting of the Apollo Lunar Program options heroic astronauts, press-savvy rocket scientists, enthusiastic reporters, deep-pocketed protection contractors, and Tang.
Many of those parts (together with Tang) make an look within the movie. Fly Me to the Moon consists of particulars we coated in our guide together with product placement by Omega watches and different firms.
No spoilers!
I noticed the movie and it’s fantastic. I’ll return to see it once more and when it’s out there, I’ll buy a DVD.
One of the crucial essential PR tasks for Apollo was the inclusion of reside tv from the floor of the moon. In Advertising and marketing the Moon, we coated many particulars of the battle to get a TV digital camera in house. Some in NASA needed reside tv to share the lunar touchdown with the world and others resisted as a result of it was a troublesome technological problem. We advised their tales.
Reside tv as a advertising and marketing technique turns into a serious storyline within the Fly Me to the Moon film.
In a USA Immediately article: Is ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ based mostly on a real story? What’s behind pretend moon touchdown film, screenwriter Rose Gilroy was quoted as saying she appeared to Advertising and marketing the Moon which particulars how NASA made the moon attractive to the lots via product placement, journal articles and TV specials. “It’s concerning the authentic adverts that have been used, and the way sci-fi was woven into the minds of the American folks” utilizing style books and films, Gilroy says. “That was instrumental. It was endlessly attention-grabbing to study all of the methods they bought” the Apollo 11 mission.
“As entrepreneurs and house fanatics, writing advertising and marketing the moon was a ardour challenge, a labor of affection,” my co-author Wealthy Jurek advised me, and I completely agree! “Its attain and affect have exceeded each expectation,” Wealthy continues. “It’s a beautiful reminder that whenever you comply with your ardour, the payoff not solely transcends financial compensation, however also can result in large private {and professional} alternatives. As an alternative of simply specializing in Apollo as a technical and engineering achievement, Advertising and marketing the Moon actually modified the historic narrative by placing a a lot overdue and deserved highlight on the pioneering advertising and marketing and PR efforts surrounding this system at each the contractors and NASA. In so doing, we’ve impressed two movies and proceed to affect a brand new technology’s perspective on a novel however important side of this system.”
Listed here are a number of tales mentioning our guide:
I’ve usually stated my finest nonfiction guide concepts got here from discovering patterns within the universe that no person else has written about. If you happen to’re contemplating a nonfiction guide, that must be your check: Is your thought a brand new manner of taking a look at one thing?
Upon getting that sample recognized, it is advisable to share it! The extra we give, the extra we get again.
The significance of selling and public relations to Apollo was a narrative ready to be advised. Wealthy and I noticed the devoted individuals who fought for reside tv and who labored to speak with the general public in methods they’d recognize is as heroic as what the astronauts did, and we have been advised their story in our guide.
Thanks, Rose Gilroy, on your fantastic script. You expertly created a humorous and heat movie and advised the tales of the hundreds of NASA folks in a caring and respectful manner. For a comedy to even be rooted in actuality is a troublesome needle to string.
And thanks Wealthy for agreeing to co-author Advertising and marketing the Moon. Once we first mentioned the concepts that turned this challenge some 15 years in the past whereas we have been at an Apollo occasion collectively, who would have imagined what it might result in.