Spacevertising: The Super Bowl And The 15 Best Outer-Space Ads You Need To See Right Now

The Super Bowl, an annual event that captivates millions of viewers worldwide, is celebrated not just for its thrilling football showdown but also for the advertisements that take centre stage – and space commercials as well! These ads have gained widespread renown for transforming typical commercial breaks into a distinctive form of entertainment.

This year, beyond the expected association with sports and entertainment, a surprising celestial connection has emerged. The astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) engaged in a zero-gravity football game ahead of the highly anticipated clash between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers in Las Vegas.

It’s not the first time Space appears on Super Bowl ads: in previous years, some commercials contained space-themed videos. In general, space has become a great platform for different companies’ ads.

Therefore, we created a collection of 15 notable space-themed commercials from different companies like Pepsi, Estee and more, on Super Bowl and beyond!

West

In fact, the idea of using outer space for advertising is not new. The first space advertising campaign took place back in 1992, when the logo of the tobacco company West was carried into orbit.

In this venture, a Russian Proton rocket served as the celestial billboard, carrying the West logo into the vast expanse of space. This marked the first instance of a corporate logo boldly venturing beyond Earth’s atmosphere, opening the door to exploring space as a unique advertising canvas.

Pizza Hut space commercials

The American company Pizza Hut became the first pizzeria to send its pizza into space. In 2001, an astronaut in front of the camera tasted a pizza heated on board, which was prepared according to a special “space” recipe.

The pizza was seasoned with extra spices, especially salt, as taste buds are known to dull a bit in outer space. And while pepperoni is the chain’s most popular topping, the company settled on salami because pepperoni didn’t hold up well during the required 60-day testing.

The advertising campaign was accompanied by the slogan “Where there is life, there is pizza” and cost $1 million.

Red Bull

In 2012, the company producing energy drinks became the sponsor of an extreme project named after the company – Red Bull Stratos. As part of this project, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner climbed to a height of 39 kilometers into the stratosphere over New Mexico and made a free fall in a spacesuit to Earth.

The media coverage of this space commercial was extraordinary. The live broadcast was carried out by 80 TV channels in 50 countries of the world, and more than 50 million viewers watched the skydiver’s jump at the same time.

Hello Kitty

A very cute space commercial was developed by Japanese students for the Hello Kitty brand. They created a special satellite, allocated a small room in it with a view of outer space and placed a Hello Kitty toy in the room. 

Inside the satellite, there was a video camera that filmed the toy against the background of space, and network users could write a tweet with any hashtag, which was displayed in real-time on the screen in Hello Kitty’s cabin. 

However, the organizers could not provide direct communication, so the video was presented in the recording.

SpaceX and Tesla space commercials

In 2018, the SpaceX company launched the Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, carrying the Tesla Roadster electric car on board. The car played the role of payload during the test launch of the rocket. Behind the wheel of the car sat a mannequin in a space suit, on the car’s dashboard was written “Don’t Panic”, and if you believe Musk, David Bowie’s song “Space Oddity” was playing from the speakers.

Thus, the project fulfilled two tasks at once: the rocket was tested, and the news about the extraordinary launch made it to the pages of most media around the world. The campaign became one of the most successful space commercials, and for three brands at once: SpaceX, Tesla and Elon Musk‘s personal brand.

Hyundai space ads

The basis of the Hyundai advertising company was a touching story about a girl, Stephanie, and her father, who works on the ISS. Because of their father’s work, they rarely managed to communicate on Earth. So the Hyundai company offered the girl an original way to convey messages to her father.

11 Hyundai Genesis cars rolled through the dry Delamar Lake and their wheel tracks depicted the inscription “Steph loves you!” with an area of 5.5 km². The message from the daughter turned out to be so large that the father could read it just by looking through the porthole. Notably, Hyundai received three bronze Cannes Lions for this space commercial.

Estee Lauder

In 2020, the American luxury cosmetics company Estée Lauder shot an ad for its night serum on the International Space Station. The idea was to photograph the serum in weightlessness. Such filming, for sure, is not cheap – $17,500 per hour and another $128,000 for transporting the product to the station.

Estée Lauder became the first cosmetics brand to enlist the support of NASA in implementing a commercial project.

Pepsi space commercials

Perhaps one of the boldest space experimenters is the Pepsi company. Back in 1996, it created an inflatable 1.2-meter model of a Pepsi can, which was sent aboard a spaceship. During spacewalks, astronauts launched this mockup into airless space. The whole process was filmed. The video of the flight was later used in a Pepsi commercial. In addition, astronauts carried several dozen bottles of Pepsi into space, which were then brought to Earth and the brand was able to sell them at an auction for huge sums of money. Pepsi paid $600,000 for this large-scale space commercial.

Also, in 2015, Pepsi and UrtheCast, a Canadian equipment manufacturer for the International Space Station, launched a joint project that included a short film. Filming took place both on Earth and in space. UrtheCast placed HD video cameras on board the ISS, which were capable of capturing high-quality images from orbit. On Earth, filming took place in more than ten countries on four continents.

In 2018, Pepsi released an ad video that shows just how far people are ready to go for a Pepsi Max. As the two astronauts prepare for a rocket launch and run through their pre-flight checklist, they realize they have forgotten critical cargo: their Pepsi Max.

In 2019, PepsiCo became the first company in the world to order a completely new type of space commercial.

The idea behind such advertising was to launch a certain number of small satellites into low orbits that are capable of reflecting sunlight. The altitude of the flight orbit of such advertising satellites had to be 400-500 km. Further, from the command center, the satellites had to be given a command, according to which they line up in a certain order (for example, in the form of the Pepsi logo) and begin to broadcast images to Earth with the help of reflected sunlight.

The customer of this innovation, the company PepsiCo, announced that they plan to advertise the Adrenaline Rush energy drink from space. Allegedly, this method of advertising from space is fully consistent with the company’s policy and corresponds to the main idea of the product. The performing company StartRocket even tested Pepsi in the stratosphere with a high-altitude balloon.

However, within a week, Pepsi abandoned the idea of advertising and publicly stated that it had no plans to implement such a project at all. The rejection probably occurred due to the mass dissatisfaction of people around the world – few people approved of this innovation.

Turkish Airlines

In 2020, Turkish Airlines have jumped into the space Super Bowl ad with a space commercial that apparently compares NASA’s Apollo 11 moon landing to a flight with the Turkish airline. 

A 20-second teaser for the Turkish Airlines ad combines archive video of NASA’s Apollo Mission Control in Houston at a Saturn V rocket on the launchpad with views of the cockpit of a commercial jet and passengers heading to the airport for their flight.

Walmart space-inspired commercial

Walmart has also shown a space-themed commercial during Super Bowl 2020. The company’s campaign, named “Famous Visitors,” includes a 60-second space commercial that featured 12 characters from popular movies and television who “touch down on Earth” from “across the galaxy” to pick up groceries at Walmart.

SodaStream

SodaStream’s space-y advertisement stars everyone’s favourite “science guy,” Bill Nye, alongside Alyssa Carson, a teenage astronaut hopeful. In the advertisements, which SodaStream teased with videos before the Super Bowl, Nye and Carson sip seltzer, future astronauts find water on Mars and (spoiler alert) someone accidentally carbonates the Martian water with a SodaStream device and drinks it.

Olay space-themed commercial

For the Super Bowl space-themed commercial Olay ad, the three dress as astronauts in Olay-themed spacesuits. A former NASA astronaut and artist Nicole Stott was joined by actress Busy Phillipps, YouTube personality, and late-night host Lilly Singh. As Stott shared on Facebook, she is participating in the ad to help “make space for women.”

Squarespace ads

The Martin Scorsese-directed Squarespace space commercial is a masterful parody that blends real events with humor. The commercial includes scenes of oblivious humans with their heads buried in their phones while UFOs make an over-the-top racket and beg for attention with physics-defying maneuvers. The zombie-like humans frustrate an alien who’s looking down from his aircraft, so he pushes a button that sends a message to every phone and electronic screen with their picture and a message: “Hello Down There”.

As we revel in the intersection of sports, entertainment, and the cosmos, these space commercials remind us that the sky is not the limit when it comes to pushing the boundaries of imagination. However, while the idea of commercials in space is fascinating, it comes with numerous challenges and ethical considerations. As technology advances and commercial space activities grow, it will be interesting to see how regulations and societal attitudes evolve in this regard.