GOOGLE to the Moon

Through this blog I hope that you will gain insight into the global world of marketing and advertising. Advertising around the world is quite a broad topic. Technically I can talk about anything in the realm marketing or advertising going on in the entire world; this is an incredible amount of news and information, there are endless stories and new developments coming from every corner of the vast Earth. Certainly "Global" is about as far as marketing money can or should go, since market research doesn't even include the stratosphere, but what if I, or a company, were to think bigger then that? Bigger then the continents, the oceans, the entire planet. An article that I read recently reported that such a company is thinking this way. Internet supergiant Google is looking to expand their market out of this world and straight to the moon.

What better way to get your name out there then to shoot it to the moon?

In a Los Angeles Times article entitled, Google to Sponsor Space Race to the Moon, the company announced their desire to spur a modern day space-race. Google and the X Prize Foundation have teamed together to create Google Lunar X Prize. This competition will award as much as $30 million in prizes for landing unmanned rovers on the moon to perform certain tasks.

Although this spacey decision to spend investor dollars and corporate earnings on a race to the moon seems like a great way to waste money, Gene Munster, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co., sees it as a great move: "This will probably frustrate investors at first glance, but when they see what this does for the Google brand, I think they will get their money's worth. If you are going to do something creative with your marketing dollars, you might as well shoot for the moon -- literally."

So what exactly is Google's idea of creative marketing? The competition, open internationally, challenges participants to land an unmanned vehicle on the moon, have it travel at least 500 meters and beam video images and other information back to Earth. The first company to win the race by 2012 takes home $20 million. Additional incentives include at least $5 million in bonuses for finding lost relics from the U.S. Apollo landings or detecting water ice.

It is estimated that the cost of building and landing this type of rover is between $20 million and $40 million.

I will be honest, after reading this article, I initially questioned Google's thinking. This is a great marketing tactic, which will surely bring a lot of recognition to the already universal brand, but I have a hard time seeing the appeal of this type of space travel. I didn't realize companies would be interested in (without help from NASA) building their own (very expensive) rockets, launching into space and exploring. Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation, however, said that since the announcement of the contest, potential competitors have already surfaced. Apparently space travel has always been a popular hobby in Silicon Valley. There are numerous examples to illustrate this. Elon Musk, a founder of PayPal, has already worked to develop rockets through his company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Mogul Richard Branson and his Virgin Group have even begun plans for "Virgin Galactic", the first commercial spacecraft, and of course, we all know GoogleEarth, which has recently updated to include moonscape images. Google is also working to develop Moon 2.0, which will hopefully be a launching pad for solar system exploration.

Diamandis envisions this as a contest to potentially expand our current methods of space exploration: "Our hope is that the technology coming out of this will really spark a commercial revolution that will see new types of companies and new types of robotics used to explore the moon, asteroids and beyond."

So, my personal opinion would be that there are much better ways to spend over $100 million here on our own planet. There are parts of our global world now that could definitely use companies sponsoring new development and exploration, and recognition gained for playing a part in the global community can't be bad. From a marketing perspective, though, I can absolutely see the appeal of being "the first company in space", and for Google, there's nowhere left to go but up and away.

Read this article and more here.

Multicultural Marketing 101

Marketing to a multicultural audience is no easy task. If you take a look to past campaigns and their attempts to fit a diverse group into a 30-second spot, you might be pleased to see that American advertising does have some ethnic variety. But take a closer look at multiple campaigns trying to make it work and you might start to see a pattern.

In the June 2007 Washington Post article, The Potholes of Multicultural Marketing, author Warren Brown points to current flaws in many American companies' attempts at expanding markets to reach a more international consumer. American companies attempting to make their products global are getting into trouble because, although there is diversity in advertisements, portrayals of our "melting-pot" society tend to look the same after a while.

Brown used cars to illustrate this point. Think back, if you can, to the last car commercial you saw. Now try to remember if the commercial featured racially mixed occupants driving in the car or truck. If yes, who was driving? Most likely, the driver was white and male. If the driver was female, she was probably white. Black or other occupants of color usually sit in the front passenger's seat, or they sit in the rear. Rarely do they sit behind the wheel.

This not so subtle but frequent attempt at inclusion has been called "Multicultural Marketing 101". Monique Tapie, communications director for Global Advertising Strategies, explains multicultural 101 as the marketing assumption that "all Asians are alike, that all African Americans are alike, that all Spanish-speaking people are alike, that we are all alike, which means that we're all mainstream, with "mainstream" still considered to be white."

We live in a country that doesn't want to offend anyone through mass media messages, which, in advertising, translates into, for lack of a better word, a formulated seating chart -- a woman here, man there, black person there, Asian here, Latino there. The purpose of this seating chart is an attempt to send the message that this company can be for anyone.
"We're being fair. We've included everybody. Buy from us."

To many, these types of ads are turnoffs. They are not being fair, and if one were to look deeply it could be seen that this seating chart places certain groups in a symbolically subordinate position. Multicultural Marketing 101 assumes that all Asians are from Japan, China, or Korea and all Spanish-speaking people are from Mexico. This method obviously does not yield the best results, and for those who have spent most of their lives trying to overcome discrimination, it can be aggravating to still be stuck in the passenger seat.

There are other strategies, which companies like Global Advertising are attempting. They rely on in-depth studies of cultural groups, differences within the groups, and how lucrative market segments can be found in these groups. It's a good idea to actually take a look inside these groups, instead of just considering them one entity with the same ideas, interests, and values. Ethnic marketing is not a matter of exploitation for profit, says Tapie. "It's simply a recognition that differences exist."

To make any marketing campaign successful, it's necessary to immerse yourself in information. Learn as much as you can about what you're selling and who you're selling it to because almost every humorous (or not so humorous) marketing mistake made through global campaigns could have been prevented through a bit more audience research.

Tapie finished her interview with The Washington Post pointing out that America is composed of different cultures. "If you plan to sell to those cultures," she says, "you better try to do a better job of understanding them."