Truly out of this world marketing: ads on satellites

[Click on image to be taken to yournameinspace.org, the web site for the satellite]

Most people don't think of my alma mater, MIT, as a hotbed of cutting edge marketing. But that's exactly what it is today, having garnered a front-page story in today's Boston Globle about a student-led plan to finance a satellite launch through advertising sales on the satellite itself. With a goal of $30 million to raise by 2010, the students working on the project realized they could be creative in how they used assets they already had:

"We needed more funding and realized that we're sending up this satellite into orbit with all this space on board used for nothing -- so why not sell it to people who want to express a message?" said Thaddeus R.F. Fulford-Jones , a 24-year-old doctoral candidate at MIT who is working on the project. "It allows them to become part of the mission."

So the visionary marketing messages is about photos of your name in space. But more practically, the group is selling Internet advertising space as well, which frankly, will get a lot more exposure. So this is really an Internet advertising play with the hard-to-copy differentiator of being able to get photos of your corporate logo in space.

The group already has a handful of corporate contributors paying from $35 to $250 per square centimeter. But if you're thinking this might be cool for your business, buy early and often; advertising space rates will rise over time as ad space becomes scarcer.

All I can say is that no matter how the spacecraft does, these students have a future in marketing.

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Internet, Marketing, Space, Satellites