Marketing the Moon

The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon Buy on BN.com Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 28 Feb 2014 | Archive Date 08 Jun 2015
MIT Press | The MIT Press

Description

One of the most successful public relations campaigns in history, featuring heroic astronauts, press-savvy rocket scientists, enthusiastic reporters, deep-pocketed defense contractors, and Tang.

In July 1969, ninety-four percent of American televisions were tuned to coverage of Apollo 11's mission to the moon. How did space exploration, once the purview of rocket scientists, reach a larger audience than My Three Sons? Why did a government program whose standard operating procedure had been secrecy turn its greatest achievement into a communal experience? In Marketing the Moon, David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek tell the story of one of the most successful marketing and public relations campaigns in history: the selling of the Apollo program.

Primed by science fiction, magazine articles, and appearances by Wernher von Braun on the “Tomorrowland” segments of the Disneyland prime time television show, Americans were a receptive audience for NASA's pioneering “brand journalism.” Scott and Jurek describe sophisticated efforts by NASA and its many contractors to market the facts about space travel—through press releases, bylined articles, lavishly detailed background materials, and fully produced radio and television features—rather than push an agenda. American astronauts, who signed exclusive agreements with Life magazine, became the heroic and patriotic faces of the program. And there was some judicious product placement: Hasselblad was the “first camera on the moon”; Sony cassette recorders and supplies of Tang were on board the capsule; and astronauts were equipped with the Exer-Genie personal exerciser. Everyone wanted a place on the bandwagon.

Generously illustrated with vintage photographs, artwork, and advertisements, many never published before, Marketing the Moon shows that when Neil Armstrong took that giant leap for mankind, it was a triumph not just for American engineering and rocketry but for American marketing and public relations.

One of the most successful public relations campaigns in history, featuring heroic astronauts, press-savvy rocket scientists, enthusiastic reporters, deep-pocketed defense contractors, and Tang.

In...


A Note From the Publisher

Foreword by Captain Eugene A. Cernan

Foreword by Captain Eugene A. Cernan


Advance Praise

“Don’t think for a moment that NASA masterminded a PR campaign that brought the Apollo missions into our living rooms. Just like everything else about the Moon program, how—and how much—to share Apollo with the public was a learn-as-you-go affair that involved not only NASA’s public affairs office but top NASA managers and even astronauts. As this excellent and informative book details, even the idea of live television from the Moon was a matter of heated debate, and there were moments when it might’ve gone the other way. Thank heaven it didn’t: When humans first voyaged to the moon, they took the world along.”

—Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon

“To call the Apollo Program the greatest marketing exploit of the 20th century is not hyperbole, but, as David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek show us, simply a of fact. Thanks to this thorough and detailed account, we can better understand not just the talent and dedication of the Mad Men-era professionals who sold the Moon to a global public, but also the larger transformation of statecraft into stagecraft, and the enduring and irreversible transformation of the public sphere into an enterprise of image creation, and manipulation.”

—Nicholas de Monchaux, Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo

“We have long known that NASA mobilized a broad public relations campaign supporting the Apollo program of the 1960s. We have not known until now, with the publication of Marketing the Moon by David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek, the details of the campaign. Scott and Jurek offer a compelling account of these great efforts, informed by interviews with many of the participants, and well-illustrated by unique imagery and documents.”

—Roger D. Launius, Senior Curator, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

“President Kennedy hoped the nation would succeed in sending a man into space and landing on the Moon. Though he did not live to see it happen, his dream was fulfilled. David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek’s Marketing the Moon shows us in vivid detail what it took to make this happen. This is one of the great stories of the 20th century.”

—Alan Brinkley, Allan Nevins Professor of American History, Columbia University

Marketing the Moon is a fascinating look at how NASA and its partners brought the Moon to the world’s living rooms. Apollo’s revered place in the collective imagination stems, in large part, from the efforts detailed in this book. ”

—Fritz Johnston, Vice President, Brand and Advertising, The Boeing Company


“Don’t think for a moment that NASA masterminded a PR campaign that brought the Apollo missions into our living rooms. Just like everything else about the Moon program, how—and how much—to...


Marketing Plan

National Publicity Campaign
National Broadcast Campaign
Author Podcast
Print and Online Advertising: Space Magazine, New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, Harper’s The Atlantic, NPR Announcement, Harvard Business Review
Website Feature
Google Ad

National Publicity Campaign
National Broadcast Campaign
Author Podcast
Print and Online Advertising: Space Magazine, New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, Harper’s The...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780262026963
PRICE $29.95 (USD)

Average rating from 14 members


Readers who liked this book also liked: