Brands are beginning to understand the potential of backing a human colony on Mars, according to Bas Lansdorp, the man behind the extraordinary venture.
Lansdorp’s Mars One plans to establish a human colony on the Red Planet by 2027, following an unmanned exploratory mission in 2020. The scheme is expected to cost $6bn.
Speaking to delegates at the Festival of Media Global in Rome, Lansdorp said that while many large advertisers are still put off by the project, the success of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in raising billions of dollars in sponsorship gives him hope.
I started connecting the world of space to the world of media, he said.
The IOC makes $4.5bn per event from sponsors and broadcasters, access to our eyeballs is worth that kind of money. I dont think anyone doubts that when humans leave for Mars the whole world will watch. It connects to a lot of brands it is a new society.
He argued a recruitment brand could benefit from the project to whittle down the initial 200,000 volunteers to a final crew, while automotive brands could help with the development of Mars rover vehicles.
Landorp was joined on stage by Bill Simmons, the co-founder and chief technology officer at DataXu, and himself a former aerospace engineer. Simmons discussed how he had used his rocket-building experience to create DataXus Decision Center technology.
Comparing programmatic media to a NASA Mars rover repeating experiments on the surface of the planet, Simmons said brands can hone their technique through rapid, global testing.
The beauty of programmatic marketing is that now you can run thousands of media experiments simultaneously around the world to work out what the ROI is, he said.
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