Jeff Foust has found a story of some people who are clueless on multiple levels:

According to Net#work BBDO’s creative executive director, Julian Watt: “So, given that Virgin’s plan is to send a passenger airplane into space; shouldn’t there be some advertising right up there with them? Why can’t there be a space billboard to read?… Never before has a billboard roamed the stratosphere for commercial consumption.”

How exactly are they going to pull this off? The report says that the ad agency has sent a letter to NASA, which Watt calls “our official appeal to NASA to set in motion our project plan to engineer, build and launch the idea.”

First, why would these genii think that people who are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for their suborbital experience would want to have to watch commercials? This is pay per view, on a grand scale, morons.

And as Jeff points out, the notion that they think that NASA has anything at all to say about this is also mind-numbingly ignorant, and a sad reminder that NASA still remains too wedded to the concept of space in too many people's heads. And also as Jeff points out, the reporter doesn't demonstrate much knowledge either, to let this go unremarked in the story.

Well, I could see significant branding opportunities for the same reason that companies buy naming rights to stadiums.

We're not talking about people watching commercials in flight... but more subtle stuff, like Coke being the "official" beverage of space (although at that price, whatever the customer wants to sip through a straw, they should get), M&Ms handed out to passengers for each flight, etc. Plus, lots of NASCAR-style branding on the ground equipment. Remember that for the first few flights, there will be lots of news footage generated, with plenty of free shots around the world that can contain logos.

There's opportunity there, and companies will pay for the oddest marketing rights. It's not going to pay the bills by itself, but heck, it's money.

So they want NASA to apropriate its funds to build space billboards for their benefit?

Do people who are too stupid to get into journalism go into advertising or something?

Why not ask Leprachauns and Faeries to make monkeys fly from their butts while they are at it!

OTOH, there are probably some advertisers who have managed to get the federal government to do things for the advertisers' benefit.

From an industry insiders perspective, they probably knew it was complete BS. But I bet it impressed the hell out of a few clients to think the agency would go that far for them.

This is nothing more than an agency promotion stunt.