Mankind to be Represented in Space by Doritos Ad
Fri, Mar 7, 2008
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Apparently unconvinced that the whole of Planet Earth is a large enough customer base, Doritos is teaming up with astronomers to broadcast their advertising into space.
The sum total of mankind’s achievements as a species will be represented to aliens in the form of a Doritos advertisement. Image by Med
The advertisement will be targeted at part of the Ursa Major constellation, a zone astronomers believe contain the conditions for life. Doritos obviously thinks the predicted inhabitants of Ursa Major are “extreme” enough to handle colored flavor dusted tortilla chips and will not blow us up for bombarding their planets with unwanted advertising for a product that doesn’t exist there.
This isn’t the first time advertisements have been broadcast into the cosmos; TV broadcast signals have been slipping into the cosmos since I Love Lucy. It is, however, the first time a company has actually tried to broadcast their commercials directly into space.
The publicity stunt is one more way for Doritos to hype their product and one more humiliation for astronomers, many of whom are desperately searching for funding as observatories face closure in the face of government budget cuts.
The advertisement will be broadcast from the EISCAT Space Centre in Svalbard, Norway, near the site of the “doomsday” Global Seed Vault. Using a 500MHz Ultra High Frequency Radar, the space centre will send a 30 second ad, chosen during a contest, 42 light years away to the zone known as Ursa Major, or The Great Bear of Plough. There is a star there called 47 UMa that has orbiting planets which could possibly harbor life.
Much like the uproar following NASA’s decision to broadcast a Beatles’ song at the North Star, some scientists started freaking out about aliens getting annoyed and attacking us. Most scientists, however, believe aliens either don’t exist,won’t receive the advertisement, or really like Doritos.
Prof Tony van Eyken is the director of EISCAT. He says: “Broadcasting an advert extra terrestrially is a big and exciting step for everyone on Earth as up until now we have only tended to listening for incoming transmissions.”
“In this case we are giving somebody the opportunity to create this message as a way to say hello on behalf of mankind,” he added.
I’m not so much sold on the idea of broadcasting advertisements to aliens as an “exciting step”. I don’t know about you, but I would prefer that aliens’ first “hello from mankind” be something slightly classier than an advertisement for flavored tortilla chips.
Info from Telegraph
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6 Trackbacks For This Post
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Wild Eggs » Blog Archive » Mankind to be Represented in Space by Doritos Ad Says:
March 7th, 2008 at 5:16 pm[...] The advertisement will be targeted at part of the Ursa Major constellation, a zone astronomers belie… [...]
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ryansutter.net » All The Links You Need To Read! Says:
March 7th, 2008 at 6:24 pm[...] Mankind to be Represented in Space by Doritos Ad : Environmental News Blog | Environmental Graffiti: [...]
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» La Tierra emitirá un vídeomensaje a la Osa Mayor | Maikelnai’s blog Says:
March 7th, 2008 at 10:37 pm[...] Inspirado tras leer: Mankind to be Represented in Space by Doritos Ad [...]
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Sum total of mankind?s achievements as a species will be represented to aliens in the form of a Doritos advertisement - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio Says:
March 8th, 2008 at 6:03 am[...] your day. Or at least lighten it as other problems really aren’t that bad are they? Read about it here. Ahh almost as funny/depressing as the stat that the number of professionals paid to find and track [...]
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el bloggo de Jacroe » Earthlings ask Aliens to buy Chips Says:
March 12th, 2008 at 4:33 am[...] Mankind to be Represented in Space by Doritos Ad [...]
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Advertising in Outer Space Generates Plenty of Publicity Here on Planet Earth « PR Interactive Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 6:30 am[...] simultaneously promoting the cheesy tortilla chips. On June 12, the winning commercial will be beamed into outerspace—to Ursa Major, some 42 light years [...]
March 7th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Nooooo! Remember when Voyager was sent out with gold plates upon which carvings of human figures & atomic maps had been drawn? That is quality. We obviously thought better of ourselves then. Could not Doritos have sponsored something like that?
March 8th, 2008 at 5:21 am
Fuck you earthlings…The chip of choice for Ursa Major is the Red Hot Riplet.
March 8th, 2008 at 7:53 am
and that’s how the galactic war started. the aliens, angered by our commercial terrorism, waged war against our tiny blue planet. after a straight hour of cooler range originals and the new dual flavor bags they had enough and knew the only way to stop it, and prevent more from coming was to destroy the earth.
so they got in their ships, ironically called Lays and began firing their Tostito Rockets at will even before they were in rage of the blue planet for there was no escaping the noise, it was on every radio frequency, every video up link monitoring screen and so said that it could be heard from from the metal plates of the Elder’s; the alien races most prized possession. In the end though, earth survived, the creatures bravest warrior didn’t get into rage before he disabled the artificial environment controls and promptly jumped out a hole he had created in the ship by swiftly maneuvering his craft in the way of a speeding missile. as the add spread more and more alien races fled away from or rushed towards the planet, a chorus of various tongues screaming,
it must be stopped, it must end.
a planetary council was held at the rim of the galaxy to decide was must be done, no one could get near it, and after a while no one, anywhere would be safe from it. then one of the Elder’s died.
it was a strange occasion because during all of the confusion, no one looked so peaceful, so happy. the Elder’s plate still wrung true with the dread Dorito, but somehow he was at peace. It was then they they all decided it was time to die, to once and for all escape the blue planets death sound technology.
We are alone now because a company wanted to make a ew more bucks. if only the aliens learned to pilot their planes without their five or more senses, we could have had a chance to survive what can only be the largest unintentional genocide in the galaxy and soon to be for all of life as we know it. the aliens are at peace now, why aren’t we. the message
Kill your TV, before it kills you. More self broadcasting, net neutrality and less, advertising. if not for yourself for those suffering the hateful Dorito ray of insanity.
March 8th, 2008 at 8:15 am
This is very interesting, Doritos always does nice ads that are attention getting.
March 8th, 2008 at 11:20 am
This is just human stupidity at it’s best
March 8th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
What on earth does this have to do with environments, and how is this problematic in the least? It’s just some invisible waves being thrown into space. The aliens won’t be able to deschiffer it seing as they don’t even know how TV-signals work and much less our language, but if they know much about radiowaves they will understand that the signal is made by someone intelligent.
This further convinces me that this is not environmental graffiti, it is luddite graffiti.
March 8th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
The new line of Doritos Advertisements that promote people screwing with others are extremely negative. I am boycotting their product. WTF were they thinking?
I’m 21.
I’d rather they broadcast their stupid, negative Ads into space than into the Human collective consciousness.
Doritos, I used to like your product, but now, your companys message TRULY sucks.
March 8th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Hopefully by the time that message reaches someone, this author will get with the 70s: it’s Humankind.
March 8th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
So their new target market is aliens now? Makes me feel so worthless…
If you’re a drudge fan: drudgetracker.com
March 8th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
How much idiocy can you cram into one page?
If Doritos wants to waste their money doing this, let them. The signal will break down and be indistinguishable from the cosmic background noise before it ever reaches the edge of our Solar System.
Also, humankind sounds fucking stupid. We ought to be sending RP and their PC bullshit into space. At least that would accomplish something.
March 10th, 2008 at 8:52 am
we are from gattus 5 take us to your Doritos
March 10th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Why cant this money be spent on something which will increase the quality of life for humans. or fix the world?
f*****g Twats
June 17th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Andres,
By 21 one would think you’d recognize the difference between Cheetos and Doritos. Same company, different product.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:20 pm
This is terrible, like the guy in the article said, if there are other life-forms out there with the technology to intercept this message, I would prefer the medium to be something ‘classier’ than a Doritos chip add. Something way beyond a snack food, but at the very least a healthier snack! In reality though, it would be nice to move beyond corporate sponsorship of these kind of endeavors. More funding should be put into space research.