Moonvertising: The Urban Legend
Wednesday March 19, 2008
While this isn't truly Wiccan or Pagan news, I had to pass it along because I've gotten no less than ten emails from outraged readers who are concerned about the moon. Specifically, they're concerned because a Very Well Known Beer Company has been running an ad campaign that joyfully announces that on March 21, the night of the next full moon, the VWKBC's logo will be projected on the surface of the moon in a Very Big Advertisement -- so big, it's called Moonvertising!
Take a deep breath, folks.
It ain't gonna happen. No one is going to use a laser to show you a picture of a big green bottle of brew on the moon when you're out there doing your Esbat ritual Friday night. This is guerilla marketing at its finest -- get people talking, get them curious, even get them mad... but mostly, you get them talking about your product. In fact, lots of people are already talking about a boycott of the Very Well Known Beer Company, simply for the audacity of using the moon as a billboard.
Here's the thing. It's just not realistic, because the moon isn't a little white circle that you can point a laser at and see an image. It's a big ball of rock and dirt which is located something like 250,000 miles away from us. You know when you're playing with your cat and making her chase a laser pointer, how the beam spreads out the further away from you it gets? Think about that in a lunar perspective. How spread out would a laser beam get by the time it was a quarter of a million miles from its point of origin? That's not even counting the fact that it has to get reflected back to Earth, and the moon isn't really much of a reflective surface. Only about 10 - 15% of the light that hits it is actually visible in reflection. Anyone able to come up with a laser this powerful isn't going to sell rights to a beer company when there are so many small angry nations who would be more than happy to use it as a military tool instead.
So, relax, guys, and enjoy the moonlight this weekend. All will be well, with not a beer logo in sight.
Take a deep breath, folks.
It ain't gonna happen. No one is going to use a laser to show you a picture of a big green bottle of brew on the moon when you're out there doing your Esbat ritual Friday night. This is guerilla marketing at its finest -- get people talking, get them curious, even get them mad... but mostly, you get them talking about your product. In fact, lots of people are already talking about a boycott of the Very Well Known Beer Company, simply for the audacity of using the moon as a billboard.
Here's the thing. It's just not realistic, because the moon isn't a little white circle that you can point a laser at and see an image. It's a big ball of rock and dirt which is located something like 250,000 miles away from us. You know when you're playing with your cat and making her chase a laser pointer, how the beam spreads out the further away from you it gets? Think about that in a lunar perspective. How spread out would a laser beam get by the time it was a quarter of a million miles from its point of origin? That's not even counting the fact that it has to get reflected back to Earth, and the moon isn't really much of a reflective surface. Only about 10 - 15% of the light that hits it is actually visible in reflection. Anyone able to come up with a laser this powerful isn't going to sell rights to a beer company when there are so many small angry nations who would be more than happy to use it as a military tool instead.
So, relax, guys, and enjoy the moonlight this weekend. All will be well, with not a beer logo in sight.
how disappointing. i wanted to see it
Actually, I always thought if anyone advertised on the moon, it should be something really clever … like a cheese company.
patti
Very clever and funny too. It always surprizes me how much stuff people will believe.
moonspinner
Gullibility, like the moon, has two sides.
One: If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
Two: If it’s too bad to be true, it probably is.
Everyone, pagan or not, needs to regularly consult Snopes.com.
Whether any of this is true or not, it seems that Patti has been doing a little plaigerising. She lifted all this information from a site called BadAstronomy.com without so much as a mention of their webiste. Great job.
Geodude, that website doesn’t look familliar to me at all, and I don’t think I’ve ever been there. Regardless, everything in my article about moonvertising is information that anyone with a basic understanding of astronomy — and some common sense — can figure out. In fact, some of the statistics I used (such as light refraction) are in my teenage daughter’s high school astronomy book — in other words, it’s information available anywhere.
I always cite online sources that I use for reference in my articles by way of linking to them. If you’d like to send me a link to the specific page in BadAstronomy that you think I’ve copied from, I’d be happy to include a link for further reading. Plagiarism is a heavy allegation, and if my article bears any similarity to another one on the web, it’s purely by accident.
patti
Logically, if they were going to illuminate the moon, they would do it when the moon was completely in shadow. When the moon is full, it is so bright, any light projected upon it would not be seen.