Oh the irony. Just as Brian Cox was about to speak about space in the Palais, a news alert came through reporting that SpaceX had lost 16.43%, wiping $400 billion from its market cap.
However, even though talk was billed as “Space Isn’t the Future, It’s Your Brief,” we didn’t hear much about the likes of Musk on the kind of stunts that brands have performed in zero gravity in recent years. What emerged was more a case of putting everything we do in this industry perspective.
The mellow-voiced Cox, and fellow speakers Aarti Holla-Maini of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, and astronaut Dr Sian Leo Proctor, touched on topics such as the possibility of alien life, the dangers of space debris and what it feels like to have your face bathed in ‘earthlight’
But the insight that resonated the most is that space systems support modern civilisation.
“Space is totally embedded into the fabric of our society today,” said Holla-Maini, pointing out that most of what we rely on tech wise, from Google Maps to the 24 hour news cycle, is satellite reliant, and if anything went seriously wrong out there, “The world as we know it would very, very quickly start to unravel.”
“This is not sci-fi,” she said, emphasising that marketers who use these platforms need to get informed about this stuff, even if they are not setting out for space in their own Blue Origin mission.
The speakers also argued that public understanding of space has lagged behind its importance, and that marketing can play a critical role in shaping that understanding. Marketing’s challenge now is to tell stories that connect space not just with rockets and science fiction, but with everyday human life.
Perhaps the most telling remark came from Cox, who told us (to a backdrop of beautiful planetary images) “When you think about space, everything that we are talking about today is pointless.”
In a sea of industry noise, it was an existential moment.
Alexandra Jardine is head of creative strategy at Persuasion Communications. She is the former creativity editor of Ad Age.
