[amsat-bb] A Book for Manned Spaceflight Junkies!

[Eric Rosenberg]

For those of you who are nostalgic about manned spaceflight, I've just run
across a fabulous book:

"Marketing The Moon, The selling of the Apollo Lunar Program
by David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek with a forward by Captain Eugene
A. Cernan.

(130 pgs) MIT Press, 2014
ISBN 978-0-262-02696-3

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To quote from the MIT website:

In July 1969, ninety-four percent of American televisions were tuned to
coverage of Apollo 11’s mission to the moon. How did space exploration,
once the purview of rocket scientists, reach a larger audience than *My
Three Sons*? Why did a government program whose standard operating
procedure had been secrecy turn its greatest achievement into a communal
experience? In* Marketing the Moon*, David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek
tell the story of one of the most successful marketing and public relations
campaigns in history: the selling of the Apollo program.

Primed by science fiction, magazine articles, and appearances by Wernher
von Braun on the “Tomorrowland" segments of the *Disneyland* prime time
television show, Americans were a receptive audience for NASA’s pioneering
“brand journalism." Scott and Jurek describe sophisticated efforts by NASA
and its many contractors to market the facts about space travel—through
press releases, bylined articles, lavishly detailed background materials,
and fully produced radio and television features—rather than push an
agenda. American astronauts, who signed exclusive agreements with Life
magazine, became the heroic and patriotic faces of the program. And there
was some judicious product placement: Hasselblad was the “first camera on
the moon"; Sony cassette recorders and supplies of Tang were on board the
capsule; and astronauts were equipped with the Exer-Genie personal
exerciser. Everyone wanted a place on the bandwagon.

Generously illustrated with vintage photographs, artwork, and
advertisements, many never published before, *Marketing the Moon* shows
that when Neil Armstrong took that giant leap for mankind, it was a triumph
not just for American engineering and rocketry but for American marketing
and public relations."

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It's a combination of a coffee table full of great photographs and an
engaging, well researched, well annotated, and well written story.

Don't miss it... it's well worth the (affordable) price.

73,

Eric W3DQ