Less than 24 hours after the Apollo 11 astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969, someone was making money off it.
The San Francisco Chronicle featured more than a dozen stories about the success of the moon landing mission, as Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins were picked up and placed into quarantine on the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier.
There were just as many advertisements in the days that followed, including Volkswagen’s brazen “It’s ugly, but it gets you there” full-page ad, and a series of movie listings trying to recast “2001: A Space Odyssey” as an inspirational film about moon and space exploration.
(“Only two men have walked on the moon. For the rest of us, ‘2001’ is as close as we’re likely to get.”)
To prove that corporations awkwardlyexploiting human triumph and tragedyisn’t a 21st century social media invention, here’s a sampling of six advertisements as they ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on July 25, 1969.
1. Volkswagen
This feels so much like an episode of “Mad Men,” you can practically hear Don Draper’s three-martini pitch. “People know the Volkswagen Bug is an ugly car … (pause for impact) … what we need to do is convince them that’s why they love it. And the answer is in the stars.”
We salute the executives who greenlighted an ad campaign that called their own line of automobiles ugly. (It predates the moon landing, but the timing here is perfect.) The bold line “It’s ugly, but it gets you there” no doubt continues to appear in advertising textbooks.
2. TWA
While Trans World Airline was indeed a contactor in the Apollo program helping with earthbound flights, this advertisement makes it look like TWA designed the lunar module and quadruple-checked all the figures before the astronauts were allowed into orbit.
“Thanks Neil, thanks Buzz, thanks Mike for letting us help give you the moon,” the ad reads, with outstretched hands throwing TWA helmets into the air like a graduation. Even the peoplewho love Tang认为这就有点太远了。
3. Woolworth
The five-and-dime store chain’s designers, who used a clip art image of the moon looking like a Wiffle Ball, definitely didn’t have any scientists or futurists on their copywriting team. The July 25, 1969, Woolworth advertisement suggests dreams of “jetting away from it all to a lovely lunar holiday,” which we’re still waiting to happen in 2019.
It’s not clear what the moon landing had to do with Woolworth, or their $1 coupon for every $10 purchase.
4. Bulova
Bulova’s Accutron technology was used for timekeeping on the Apollo mission, so the makers of the watch wisely upgraded their claim from “most accurate watch in the world” to “most accurate watch in the universe.”
Less successful is the photo of two men in pajama party-looking spacesuits, standing next to a lunar instrument that appears to be made of cardboard and used TV antenna parts, making thumbs up signs with dishwashing gloves.
5. IBM
We’re not going to mock this classy advertisement, featuring a man in a spacesuit, above a thoughtful and poetic tribute to human exploration past and present. Best of all (learn a lesson here, TWA), IBM salutes NASA and the astronauts first in its “The Questers” ad, before emphasizing the information technology company had a very small part in the process.
“And the some 20,000 companies in the Apollo program. We are proud to be one of them.”
6. “2001: A Space Odyssey”
Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” had been out for more than a year when the Apollo 11 astronauts returned from the moon.
No doubt looking for a new audience, the distributors at Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer began marketing the film in a series of advertisements as if it was a Moon documentary. After running a cursive congratulations to the astronauts, the ads declared that “ ‘2001’ is as close as we’re likely to get” to walking on the Moon.
The makers of “Moon,” “First Man,” Apollo 11” and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” would beg to differ ...
Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop culture critic. Email:phartlaub@sfchronicle.comTwitter: Peter Hartlaub
