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In a new movie titled\u00a0\u201cFly Me to the Moon,\u201d\u00a0a marketing consultant played by Scarlett Johansson uses Tang breakfast drink, Crest toothpaste and Omega watches to give a publicity boost to NASA\u2019s Apollo moon program.<\/p>\n
The marketing consultant may be totally fictional. And don\u2019t get me started on the\u00a0fake moon landing\u00a0that\u2019s part of the screwball comedy\u2019s plot. But the fact that the makers of\u00a0Tang,\u00a0Crest\u00a0and\u00a0Omega\u00a0allied themselves with NASA\u2019s brand in the 1960s is totally real.<\/p>\n
More than 50 years later, those companies are still benefiting from the NASA connection, says\u00a0Richard Jurek, a marketing and public relations executive in the Chicago area who\u2019s one of the authors of\u00a0\u201cMarketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the latest episode of the\u00a0Fiction Science podcast, Jurek says Tang sold poorly when it was introduced in the late 1950s. \u201cBut once it was announced that it was being used in the space program and marketed that way, it became a huge bestseller for them, and in fact, still sells more overseas \u2014 and is a multibillion-dollar brand today,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n