‘Fly Me to the Moon’ Points to the Past and Future of Moonshot Marketing [Video]

In a new movie titled “Fly Me to the Moon,” a marketing consultant played by Scarlett Johansson uses Tang breakfast drink, Crest toothpaste and Omega watches to give a publicity boost to NASA’s Apollo moon program.

The marketing consultant may be totally fictional. And don’t get me started on the fake moon landing that’s part of the screwball comedy’s plot. But the fact that the makers of Tang, Crest and Omega allied themselves with NASA’s brand in the 1960s is totally real.

More than 50 years later, those companies are still benefiting from the NASA connection, says Richard Jurek, a marketing and public relations executive in the Chicago area who’s one of the authors of “Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program.”

In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Jurek says Tang sold poorly when it was introduced in the late 1950s. “But once it was announced that it was being used in the space …