In 1996, something extraordinary happened. Two cosmonauts left their post on the Russian Mir Space Station, leaving Americans to man the station while they conducted a replacement on a spacewalk. But that was not the interesting part. Yuri Onufrienko and Yuri Usachev also filmed part of an advertisement while on the spacewalk. This is reportedly the first ad shot in space, which might also be the best Pepsi ad ever created!

You can get more insight into the history of this Pepsi ad and watch it here:

Here’s how that epic advertisement came to be….

Pepsi & Mir

During this time, the Russian space agency was incredibly strapped for cash. It was the perfect opportunity for the Pepsi company to offer a much-needed injection of money to support the mission in exchange for a groundbreaking advertisement. It’s known as one of the most expensive ads ever produced, costing more than $300 million dollars in 1996. 

The Mir advertisement was part of a larger campaign that Pepsi pursued to promote its new blue can design. They also convinced Air France to paint one of their jets blue and paid a national newspaper to be printed on blue paper for a single day.

How They Did It

As the two cosmonauts were on the spacewalk, the American astronaut Sharon Lucid was inside keeping an eye on their life support systems and filming the ad. The featured product was a large-size replica of Pepsi’s new blue can design. The tagline was, “The choice of the next generation.” 

Even today, Pepsi continues to use outer space to help sell their products. The company’s latest idea is to launch an ‘orbital billboard’ that blinks a logo. In the earliest days of Pepsi’s advertising, they paid skywriters to zigzag through the sky and promote their products. 

It took special engineering to send a space-safe canister of soda with astronauts in 1985, costing Pepsi $14 million. NASA called it an engineering demonstration, but Pepsi used it as a commercial.

Source: Going To Space

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