Tombras worked with alien-language experts to write copy aliens might actually understand. Image Credit: MoonPie
Tombras worked with alien-language experts to write copy aliens might actually understand. Image Credit: MoonPie
Inspired by congressional hearings on extraterrestrials, Tombras eyes an untapped consumer market
Last summer, Congress held much-anticipated hearings about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), at which several experts testified under oath that aliens do, in fact, exist—and may already be here on Earth.
Now, MoonPie wants to sell to them.
A new campaign by Tombras for the graham cracker, chocolate and marshmallow sandwich snacks is aimed squarely at an intergalactic demographic. A series of out-of-home ads, running globally, were written in Lincos—a language developed by a Dutch mathematician in the 1960s specifically to communicate with aliens.
Humans are unable to read the ads, but aliens possibly can.
Tombras recruited Daniel Oberhaus, an author well versed in Lincos, as well as two UAP experts—Sean Cahill (who testified before Congress) and Holly Wood. All three advised on everything from what the ads should say to where they should be placed.
The three also appear in the minidocumentary below, which shows many of the ads—and includes English translations of them.
The doc also suggests that aliens likely live much longer than humans—thus, the profits they could deliver to MoonPie over time as loyal consumers could be “exponential.”
If the effort sounds like a gag, it sort of is—but not entirely. Doing something after the hearings made sense for MoonPie (whose “out of this world” platform allows it to weigh in on anything space-related). At first, the Tombras team circled around comedic ideas—such as having MoonPie hold its own hearings, or offering a lifetime supply of MoonPie to the first alien to reveal itself publicly.
As the Tombras creatives learned more about the topic, however, they began to feel like they should take it more seriously—though still with the kind of wink MoonPie is known for.
“People might find this funny, but I went into it pretty serious,” Jeff Benjamin, chief creative officer of Tombras, told Ad Age. “I genuinely believe there are aliens. And I think if you were to market to them, this is the way you would do it.”
Ads are running globally, including on this Tokyo sporting goods store. Image credit: MoonPie
“These people testified in front of Congress saying aliens are real. Think about the magnitude of that,” added Dooley Tombras, president of Tombras. “We said, ‘Wouldn’t it be something for MoonPie to take a serious approach, talk to the experts, find out if aliens are real. And if they are real, figure out out how to sell to them.’”
Creatively, the billboards boldly go where none have gone before. The copy is rendered in the distinctive markings of Lincos. Even the MoonPie logo is translated into Lincos—though while the language has a word for “moon,” it doesn’t have a word for “pie.” (The ads also include product shots, and the logo may still be recognizable to humans through its color scheme.)
Banners target extraterrestrials who might be drawn to ocean locations. Image credit: MoonPie
The limitations of the Lincos vocabulary dictated the copywriting process, which ended up being backward in some ways.
“We wrote some lines initially, but there were words where Daniel was like, ‘I can’t translate this into Lincos.’ So we had to almost get a glossary of terms from him and rewrite them,” said Avinash Baliga, executive creative director at Tombras.
The agency was strict, in the end, about having the ads speak purely to aliens—and not trying to sneak in language for humans.
“I loved our first round of billboards,” said Tombras. “But Jeff and Avi said, ‘No, no, no, these are too good at communicating to humans. That is not our target audience. We’ve got to go back to everything we know from the experts.’ That really shifted the direction of the out-of-home.”
Roswell, New Mexico, famous for an alleged UFO incident in 1947, is getting ads too. Image credit: MoonPie
Humans may be drawn to the ads as well, of course, because of their cryptic nature. “The whole campaign targets aliens, but humans are going to like this, too,” said Tombras. “We feel it open us up to a lot of new audiences of people that are going to find this interesting.”
The billboards have been running all over the world—including New York, London, Tokyo and Washington. They’ve also hit Cape Canaveral in Florida and notorious extraterrestrial hot spot Roswell, New Mexico. Other ads were placed in and around the Atlantic Ocean (aliens are said to be drawn to water), and a drone show was held at the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico.
A truck featuring mobile billboards heads toward Big Ben in London. Image credit: MoonPie
Benjamin said there has been so little advertising to aliens that these billboards should really break through when an alien sees them.
“We’ve all had that feeling of going to a foreign country where everything’s in a different language,” he said. “Then you see something written in English—or in your language—and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, they’re talking to me!’ We wanted an alien to feel that way. We want them to walk through Times Square or Miami Beach, see these ads and think, ‘Wow, that brand gets me. Maybe I should try MoonPie.’”
The ads are written in Lincos, a language developed in the ’60s to speak to aliens. Image credit: MoonPie
The agency said it will be monitoring the typical channels to see if its message is getting through. (“If sales go up this month, you’ll know where that came from,” said Baliga.) But it’s not out of the question, the agency said, that the campaign could lead to actually connecting with aliens directly.
“That would be the ultimate hope, right?” said Tombras. “MoonPie is a historic brand already—a 100-plus-year-old brand that’s in culture. But how epic and crazy would it be if MoonPie were the brand that helped us make first contact?”
A few questions remain, for which there are likely no answers. First, could aliens even consume MoonPies? And more troublingly, what if we actually don’t want to meet the aliens? What if the ads provoke them to unleash chaos in the world?
“We did think this through,” said Benjamin. “The earlier idea for a promotion to get an alien to reveal themselves—that originally said they would get MoonPie for life, or until the end of the world.”
“What’s done is done,” added Baliga. “The door’s been opened by this campaign, and there’s no going back.”
