Here is a crazy fact.

There is a bright red convertible car floating in space.

Minds far greater than mine have pondered the greater impact of that sentence. They have put extensive discourses debating the brand building impact it holds for Tesla. They have buzzed excitedly about how launching a car into space has ignited a whole new generation of space fervor. But my mind has drifted into a different tangent.

Atmospheres, stratospheres and brand touchpoints.

A handful of days ago a little thought began to form in my mind. What if brands are like the earth? With an atmosphere of branded touchpoints and a gravitational pull of brand love around them?

When you get farther away the atmosphere gets less dense. It doesn’t mean you don’t experience the brand at all, just with less strength. Is this ok?

Or do we need to keep our brand at full breathable air strength at all times?

In Space, you need a spacesuit.

I am currently in the middle of a large-scale brand project for a Michigan company with several hundred employees that interact with thousands of people every day.

They have the typical brand materials; logos, letterhead, business cards, etc. But as you travel down the wormhole of their daily needs you find yourself in strange uncharted territories. They host and promote events of various sizes almost every week, most need materials. How connected should they be to their brand?

These events are on their premise, they host them, they fall under their brand mission—but if you make them look, feel and vibe like the overarching brand there will be no excitement for the events. The event promotions will get lost in the solid drumbeat of the brand.

You have to break the rules and blast off into the stratosphere—you have to leave breathable air behind and go for a brand spacewalk.

It makes a lot of sense for a short-term high-intensity event or promotion to leave the brand homeworld behind, but it shouldn’t be done lightly.

Ask yourself these three quick questions before launching any brand communication into space:

1. Is this an exception? (if everything is floating in space you may need to bring some assets back down to earth. Keep your pimp hand home base strong.)
2. How will this communicate back to the homeworld? (rarely does NASA or SpaceX launch something into space without communicating with it, how will you get your info?)
3. What is the trajectory of this launch? (Is this going to orbit your brand forever? Will it come crashing down after a few months? Will you land it neatly on a platform at sea? Know the exit plan.)

Come down to earth spaceman.

As fun and exciting as it can be to send rockets into brand space. Building and maintaining a strong brand core is fundamental to any brand strategy.

Without a strong core, no one notices your rockets or cares about your moonwalks.

You need your brands’ hum to fill the minds of your target audience so that when you change the tempo and launch it thousands of miles into the stratosphere they know who they attuned to.

Ponder this:

The Falcon Heavy launch on Feb 6.

SpaceX?

NASA?

TESLA?

Who got the most bang out of the launch?