Pizza Hut once Delivered Pizza to Outer Space, Spending $1 Million

Story:

Pizza Hut once made a delivery to the International Space Station in 2001. They paid the
Russians $1 million to transport the Pizza.

Analysis:

The message says that Pizza Hut once delivered its Pizza to the outer space station in 2001, paying $1 million to the Russians. It is a fact.

Picture: Pizza Hut once Delivered Pizza to Outer Space, Spending $1 Million — Pizza Hut once Delivered Pizza to Outer Space, Spending $1 Million

In the year 2000, Pizza Hut started massive international branding campaign to improve their image worldwide. They planned to invest about $500 million over five years to make them contemporary and upgrade their Pizza Hut units around the globe. As a part of this global marketing campaign, Pizza Hut started an innovative space sponsorship by first placing a 30-foot (9 m) Pizza Hut logo on the side of the unmanned Proton rocket that launched Zvezda module (refer to the picture in image section below). The next year, they sought an unusual form of fast food advertising, by delivering pizzas to the outer space for the first time.

The Pizza Hut logo was set to burn off before leaving the atmosphere, and the advertisement did not make it into space. But in 2001, Pizza Hut became the first one to deliver pizzas to outer space, as their vacuum-sealed pizzas arrived at the International Space Station (ISS). It was small 6” pizzas topped with salami, tomato sauce and cheese, delivered to the astronauts aboard. Salami had to be used as pepperoni did not withstand the 60-day testing process and turned mouldy. Yuri Usachov, one of the Russian cosmonauts on the ISS ate the pizza the company had sent him, after playing with it in space and later gives it a thumbs up as shown in the picture in image section below. The video below shows and explains this branding campaign of Pizza Hut using space marketing.

And as mentioned in the message, the Pizza Hut chain has reportedly paid the Russian space agency about $1m (£700,000) for all this promotional stunt, which included the commercial footage of Mr Usachov showing a thumbs-up after eating the pizza, and also for placing their logo on the rocket the previous year.