On a hot November day in the tropical forest of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, amongst the croaking of coquís, the message went out. Warbling audio crackled over loudspeakers—the audible result of the work of Cornell University and Arecibo scientists, Frank Drake (the creator of the eponymous Drake equation), Carl Sagan, and other brilliant minds. It lasted about three minutes. This interstellar radio message, transmitted on a frequency of 2,380 MHz and consisting of 1,679 binary bits representing ones and zeros—a method similar to what computer modems use to send binary code over a telephones line—became humanity’s first official attempt to make contact with extraterrestrial life. Beamed out of the Arecibo Telescope and into the Messier cluster 25,000 light-years away in our Milky Way galaxy the message went. “If the message is received and answered promptly, unless we happen to hit them on one of their three-day holidays we should have their answer in 48,000 years, give or take a day or two,” wrote US Army cryptologist Lambros D. Callimahos in a 1975 document recently declassified by the National Security Agency. Unfortunately, the message has still—even after 50 years of moving at the speed of light—only made it 1/960th of the way to its intended recipients in the Messier cluster. In times like these, it’s uncertain if humanity can continue to afford to wait.
On July 26, 2023, the United States Congress held hearings on the existence of UFOs and unidentified anomalous phenomena (or UAPs). These hearings, through the testimony of a witness or two, set a new conversation alight: that aliens aren’t only real, but that they’re here on Earth. David Grusch, a former US intelligence official, testified about his own secondhand sightings of "nonhuman biologics" from crashed UAPs, which have not been confirmed as alien aircraft or human aircraft.
After 50 years of attempted contact and hopes to reach extraterrestrials, we still haven’t had any engagement. However, the renewed conversations around sightings have led one group to reconsider the existing approaches of communication. Their hypothesis? We’re sending the wrong messages.
MoonPie, a family brand that values hospitality, wanted to change that. So, in an effort to be as inclusive as possible to our nonhuman neighbors, the makers of the celestial-themed cakes sent out a new type of message: Nonhuman biologics should try MoonPies.
"Our antennas are up for anything that has to do with space,” says Tory Johnston, vice president of sales and marketing at MoonPie. “If there are, in fact, these new beings in our orbit, we want them to be hooked on MoonPies."
In an ambitious attempt at alien marketing, MoonPie translated all of its messaging into a language that it is believed to be one that aliens could understand; it’s called Lincos, a general-purpose language derived from basic mathematics and logic symbols, created by Hans Freudenthal in 1960. Lincos is “made up of unmodulated radio waves of varying length and duration, encoded with a hodgepodge of symbols borrowed from mathematics, science, symbolic logic, and Latin,” according to Freudenthal’s original writings. “In their various combinations, these waves can be used to communicate anything from basic mathematical equations to explanations for abstract concepts like death and love.” And snacks. However, one astrophysicist called Freudenthal’s book about Lincos “the most boring I have ever read.” Thus, humans are nearly powerless to learn it.
This is exactly why MoonPie consulted with alien and language experts to find out where aliens live, what they like, and how we can communicate with them. “You can't just speak to a brand new audience without gathering demographic and psychographic data,” says Dooley Tombras, president of advertising agency Tombras, which partnered with MoonPie for this campaign. “So we did the same thing we would do when launching any campaign: intensive market research. Working with credible extraterrestrial experts was key to developing a deeper understanding of this intergalactic demographic.”
In their market research studies, MoonPie found that it is likely that there is a form of commerce or trade within alien society (and as such, aliens would probably appreciate a good deal). “Even if everything about the alien recipient is different from our own experience, we can at least assume they will share our understanding of math,” says Daniel Oberhaus, the author of Extraterrestrial Languages (MIT Press, 2019) and the owner of Haus, a digital agency in New York City. It was also determined that aliens on Earth would like bright flashes of color, the ocean, music, and humor. “At the end of the day, extraterrestrial communication is an exercise in identifying universals in the strongest sense of the term—something that can be assumed to be shared by any intelligent species regardless of their physiology, culture, and so on,” Oberhaus adds. “When you start to dive into that question, you begin to realize just how few things can be universal.”
These pivotal learnings directly influenced what MoonPie said to the alien market and how the brand designed its ads. It even determined where the new ads should be placed. After months of serious research and a deliberate approach to strategy, the advertisements were officially launched with billboards, boat banners, and drones in cities and regions where reports of UFO and UAP sightings seem to be abundant, including the Atlantic Ocean; London; Tokyo; Cape Canaveral, Florida; New York City; Teotihuacan, Mexico; and Roswell, New Mexico.
“We need more people thinking about and contributing to this issue so that when we make first contact we’re ready to respond,” says Oberhaus. “Although other groups have broadcast into space, this is the first time that an advertisement has been designed specifically for an extraterrestrial audience.” After attempts to make contact by transmitting frequencies into our galaxy and loading up rovers and probes with phonographic records like interstellar messages in a bottle left us with a wait time of nearly 40,000 years, an Earth-bound campaign to speak directly to the life that is already here could usher in a new (and potentially successful) era of extraterrestrial communication.
Looking at how history has played out, it’s a good thing we’re not idly waiting for a response to the Arecibo message. The Arecibo Telescope collapsed in 2020. And the globular cluster the 1974 message was aimed at—Messier 13—won’t be there when it arrives. As things do in outer space, it will have rotated to a new position in the galaxy. So, for now, MoonPie’s on-Earth alien messages could very well be our best hope—and a historic milestone. “This is a significant milestone in the history of interstellar communication attempts,” says Oberhaus. “It brings broader awareness to the need to think deeply about what all humans have in common—and what we might have in common with any other intelligent life in the cosmos.” Perhaps a love for marshmallow creme.
Visit MoonPieAlienAcquisition.com to learn more about the campaign.
This story was produced by WIRED Brand Lab for MoonPie.
