VIRGIN GALACTIC / AUDIENCE INSIGHT · STRATEGIC ADVISORY CONTRIBUTION
Birth. Death. Marriage. Space travel.
VSS Unity above Earth · Galactic 02 · Image: Virgin Galactic
The moments that define a life carry a profound need for connection. We want to share them with the people who matter most.
So how do you make the experience of a lifetime even more meaningful—when the people you want beside you can’t come along?
Rob Schwartz, then President and CEO of TBWA Chiat Day New York, invited my thinking on Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight experience, drawing on my aviation industry background and work on Raytheon.
I explored a question beyond the journey itself: how could space travelers share something so profound with the people they loved?
Sharing an experience can magnify its meaning. But the people a space traveler most wants beside them may not be able to come.
The spaceflight experience aboard VSS Unity · Galactic 02 · Image: Virgin Galactic
Bringing the people who matter into the moment
I recommended helping space travelers choose something that brought those people into the journey: a photograph of their children, a piece of jewelry, a handwritten card. Each item would carry a relationship, a memory, a reason this moment mattered.
The strategic opportunity was to make an extraordinary journey feel deeply shared. To help space travelers look out at Earth and feel connected to someone on it.
My contribution: Audience insight and experience recommendations for Virgin Galactic through TBWA Chiat Day New York.