The whole phase before the race will be used to stimulate public interest in the race, mainly by organizing the contests described in section 4.7. In the beginning, sponsoring and marketing will essentially take place at the local and national level. These contests will start about 2 years ahead of the race and therefore will prepare the field for larger, worldwide campaigns preceding directly the race.

Rocket-Painting Contest

One worldwide contest with high media-coverage capability is the rocket-painting-design contest for elementary schools. Pictures of children painting on a huge high-tech, normally unreachable rocket guarantee high public interest and high advertising income. Moreover, area on the launcher will also be sold as a pure advertising space. This has even more media impact as mini- and toy-launchers showing the children's design will probably reflect high selling rates.

Art and Fashion

The same is valid for the artist's contest for the design of the first art-gallery in space. The implication of this highly, media-present part of society assures also the favor of people who are traditionally not interested in such high-tech space events. Art in space can trigger a whole new industry ranging from artistic spacecraft design to selling duplicates of the sculptures on Earth. Moreover artists play an important part in the opinion making process of the public due to their higher media-coverage.

In parallel to this, the race-committee will also incite (eventually also in contest-form) young fashion designers from all over the world to create a new lunar-fashion style, with a fancy name like "crater wear". The moon-boots twenty years ago represent the tip of an iceberg of possible fashion-impact of such a lunar expedition. This fashion-series will then serve as the "official" dress of all participants, and will be used in all public appearances especially by the teams in the ground stations and afterwards for their PR events. We intend that the marketing of the new fashion will always be directly related to our project, as does the "Camel-Trophy" for its articles. As we expect this fashion to be very showy, remarkable and trendy this will not only represent a significant source of income but also a very effective advertising. Moreover the implication of the fashion world will liberate a source of funding which is normally totally remote to space-exploration.

Qualifying Contests

Also about 2 years ahead of the race, the main rover-contest will begin. Since the first qualification races are on the national or local level the participating teams (rovonauts) will try to raise money and public interest in their local area. The rover teams are totally free to market their rover as they want in order to raise the participation fee and at least part of the development cost of their rovers. Some examples could be to engrave the names of very good sponsors onto the rover-surface, to sell advertising space on the rover and to give the rover names and nicknames. Probably the teams will come up with some very original and innovative approaches and methods we could not even think of.

The qualifying-contests for the rovers will be highly mediated events, taking place in stadiums, and are intended to function like the qualification games for soccer world cups or formula 1 races. They are not designed just to designate the best rovers fulfilling all our requirements but they are at the same time highly profitable events because the rovers are, at least for the contest at national level, similar to their final shape with most of the advertising already on them.

Each definitely selected rover team will furthermore have the obligation to build a second, totally identical rover. This will serve not only in case of troubles with the launcher, but as an efficient way to market the race once the rovers are on the lunar surface. These rovers should be used for commercial purposes partly (e.g. 50% of the time) by the race-organization at least for a certain period (e.g. two years) after the race and can then be donated to museums.

Merchandizing

In parallel to the raising of public interest and awareness, the number of visitors of the web-sit,e and therefore advertising income on the web-site, will increase significantly. On the other hand the web page will contribute significantly to raise the public awareness of the project and distribute additional information. In addition to the informal and fun-side of the site, it will also be used to sell the crater wear as well as "fan articles". We are thinking of a whole range of articles much like what can be found for soccer world championships or for the introduction of huge film productions like Star Wars.

Some examples of these articles are pencils in the form of the launcher with the design of the winner of the elementary-school-launcher-design contest, stuffed animal versions of the race mascot, small toy-rovers, also remote controlled ones, a whole range of computer-games simulating all the parts of the project, from the construction of the rovers, the launch, the rocket-design, the landing up to the real race with the rovers on a simulated moon surface. In order to promote the video- and computer-games the web-site will contain some sample versions, some features of playing with rovers directly on the site.

Another important income source will be the organization of a worldwide race-betting system. Not only will this raise money but it will also attract new parts of the society and therefore new types of advertisers.

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