Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

The first one is the "Seinfeld Bus Tour," centered around a 60-foot long tour bus filled with memorabilia from the sitcom, including Jerry's puffy shirt, the "Manzier" male bra, and the 1993 Emmy Award for best comedy series.

Outside the bus, visitors can sample an interactive Seinfeld experience in a1,700 square-foot compound and can win Sony video Walkmans and Sony digital cameras while playing the "Marine Biologist Hole-in-One" putting game and a frisbee game called "Monk's Diner Plate Toss." Somehow, the Soup Nazi is also being invoked to jump-start a college campus soup drive.

Why Seinfeld? Why now? Apparently (at least in part) because ratings for TBS' Seinfeld repeats are down some 21 percent over last year, and the network isn't quite ready yet to consign the show to the Cheers and Family Ties reruns of yesteryear.

All together now: Yadda, yadda, yadda.

The other branding initiative involves Doritos' broadcasting the first-ever advertisement towards potential extra-terrestrial customers. The ad, called "Tribe," was earlier this summer pulsed out over a six-hour period from high-powered radars at the EISCAT European space station in the Arctic Circle. It basically involves a bunch of chips forming a ritualistic circle around a jar of Doritos salsa.

EISCAT director, Professor Tony van Eyken, said the signal is directed at a solar system "just" 42 light years away from Earth, in the Ursa Major region. "Its star is very similar to our Sun and hosts a habitable zone that could harbor small life-supporting planets similar to ours," he said in a release.

"We also shouldn't be too surprised if the first aliens start arriving on planet Earth immediately demanding a bag of Doritos," added Peter Charles, head of the "Doritos Broadcast Project."

Either that, or they'll arrive thinking we have sentient snack foods. In any case, we all know that ET's prefer Reese's Pieces.

Whether it's Zaphod Beeblebrox or a Predator who eventually arrives here, however, chances are they're not going to be thrilled to have finally heard from Earthlings ... and to find that message to be a commercial.

Why else would you move to Ursa Major?