Japanese firms take ads to new heights

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Russian Soyuz TM-33 rocket blasts off into space leaving a trail of fire on the horizon. A glimpse of the blue Earth below is seen from space. An astronaut looks out the window, and leisurely sips some Pocari Sweat from a squeeze bottle.

The newest television commercial from the Japanese health drink, Pocari Sweat, was made in cooperation with Russian cosmonauts Captain Viktor Afanasiev and Flight Engineer Konstantin Kozeev, in the Russian section of the international space station some 400 kilometers above Earth.

The commercial also marked a breakthrough for the international space station for functions that were purely commercial instead of its usual scientific tasks.

Yasuyuki Ikegami, the senior advisor of PT Inter Admark Dentsu -- the Indonesian representative of the Japanese advertising giant Dentsu Inc. -- said that the television commercial was the world's first full-fledged filming in outer space.

He said that the plan for an outer space television commercial had begun in June last year, with full cooperation from the Russian side. Soon after, Japan's health drink producer Otsuka Pharmaceutical was selected.

"We had to find a very good reason to why a product is needed in space," Ikegami said.

He also said that the Russian cosmonauts had to film the whole commercial themselves as it would take far too long for professional cameramen and art directors to train for space.

But getting inexperienced people, albeit professional cosmonauts at that, to use a video camera and actually shoot a commercial to be broadcast around the world was nevertheless risky.

So besides intensive training in basic video camera usage, a 200-page shooting manual was created and translated for the Russian cosmonauts.

"We couldn't afford to make any mistakes," Ikegami said.

In September, the two Russian cosmonauts were trained and on Oct. 21, 2001, they shot off into space with a container full of different versions of Pocari Sweat to cater to the different markets.

A video of the making of the commercial was shown to Indonesian journalists in the media conference last week, and it was eerie to watch one of the cosmonauts move a can to a certain angle, and then watch it hang suspended in mid-air when he took his hands off it. What is more, when he gave the can a little spin, it continued spinning on its own without stopping. This was the effect of low gravity in the space station.

The directing was not left to the cosmonauts. Instead, real- time remote direction from Baikonur space base in Kazakhstan was provided. The tape was ready by mid-November last year, and the new commercial was broadcasted on Japanese television early this year.

What does a Japanese health drink got to do with astronauts in space? A lot apparently, and not only for the purposes of making a TV commercial.

Sports medical doctor Haryo Tilarso said that 60 percent of the average adult body was made up of fluids, consisting of natrium, calcium, potassium and fluoride, which are all necessary in keeping acid and alkali balanced in the body so that it is able to adapt to the environment.

In an infant, that amount is about 80 percent, while in adults it decreases to between 50 percent and 52 percent.

"That's why we are very concerned when a baby suffers from diarrhea, and that's why old people have lots of wrinkles, because their body contains a lot less water," he said.

In space, a person is more susceptible to the loss of body fluids, aeronautical specialist doctor Sukarto said. He said that while people normally lose 2.5 liters of bodily fluid a day through urinating, sweating, breathing and passing stools, in space the body could lose a lot more, and suffer dire consequences.

Without the Earth's gravitational pull, the blood that normally pools in the legs would collect in the upper body instead, causing the heart to enlarge. The body responds to this flooding of the heart by increasing the output of urine and decreasing the urge to drink. Both these actions decrease the overall quantity of fluids and electrolytes in the body.

"When you look at astronauts smiling and laughing, well the experience is no laughing matter actually as it really doesn't feel too good having your upper body bloated and you feeling light-headed," Sukarto said.

When a person loses too much body fluid, it is important to replace it. The human body can actually replace a limited amount, as well as by drinking a lot of water and eating, but a sports drink such as Gatorade and Pocari Sweat helps to quickly replace those lost fluids, he said.

"When a person does a form of exercise or sport for less than one hour, the body can replace the necessary fluids, but exercises taking more than two hours at a time are hard on the body and a person should drink a lot of water," Haryo said.

The new commercial will be aired on Indonesian television this month on private TV stations Indosiar, RCTI, SCTV, and MetroTV.