Agency Known Went From Making a Super Bowl Ad to Netflix Documentary for Inspiration4

Agency Known’s studio branch in Los Angeles has had Hollywood ties for years, but nothing compares to the star power the team encountered on its latest project. Known Studios helped a crew of four non-astronauts reach higher than any civilian has before, as it helped produce the series Inspiration4 for Netflix. Known became involved with the project as an extension of its work with Netflix, a partnership that started when Known Studios was called Stun Creative before merging with Known in 2020. It was charged with producing the marketing campaign for the Netflix series, documenting the launch of the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission. What started as a Super Bowl ad grew to reach the stars. From Super Bowl to space The Super Bowl ad might have seemed odd to some viewers in that it was essentially calling anyone to come board a flight to space. The spot, directed by Bryce Dallas Howard and voiced by Octavia Spencer, guided people to Inspiration4.com to learn more about how they could become a passenger on the SpaceX mission. This Super Bowl Ad Provides Info on Winning a Trip—to Space That mission was billed as the world’s first all-civilian mission to orbit, commanded by Jared Isaacman, the 38-year-old founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments and an accomplished pilot and adventurer. But this wasn’t supposed to just be another rich guy going to space. It had a mission to raise funds and awareness for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The crew eventually landed Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a physician assistant at St. Jude and pediatric cancer survivor; Dr. Sian Proctor, 51, a professor of geosciences and two-time NASA astronaut candidate; Chris Sembroski, 41, a former member of the U.S. Air Force who now works as a Lockheed Martin engineer and who made a donation to St. Jude and was gifted the seat on the mission. After the Super Bowl ad, the team dreamed bigger and decided to document the entire process on a Netflix documentary called Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space. “We chose the biggest platform in the world of the Super Bowl to put out that clarion call and invite anyone to go to space. And so we felt that Netflix was the absolute right platform to continue to tell the story…in this very much near real-time approach, as we're following the crew in the lead up to the actual launch and after splashdown,” Known Studios partner and president Brad Roth told Adweek. Known developed key art with Netflix and SpaceX and worked on several animated factoids and augmented reality pieces to make viewers feel like they were on the mission. And a funny thing happened along the way—Known, including Roth and partner/president Mark Feldstein, became executive producers of the series, along with producer Conor Schell (The Last Dance) and Time Studios. Known was brought in by Isaacman, who met with the Known team in November 2020 and solicited their help get the invite out to the world. “From that moment, we knew that this was a bigger story,” Feldstein told Adweek, adding the team knew it wanted to do a documentary series and partner with Time Studios. “So it was way back then that we started documenting this, even before we wound up selling that to Netflix.” Known helped create the North Star for the entire mission, which was “Where can inspiration take you?” and that drove the creative all the way through. The mission, unlike the Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson trips, were more aspirational for real people, to know that they could maybe someday reach the stars. The fact that it was raising money for a good cause made it even more enticing for Known and the rest of the production crew. Feldstein described Known’s role as one that kept morphing throughout the mission, from marketing agency, to designing the coveted mission patch, to becoming executive producers. “It was flexing another sort of muscle,” he said, but he acknowledged that their jobs have always been as storytellers. “We've been in the advertising game for our entire career, but really we're in the storytelling business, whether it's 30 seconds, or 30 minutes, whether it's on a billboard in Times Square or it's a five-part docuseries, it's about encouraging people to come along on that journey.” Hoping nothing goes wrong The first few episodes followed the preparation for the mission, the stories behind the crew, the training and the emotions leading up to the launch. The launch was covered on a live feed and, to the delight and relief of everyone watching, was a success. The final episode, which airs on Netflix, shows the rest of the story, including the crew’s time in space and successful splash down in the ocean. The crew, their families and all the producers knew that there was a chance that something could go wrong. Space travel is not without its dangers, and with an all-civilian crew, something could have happened. “We're all aware that with space exploration comes extreme risk…and it's looked at in our documentary,” said Roth. Fortunately, for everyone who watched the news of the Inspiration4 crew’s splash down, the landing was triumphant. The Inspiration4 crew. Roth described the liftoff at Kennedy Space Center as “awesome” in the truest sense of the word. “You felt just how imminent it was, and just began to feel the emotion and the adrenaline just course through your ears your body…(but) equally and surprisingly emotional was watching the splashdown. Coming back down to earth “Mark and I keep coming back to this idea that this is the script that Hollywood wishes they could write,” said Roth. “It’s almost like you can see someone present this script to the studio exec saying this is too unbelievable, you know this could never happen…but it literally just unfolded in such a way that it just kept building upon itself so powerfully, and Mark and I are truly grateful to have had a front row seat to history, literally.” While many people watched the live feed of the mission, there are touches in the final episode that warrant watching, including cameras positioned in ways of capturing of the launch that allowed overviews of the rocket at a height around 40,000 feet. Coming down to earth after this monumental mission may seem a bit of a letdown to the Known Studios team, but they’ve developed a deep respect for telling the best story possible. “We did this so differently. There was no playbook for this kind of project, from the beginning down to all the different aspects, the cover of Time magazine and the Netflix series…but it did inspire everyone at the agency,” said Feldstein. He added that Known will never approach something the way that a typical agency would. “We’re going to come up with things that are going to impact culture in a way that no one has done that before and that's something that I think this really demonstrated,” said Feldstein. Roth continued to say that Known moves at the speed of culture—which he joked in this case was at 17,500 miles an hour. “In terms of how we do things differently, we've never just looked at a list of deliverables when we have an engagement…we’re constantly iterating and thinking and ideating about how we can tell the story in an innovative way,” said Roth. Apparently, there is life after space. Is Out of Home Ready for Outer Space?