• by Les Luchter , March 15, 2022

On Tuesday, Mark Vande Hei broke Kelly’s record of consecutive days in space (341) for an American, set in 2016.

Also, on Tuesday, Kelly penned a Washington Post op-eddecrying threats against the International Space Station from the head of the Russian space agency. Vande Hei, you see, is set to return to earth aboard a Russian spaceship on March 30.

And did we mention that Kelly has also become the first person to walk on Mars?

Well, he actually walks on Amorim Cork Flooring’s latest design -- an elaborate “reconstruction” of the Martian surface -- in a global ad campaign created by Stream and Tough Guy, with media handled by Havas’ Arena.

The campaign, titled “Walk on Amazing,” features a digital media/social video in which Kelly takes his first steps on the Amorim surface.

His first words? Rendered nearly speechless, Kelly can only utter “No words.”

For the video, Amorim printed a 600 square-meter (around 6,458 square feet) floor based on pictures from the Mars Rover and other missions, plus a video-mapped wall projection conveying Martian planes, mountains and dunes to fully convey the scene.

“This idea was first presented more than two years ago,” Miguel Durão, creative partner, Stream and Tough Guy, says in a “making of” video  “It survived a pandemic so that we can finally have an astronaut step on the surface of Mars for the first time.”

Amorim reached out to Kelly because of both his”gravitas” and“gravitational power,” João Ribeiro, the agency’s managing partner, tells Marketing Daily. “We were looking for someone who would appreciate the opportunity to ‘walk on Mars,’ someone who was an immensely experienced astronaut but never had the opportunity to step on an ‘alien world.’”

The campaign aims to use the Martian recreation to raise awareness of cork’s versatility and potential as a design material, while bringing attention to its  sustainability  and the comfort it can bring to walkers.

Designed to reach 100 million people in the U.S. and 16 other countries, the campaign has a broad target audience, says Ribeiro. It ranges from retailers, to architecture and design professionals, to “the environmental and sustainability crowd” and “society at large.”

Portuguese-based Amorim Cork Flooring, whose parent company has been marketing cork for over a century, was established in the 1970s and came the U.S. in 1997. It is currently sold through retailers in several states, Gonçalo Marques, the brand’s global marketing and sales director, tells Marketing Daily.

“Cork is a very limited raw material that only grows in a specific part of the Mediterranean region, so cork flooring does not represent a high-volume market,” he explains “We focus our message on sustainability and target an audience that favors natural materials and is green conscious."