A FAMILIAR MEME. A NEW CONTEXT.

Moscow-Jupiter: The Malikov and Khovansky Show

What this meme means

Moscow-Jupiter is a 2017 show VKontakte launched to promote its virtual mobile operator, VK Mobile. The first two episodes, hosted by Dmitry Malikov and Yuri Khovansky, sparked plenty of discussion and jokes online.

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What it was

"Moscow-Jupiter" was conceived as an internet show that combined an entertainment format with product promotion. VKontakte used it to talk about VK Mobile, a virtual mobile network operator that worked without its own cellular infrastructure and offered services through partner networks.

The name is built on a play on words: "Moscow" (Moskva) is joined with "Jupiter" (Yupiter), apparently a nod to both a video format and the well-known planet. The episodes came out as talk-show-style programs with guests and scripted segments, which let the advertising be delivered wrapped in entertainment.

Hosts and the first episodes

The first two episodes were hosted by Dmitry Malikov and Yuri Khovansky. Malikov is known as a TV host and singer, while Khovansky is known as a blogger and participant in internet projects who had a sizable video audience.

The combination of television experience and internet audience was meant to appeal to different groups of viewers. Older viewers knew Malikov from television, while younger audiences were more inclined to watch bloggers like Khovansky. This pairing of hosts made it possible to speak to both audiences at once.

Memes and viewer reaction

The format and the hosts' manner prompted jokes in the comments, and some episodes turned into short meme clips. Such videos were quickly quoted, and the captions attached to them usually referred to the very idea of the joint show and its advertising directness. One clip shows a host sitting at a laptop wearing headphones, with a ginger plush cat sitting nearby, and it was exactly these everyday details that often became the butt of jokes.

For internet culture this is a typical story: advertising made to look like entertainment often provokes more irony than an ordinary commercial. Viewers noticed that the show talked about the product not directly but through storylines and jokes, and that became a subject of discussion. No precise data on the popularity of specific memes from the show could be established.

Place among advertising campaigns

In 2017, many companies were trying to bring products online through video formats and bloggers. VKontakte followed the same path: the show let it showcase the service without a conventional commercial while holding the audience's attention.

The project's fate and its results are not described in detail in the open sources that could be checked. So an assessment of its effect is limited to noting that the show remained a notable episode in the history of the service's advertising and in the memory of those who followed internet video at the time.

Context and legacy

"Moscow-Jupiter" is interesting as an example of a social network trying to combine entertainment and marketing. The show is tied to the image of two hosts who were, in different years, prominent online, which is why it is sometimes recalled in discussions of advertising from that period.

Anyone looking for memes connected to this project should focus on short clips and comments, because detailed documentation of the episodes has survived only in fragments. That is often the case with early internet shows that existed mainly as video and quickly faded from view.