Living in the UK or France, it almost feels like Disneyland — and The Twilight Zone — are staging a full scale attack on the airwaves. Whilst the major national networks are premiering the brand new “Celebration Continues” commercial from this Monday, last Thursday, 21st February, saw the launch of an exciting campaign across British MTV channels and, earlier, the French M6.

For the first time ever, members of the public — and of course, Disney fans — will have the chance to create the new attraction’s TV advert themselves. This comes following the “leaked” video of a dog being mutated within The Hollywood Tower Hotel’s elevator and the initial launch of the official attraction website.

MTV channels in the UK began airing a special trailer for the competition last Thursday, featuring presenter Ricky Haywood-Williams wandering the halls of the hotel as he directs entrants toward www.tower-of-terror.co.uk. There are a grand total seven MTV-branded channels in the UK — MTV One, MTV Two, MTV Hits, MTV Base, MTV Dance, MTV R and MTV One+1.

Whilst the short commercials focus on the competition, they also mention to a wide audience all the key points: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Disneyland Resort Paris and Now Open, hopefully sparking interest in the new thrill attraction amongst the important youth audience.

Launched alongside these promos, the “fourth floor” of the official website now features either Ricky Haywood-Williams (for the UK) or Virginie Efira (for France) introducing the competition and its rules. Entrants must create their own home-made videos — featuring all of the required elements, such as the bellhop and elevator — to be uploaded via the website.

The 10 (or 5, depending on which source we believe) ‘best’ attempts will then be open to a public vote between 8th and 12th March to choose the winner, who will win a trip to Disneyland to ride the attraction and see a fully-professional version of their advert made before their eyes by Disney and MTV.

A similar competition to script a spoken radio advert is also available, in partnership with GCap’s One Network of no less than 38 local radio stations across the UK. Members on magicforum also report competitions to win a trip to ride Tower of Terror on the breakfast show of London’s Capital Radio, also owned by GCap.

The final, professionally-created commercials will be broadcast across MTV and the One Network stations from early April, ready for the attraction’s press launch weekend on 4th-6th April, which will include a belated official inauguration.

BrandRepublic, online news source for the advertising industry, brings us an article about the entire UK publicity campaign, which actually looks to be rather exciting — particularly if you live in London.

In a later stage of the campaign, timed to coincide with the opening of the attraction on April 5, Disney has booked a special installation at the Centrepoint billboard in London.

For four weeks from April 7, the billboard will be dressed to appear like the Hollywood Tower Hotel featured in the ride. An integral screen will show the distorted pictures of people previously generated by the website.

The billboard will be supported a nationwide campaign of six-sheet posters and interactive posters in ten key locations around London.

According to Federico Gonzalez, senior vice-president of marketing for Disneyland Resort Paris, the campaign is designed to appeal to 13- to 15-year-olds through media platforms they engage with.
Gonzalez said: “We are delighted to develop a marketing campaign to attract new, older children to Disneyland Resort Paris. Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is a white-knuckle ride and we wanted to create a fast-paced, fun marketing campaign to reflect this.”

So, rather than allow this major attraction to be overshadowed by the continuing 15th Anniversary promotions, it appears to be being given a generous publicity campaign of its very own. Something that, in the recent past, has been rare outside of France.

— Are you entering the MTV competition? Let us know on magicforum!