Overview
As 20^th Century Fox’s biggest release of 2007, The Simpsons Movie enjoyed a hugely successful theatrical campaign introducing new characters such as Spider Pig as well as a feature length storyline and new themes.

Taylor Herring was appointed to handle the launch of the DVD release. The brief was to position The Simpsons Movie as the must-have DVD for Christmas and make it the biggest selling DVD of the season.

The Campaign
We devised an ambient outdoor stunt with the aim of delivering mass awareness of the DVD by targeting the news pages and news programmes of national UK media, as well as delivering a property that would generate worldwide coverage online.

Building on the hype surrounding Spider Pig, the undisputed star of the movie, we paid tribute to one of the most iconic album covers of all time, Pink Floyd’s seminal 1977 album ‘Animals’ – which also stars a flying pig.

We recreated the image by creating and flying a giant inflatable Spider Pig (the size of a double decker bus) over Battersea Power Station exactly 30 years on from the original stunt, when it famously broke free from its tether causing major panic with air traffic control. We managed to secure permission from Battersea Power Station who gave the go ahead for the first time since Pink Floyd’s own attempt.

Taking no chances, we employed a marksman to be on hand to take the pig down in case it attempted an escape. The pig was designed to specifications stipulated by The Simpsons creator Matt Groening. The finished model was a magnificent 12 metres long and 8 metres high weighing approximately 20kg when deflated. Spider Pig also carried internal lighting so he could be viewed during darkness by the hundreds of thousands of London motorists and commuters. Prior to the stunt attempt we approached Pink Floyd’s management to alert them and drummer, Nick Mason, came back to us direct with his own encouraging comments.

After several thwarted attempts owing to severe wind conditions, we used this as an opportunity to seed a ‘Will Spider Pig Fly’ campaign around the initiative. We rallied the support of the media and public by placing a viral clip on You Tube of Spider Pig’s failed attempt, approached national and London radio stations who gave daily talk-up on the subject. We approached Ladbrokes who quoted odds on the chances of it flying.

Spider Pig finally took to the skies over Battersea Power Station three days later, during the week of release. A photocall was staged from the roof of The Duchess pub, where the original shot was taken from and attended by national newspaper photographers and picture agencies, as well as TV news crews. A select few were given exclusive on site access including The Evening Standard, one picture agency and a TV news agency. A specialist film crew were employed to film the entire process for an online distribution.

On the morning of launch we also delivered mini pre-inflated Spider Pigs to radio DJs across national and London radio stations to sustain interest and subsequent talk up. 

We flew James L Brooks (Exec Producer) and Yeardley Smith (Lisa Simpson) to the UK where they completed press junkets, securing a raft of high profile national print features, as well as TV and radio guest spots. DVD reviews were also aggressively secured across national print and broadcast media and a select few targeted competitions were secured.