Look Up! It's A Bird... No, A Zeppelin, Promoting Disney/Pixar Film

Often the best way to promote a movie or product is the most obvious route. Case in point: a campaign for the Disney/Pixar movie "Up."

The film follows a crotchety old man who travels to South America in a floating house, attached to countless helium balloons, with an unexpected companion.

Disney/Pixar promoted the movie in an unusual, yet fitting way, over Memorial Day weekend.

A Zeppelin airship, larger than a 747 and recently brought stateside from Germany, was affixed with 700 pieces of ultra-lightweight vinyl-like material that combined to reveal a picture of the "Up" house, fastened to helium balloons. The picture of the house and balloons pales in comparison to the understandably large-type words "Disney/Pixar. Up. Only in theaters."

Creative was manufactured in Germany; it took three days for the pieces to adhere. This is the costlier way to advertise on the Zeppelin, since banners crafted from a porous fabric can be hung on one or both sides, allowing for a faster application and removal.

The Zeppelin, named Eureka, is normally used for sightseeing trips over San Francisco, Napa Valley and Silicon Valley.

However, the "Up" campaign flew Eureka over the Los Angeles area as part of Disney/Pixar's six-week campaign, costing six figures, according to David Knight, Airship Ambassador for Airship Ventures.

"Up" was the first ad campaign featured on Eureka. Two additional Zeppelins are used for advertising purposes in Tokyo and Germany.

The ad buy was brokered between Disney and Airship Ventures, the company that flies Eureka.

Airship Ventures believes the newly used medium will soon gain popularity, given its novelty and the rise of social media. "One of the elements that makes this very unique, compared with other forms of out of home advertising is you get press and tens or hundreds of thousands of consumers taking pictures and video of it, placing it up online, all featuring the branding on the sides," said Knight.

If you're in the Los Angeles area this weekend, be on the lookout for Eureka. She will offer tourists a "Hollywood Studios By Zeppelin" flight throughout the July 4 weekend while promoting 23andMe, a genetics company that helps people decipher their genomes.