Walt Disney World Resort’s Hollywood Studios was seen as a half-day park without experiences families could enjoy together—so they weren’t showing up. But the opening of Toy Story Land was set to mark the first major milestone towards a new park vision for Hollywood Studios. A repositioning away from a passive “movie studio” themed park, to a place where guests are truly immersed in their favorite stories as they unfold.

To announce the grand opening of the land, we wanted to engage fans of the Pixar franchise and non-fans alike with an over-the-top adventure like the Characters have in Toy Story movies that could only be exceeded by experiencing Toy Story Land itself. This unique approach set out to prove that the beloved film franchise could now be experienced in real life, making Toy Story Land a must-do for anyone considering an Orlando vacation.

With rumors abounding that Toy Story was getting its own land at Walt Disney World Resort, we wanted to surprise generations of fans that it’s really happening with a big program activation during Hollywood’s biggest night featuring a really big Pixar icon.

In every Toy Story film there is a little yellow Pixar Ball with a blue stripe and red star that’s hidden in multiple scenes that drives audiences wild every time they find it. And it just so happens that you’ll be able to find this larger-than-life Pixar Ball at Toy Story Land when it opens at Hollywood Studios.

We set out to tell a 3-hour and 53-minute Toy Story of our own, during The Oscars, about the journey of a larger-than-life Pixar Ball across the U.S. that put fans on a scavenger hunt to #FollowTheBall all the way to Orlando to reveal Toy Story Land!

Toy Story is one of the most beloved movie franchises of all time. But how do you transfer the deep-seated love for watching the films into a real-life experience? That was the challenge we faced with the launch of Toy Story Land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

We flipped the script at The Oscars, using Hollywood’s biggest movie night to announce the biggest non-movie news about Toy Story since 1995. The multi-channel experience invited fans to turn from their TV screens to their second screens and engage with an interactive hashtag #FollowTheBall. We rewarded their curiosity with custom content that showcased where the Pixar Ball had been spotted and brought them into the adventure, just like Toy Story Land. In doing so, we proved the beloved film franchise could now be experienced in ways like never before, making Toy Story Land a must-do park.

Our :90 film premiered during The Oscars, as 3 TV spots, with hidden clues of the Pixar Ball’s whereabouts that drove viewers to #FollowTheBall on its journey across the U.S.A. Fans were invited to tweet a state and our hashtag to find the Pixar Ball. The more they tweeted, the more locations we revealed. We created over 100 pieces of custom content using a mix of GIFs, videos and images that revealed the Pixar Ball delivered via a real-time response engine that kept fans searching all night.

The Pixar Ball’s journey got even bigger with an original storyline on Twitter filled with Toy Story fun. Fans even started placing the Pixar Ball into their own content they shared online. As The Oscars ended we rolled out the red carpet and revealed the announcement of Toy Story Land in our film’s finale that ran on TV and social.

During the Oscars, a new person joined the #FollowTheBall conversation every 1.2 seconds. We responded to 22,600+ social posts by fans that helped tell our story across multiple media channels. We generated 5.6 billion impressions across Facebook and Twitter with a reach of 69.9 million that landed us $17.5MM of earned media. All of this was done in just 3 hours and 53 minutes of The Oscars.

Even with no specific call-to-action, our organic website traffic (46.7K visitors) showed that 50% of visitors came from social and 26% from search. In the 4 hours of our #FollowTheBall campaign, we generated $160,000 worth of attributable ticket sales and heavy pre-bookings that led to sellout crowds in the summer 2018. And to fans’ surprise, the Pixar Ball could actually be found at Toy Story Land that quickly became the most popular object to post on Instagram from Walt Disney World Resort.