Beofre I became a writer, I was in advertising. That was a life-long passion – the idea of telling stories, to get a message across to a potential client of how you could solve their problem, even before they knew they had a problem.

Creative ads that appeal to my sense of humor are very effective with me – I’m a great fan of the GEICO ads, for example. I also love the occasional special effects-laced advert, but only if the message is lost in the gee-whiz. But a well-written, thoughtful ad that reaches folks is, in my opinion, really a work or art.

So… say you’re in the marketing division for a major entertainment conglomerate, beloved by millions, and you’ve just made a bold acquisition. How do you make a splashy video to emphasize how well the properties will fit together?

It helps if you’ve already done something funny… and as it turns out the folks at Disney had something on the shelf. They released this today:

Now, looking at the production values, you might ask how they turned that around in 24 hours. The simpl answer is, they didn’t.

Last year, Disney Imagineers revised the Star Tours attraction, making a major update. This ride was George Lucas’ first collaboration with Disney, and he was closely involved in the reboot. As you can well guess, the re-opening was greatly anticipated in both Florida and California.

It turns out that they were going to have Darth Vader involved int he opening ceremonies for Star Tours, so the marketing team created a video showing Darth getting to Disneyland early, and taking in the park, as only a Dark Lord of the Sith can.

The video at the time was a hit… and with a simple change to the graphics at the beginning and end, it works quite nicely for this announcement as well.

Just another piece of Disney trivia. Enjoy!