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Alton Towers Resort. Gangsta Granny: The Ride.​

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the challenge. Alton Towers Resort had an amazing new IP for 2020: TV star and children's author, David Walliams’ much beloved geriatric superhero, Gangsta Granny. As the most well-known character of his children’s book series, we needed to get people excited about the new Gangsta Granny ride and Walliams’ miniland, as well as showcase Alton Towers' other offerings, and keep their running line of 'The Power of the Towers'.

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the work. We created a suite of work to surround the launch, including prequel videos, interviews with David Walliams and two 30s TVC spots, tailored to either a teenage or younger children audience. The shoot took place over two days, and as the ride is all inside and dark, we added an exuberant voiceover from David Walliams himself and humorous sound effects to give the spots some life.

I also came up with several PR ideas. One was to stage a theft of jewels at Alton Towers itself (a nod to the plot of the book). Another was BYOG (Bring Your Own Granny). Alton Towers Resort have always had a policy where children under a certain age go for free. Due to the ‘mature’ age of this character, I thought it would be fun to flip this offer on its head, and have a ‘Granny goes for Free’ offer for over 65s, for a limited period only.

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the results. This campaign was set to air in March 2020. Yep. Miss ‘Rona put a stop to that, and unfortunately the park had to shut down. However, we managed to revisit this footage in our April/May 2021 advert for ‘Britain’s Greatest Escape’, so thankfully all was not lost for Granny, or her bottom burps.

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