Halloween marketing campaigns are more than just spooky fun - they’re a strategic opportunity for brands to engage with their audiences in a memorable way. Halloween spending reached an all-time high of $12.2B in 2023. Those numbers are expected to be closely matched heading into the 2024. Consumers are eager to treat themselves to new costumes, decorations, and candy to make Halloween as memorable as it can be for the younger kids who are eagerly anticipating trick or treating. However, candy and costumes are not the only products that see a rise in demand during the spooky season. Halloween parties are almost equally as popular for adults as trick or treating is for kids. With these parties, a number of goods and services may be sought after from food and drinks, to entertainment, to car ride services like Uber. There is a lot of business to be had during this spooky holiday. This is why having an effective halloween marketing campaign can not only drive sales, but leave a memorable impression to your audience and build off their excitement for the holiday.
So what does a successful Halloween campaign look like? This is a chance for your brand to get creative, despite whether your brand fits naturally with the spooky season or not, there is always a creative opportunity to fit. When creating your halloween marketing campaign there are four things you need to consider:
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1. Tell A Story: Using storytelling to connect your products with Halloween themes
is a way that will capture the attention of the audience and draw them in.
2. Engage Customers: Creating contests and challenges on social media will not only drive engagement on these social media platforms, but also increase brand awareness during the spooky season.
3. Add a Surprise or a Twist: Adding a twist or surprise to your campaign will make your content more shareable and memorable.
4. Collaboration and Pop Culture: There are many notable faces and icons from pop culture that are associated with the halloween season. Finding unique ways to incorporate some of these well known icons is an excellent way to boost appeal, especially for the younger audiences.
Let’s take a look at five Halloween campaigns that effectively captured audience attention and made a lasting impact.
Burger King: #ScaryClownNight
In 2017, the global burger chain Burger King used the timing of the newly released Stephen King’s "IT" movie during the Halloween season to create a unique campaign that also taunted their competing rival, McDonalds. Burger King offered free signature Whopper burgers to the first 500 customers who arrived at selected establishments dressed as clowns (inspired by McDonald’s Ronald McDonald). Burger King promoted this digital PR campaign through social media platforms and incorporated the tagline “Come as a clown, eat as a king.,” The timing and relevance of these advertisements during the spooky season, and capitalizing off the success of the new "IT" movie, created a recipe for a massively successful campaign. The campaign achieved 2.1 billion impressions, resulting in the campaign getting mentioned in more that 1000 articles across 40 countries.
Tesco: A Spooktacular Halloween
n 2016, Tesco launched a spooktacular Halloween campaign that aimed to promote their delivery service as an essential one stop shop that supplies everything families need for a great Halloween. The campaign entailed a delivery van that was filled with halloween goodies as well as hidden scares. The campaign showed a series of commercials of the delivery fan making stops at numerous family homes, with the family approaching the van to obtain numerous halloween goodies, however for every treat there was a scare lurking behind the corner. The numerous jump scares captured priceless reactions from the families that resonated well with audiences. This campaign received 1.4 million views on YouTube alone, and proved to be a massively successful campaign.
Skittles: Rotten Zombie Roulette
There is no better time for the candy industry than Halloween, and in 2019, Skittles capitalized on this occasion by creating something wildly different. Skittles launched a brand new limited edition product called the “Zombie Skittles.” These skittles incorporated Halloween themed flavors into the traditional fruit flavors the brand is known for. However, Skittles incorporated a new “Zombie” flavor into the mix. The new flavor was intentionally repulsive and gross, Skittles used this as an opportunity to play on the classic “trick or treat” phrase that is associated with Halloween. Skittles developed a social media campaign to promote this limited run, called “#DareTheRainbow.” The objective was to challenge users to try this disgusting new flavor if they were brave enough, and record themselves doing so. This led to a ton of engagement with a vast number of people reviewing the product as well as tricking their friends into eating the zombie skittle. This campaign was a massive success that resulted in over 1.4 million impressions across social media.
LG: So Real it's Scary
LG does not scream “Halloween” to its audience, and one would question how could LG find a way to create a campaign in line with the spooky season? In 2012 LG introduced the “So Real it’s Scary” campaign, a creative marketing initiative that went viral. The campaign aimed to show the lifelike quality of their monitors. To show this, they set up a hidden-camera prank in an elevator. By replacing the elevator floor with monitors displaying an image of the floor cracking and falling away. Unsuspecting riders were shocked as they believed the illusion of the floor collapsing beneath them. The hidden-camera footage went viral, generating more than 10 million views within the first week on social media, sparking international media coverage. This campaign was a powerful example of how thinking outside the box, created one of the more memorable halloween marketing campaigns of the past decade.
Strange Mode: Lyft x Stranger Things
In 2017, Lyft partnered with Netflix’s hit show “Stranger Things” to celebrate and promote the upcoming release of their second season. The collaboration created an immersive experience for two days, On Oct. 27 & 28 in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Lyft created a “Strange Mode” experience for its passengers, creating an environment that mimicked what one would expect if they entered the “Upside Down” world, from the hit TV show. The experience consisted flickering lights within the ride, electronic glitches, and an other worldly encounter, that collectively gave passengers a thrill ride for the ages. This campaign showed how effective a partnership can be, in creating an immersive approach that can expand a brands presence beyond its own platforms. This collaboration provided one of the most original and thrilling Halloween marketing campaigns in 2017, and is still talked about to this day.
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Meet the Author
Erik Rudolph
Marketing Assistant Student Worker
Erik is a senior advertising student with a minor in communications, he also is a part of the MSJ 4+1 program at WVU. He is currently the marketing assistant student worker for the WVU Marketing Communications Graduate Programs. Erik loves the sport of boxing and works closely with a local boxing promotion in Morgantown, Real Fight Promotions, as a color commentator and a social media manager.
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Marketing Communications Today is a collection of resources for marketing communications professionals filled with industry research, marketing trends, and career information about integrated marketing and data-driven communications. Learn industry insights through the Marketing Communications Today blog, podcast, as well as Integrate Online.
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