10 Inspiring “Scary” Halloween Marketing Campaigns

Halloween has long been an occasion for media to take advantage of creepy elements to incorporate into their creative marketing campaigns. Especially in recent years, as technology has developed, Halloween campaigns have become even more “scary” because brands have known how to take advantage of digital platforms to attract audiences in new and unexpected ways.

If you’re looking for inspiration for your Halloween marketing campaign this year, these 10 campaigns might help you find your inspiration.

10 “Scary” Halloween Marketing Campaigns That Will Inspire You

M&M’s: Millie & Max Campaign – Interact with Ghost Stories

For Halloween 2017, the popular chocolate Brand M&M’s let customers interact with its ghost stories every week on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram throughout October until Halloween. The ghost story Millie & Max consists of over 7 chapters and is told as a 30-second animated Video, and customer interaction will take place when they vote for 1 of 2 options proposed in the story scenario.

The story uses the basic plot of ghost movies, about a 15-year-old girl and her family moving into an old house on the West Coast and encountering strange images and adventures in her new house. Especially the image of M&M candy appears throughout as a highlight of the plot. In different situations, the girl Millie has to decide which direction or flavor of M&M to choose to overcome the challenge, and this is also the part that interacts with the audience.

Result: Interactive Storytelling seems to be a trend among young people, who often use smartphones for entertainment. On Facebook, M&M’s’ first video in this campaign only had 2,000 views, but the number increased to more than 17,000 in chapter 5 of the story. Although this interactive storytelling format is not widely applied and M&M is still in the testing phase, looking at the results, it can be seen that M&M’s storytelling method this time has made the content more memorable and increased brand awareness.

Burger King: #ScaryClownNight

Also in 2017, based on hot trends and customer psychology during the holiday season, Burger King’s “Scary Clown Night” campaign was born. This campaign is a Halloween party with the standards of “kings” specially prepared by Burger King for clowns with the invitation: “Come like a clown, eat like a king”

The highlight of the campaign is the invitation to Burger King’s party in the form of a 90-second video, converging all the elements of a short horror film, the main character walking alone at night, creepy clowns secretly following behind, urgent chase scenes. Among the clowns appears a very familiar character – McDonald’s clown Ronald is also rushing to Burger King to receive a free Whopper with his “accomplices”. This is considered a prank that Burger King aimed at its “traditional” competitor McDonald’s. Notably, at Halloween 2017, the movie “IT” with the content about a brutal killer in the guise of a clown was causing a fever on social networking sites. Even more coincidentally, the mascot of McDonald’s competitor is the image of clown Ronald. This is definitely a strong blow for its competitor and also an interesting topic for everyone to talk about.

Result: Perhaps, thanks to the subtle joke with McDonald’s plus the good trend capture and follow, the “Scary Clown Night” campaign gained more weight, helping this campaign receive 3 Gold Lion awards. Not only stopping at the award, Burger King also brought more practical results when the number of customers coming to the store increased by 21%, leading to a 15% increase in Sales; the keyword #scaryclownnight was mentioned in more than 1,100 articles in 40 countries; “Clown” became the “hottest” cosplay concept during the Halloween season.

Topshop: Experience the “weird stuff” in store

Ahead of the second season of the hit horror show Stranger ThingsTopshop has teamed up with Netflix to create a truly immersive experience for customers visiting the store, transforming its largest London store into a set from the show, including spooky highlights from the show such as Will Byer’s hideout, Joyce’s living room and Hawkins Lab. As well as exploring, visitors can purchase Stranger Things merchandise and learn more about upcoming episodes.

Customers have rated this as a must-see Halloween experience and if you are a fan of Stranger Things, this is the ideal event to prepare yourself for season 2 of the show.

Ahead of the release of the second season of hit horror series Stranger Things, Topshop has teamed up with Netflix to create a truly immersive experience for customers to visit (Video: Topshop)

Kellogg’s: AR Trick-or-Treat

Popular Australian breakfast cereal brand Kellogg’s has partnered with Shazam and Creative Agency Orchard to deliver a Halloween 2017 Trick or Treat experience on the AR platform.

Have you ever tried to dig to the bottom of a candy box or package to find a small toy or scratch card? And kids love it. Understanding this psychology, Shazam and Orchard came up with a great idea for Kellogg’s: Instead of expensive and environmentally unfriendly toys in the package, each package of Kellogg’s cereal will have a Shazam code, access to the website and receive a unique breakfast recipe from the Halloween season like Rice Bubble Bats good Coco pops skeleton,… This encourages families to celebrate Halloween with Kellogg’s food.

Buffalo Wild Wings: The Red Zone

The campaign of the famous American restaurant chain Buffalo Wild Wings is considered a typical example of accurately hitting the psychology of the target audience. Set in the context of two fiercely competing football teams in the US, the Florida Gators and the Georgia Bulldogs, attracting the loyalty of the fans of these two teams, during the Halloween season, what scares the fans the most is not ghosts but the fans of the rival team and this restaurant chain was very smart when integrating this psychology into the horror element of its Halloween campaign.

WD40: “Squeaky Door” Application

Most people don’t like the sound of a squeaky door opening and think it’s a bad thing, but on Halloween, it can be the perfect tool to cause a scare. WD40 has capitalized on this and has come up with a product that everyone wants to use this Halloween season: a smartphone app that turns any normal door into a creepy one when it’s opened.

Fanta: Snapchat Codes

Fanta’s partnership with Snapchat is one of the most clever recent integrations of a consumer product and Social Media. For a short time, Fanta launched unique Halloween-themed cans with QR codes on them. Scanning the code unlocked special Halloween-themed Snapchat filters, such as a creepy china doll shedding tears.

From the past until now, Coca Cola has always been the king in campaigns with unique design changes in packaging, and this time adding some fun to the Fanta can has further proven the intelligence and sophistication of the Coca Cola empire.

Harley-Davidson: Halloween Skull

The end of October is often mentioned for two reasons: first, it is Halloween and second, it is the end of the racing season for motorcycle enthusiasts and the time to take care of their vehicles. Therefore, the Harley-Davidson motorcycle parts company has launched a promotional poster for its products with the image of a skull constructed from parts of the legendary Forty-Eight sports car, both affirming the quality of the product during the Halloween season and making customers feel appreciative of their racing trips.

Bacardi: Dress to Be Free

Not all Halloweens have to have scary ghosts, this is Bacardi’s point of view in its Halloween campaign. As a famous liquor brand from Cuba with the typical slogan “live a meaningful life”, Bacardi has breathed its free and liberal personality into the campaign called “Dress to be free”. It is a Carnival-style festival in Brazil and Pantsula in South Africa that celebrates the spirit of self-liberation, living for the moments when we are happiest and freest. In addition, some costumes in the festival have been cleverly designed with the shape of a bat, the symbol in Bacardi’s logo. With its freedom and knowing how to take advantage of opportunities, this campaign has attracted a lot of participants and the brand has become more and more famous.

Svedka Vodka: The Cursed Banner

Finally, here’s a Halloween campaign from Svedka Vodka that marketers in particular will appreciate: After clicking on an online ad offering cocktail recipes, users are shown a video telling them they’ve been “cursed by Advertising hell.” The campaign also “scares” customers by using retargeting to deliver ads to its victims. It’s a great way to grab your audience’s attention — and actually scare them.

Conclude

These are 10 sample examples, but there are many more ways for you to be creative with your Halloween marketing campaign because this is an opportunity for countless interesting things for you to express and integrate your brand personality into it. Moreover, today we have countless technological gadgets that can support our “horror” ideas.