OUR TOP 5 HALLOWEEN CAMPAIGNS OF ALL TIME.
It's that time of year again - it's dark by 6 pm, the condensation on the car is the bane of my life, it's cold and wet, and even the dog is miserable. But it's not all doom and gloom because, in just 2-sleeps, it's Halloween, one of my favourite dates of the year. And yes, that is because I like to dress up, watch Hocus Pocus, decorate my house in tacky hanging spiders, and yes, I'm pro pumpkin spice latte - but that's not the point. The point is -
Halloween is a marketer's dream - a springboard to get creative.
Every year opportunity is abundant to reaffirm your proposition and solidify your differentiation. It can be a tactile, a chance to boost revenue or just a delightful and exciting experience for your customers. When they're fun, fearless, and considered a part of your overall marketing strategy, creative Halloween campaigns can become a pillar of your marketing calendar, connect with your audience, and bring your brand front and centre of mind.
Anyway, showing is always better than telling. So here are our TOP 5 HALLOWEEN CAMPAIGNS OF ALL TIME (in no particular order, of course).
Burger King - SCARY CLOWN NIGHT (2017)
This one is bound to appear on almost every best Halloween campaign list, and rightly so. #ScaryClownNight was executed exquisitely by LOLA Mullenlowe in collaboration with the then Global Head of Brand Marketing for Burger King, Fernando Machado. And this is why it worked so well.
Burger King knew that Halloween was one of their most substantial opportunities to stand out against competitors, make noise, and bring their brand front of mind. They also knew that with the release of the 'It' film in September 2017, the character Pennywise was back as a cultural icon. Trends and insights supported their theory that this was a global phenomenon to leverage. So it was the perfect opportunity to troll their arch nemesis mascot, Ronald McDonald the clown, by bringing a fun, creative, spooky, trend-led campaign directly to their customers.
But it didn't stop there. Burger King knew its goals - to drive traffic to their restaurants, raise its profile, increase their share of voice and push consumer engagement. So they kicked off on 24th October with a push-out invitation to their customers in the form of an 'It' remake, referencing the globally trending film with Ronald McDonald reimagined as Pennywise.
So, what was the message? Come to their restaurants on Halloween night dressed as a clown in exchange for a free whopper.
It was simple, captivating, on-brand, and uncomplicated - a clear call to action for an audience embracing convenience and an on-the-go culture. The activation also reinforced Burger King as a community, with exclusivity surrounding the teaser invites - if you know, you know.
They then followed up by leveraging both new-wave and old-wave media, from the press and social to out-of-home and in-restaurant activations, to form an expertly crafted campaign which achieved virality in a heartbeat.
There was a bold, innovative, and, most importantly, thorough and well-thought-through strategy for this campaign. As you would expect from a global powerhouse like Burger King, this wasn't just an off-the-cuff promotion piece. #ScaryClownNight was, and still is, a masterclass in executing a seamlessly integrated and flawlessly creative multi-channel campaign. It was built on the grounds of a clear intention and goal, contextual relevancy for the times, and sealed with a customer-first approach, all to deliver a measurable outcome.
In the end, the campaign achieved global recognition, a place in the history books, 2.1 billion earned impressions, 1100 article mentions and a media value of $22.4 million. That is not bad for a mostly organic campaign!
2. BOOKING.COM - HAUNTED HOTELS (2013)
This one gets nowhere enough love as it should.
Haunted Hotels by Booking.com and Wieden+Kennedy was, and is still is, a genius Halloween campaign. It struck all the right chords and used a simple idea, combined with jaw-dropping creativity and a seamless roll-out across all platforms and mediums, to capture global interest and attention.
Back in 2013, it was uncommon for travel providers to leverage Halloween as an opportunity. It famously falls post-holiday and pre-Christmas, so it's usually a quieter period for travel activity. But the team behind this campaign understood that Halloween presented a huge opportunity to drive brand awareness, cement their positioning, and engage customers in a new and innovative way.
Like any great campaign, the mission from the onset was clear - Booking.com wanted to position itself as a mainstream platform with hugely diverse hotel rooms and stays, offering over 350,000 options across the globe. They also wanted to tie this in beautifully with the Halloween season and create a stand-out and thought-provoking campaign with a solid message. So, Haunted Hotels was born.
The idea was simple - a campaign promoting just seven eerie and famously haunted hotels across the US.
But instead of making this broad claim, they made the audience draw this conclusion themselves. Of course, promoting just seven hotel rooms was a very niche target for such a global brand, but that's because selling out seven hotel rooms, or even promoting their horror-lovers proposition, was never really the goal.
You see - by appearing to speak to such a niche category so directly and by promoting such a small proportion of its vast offering, Booking.com positioned itself as a mass appeal platform.
Through this campaign, customers saw that Booking.com had a few haunted hotel rooms available - the perfect staycation for a horror film lover or a fright seeker. Therefore, customers automatically draw the subconscious conclusion that Booking.com must also offer their ideal hotel room or stay. Whatever their hobbies, interests or location, there must be a perfect category for them. Therefore overnight, Booking.com cemented itself as the go-to platform for all weird and wonderful niches, all people and lovers of all things. The perfect example of a brand going after the few to attract the masses.
So what was the campaign? How did they achieve it? Well, it was a straightforward idea:
Haunted Hotels was a spooky and haunting film-trailer-style video combined with retro haunted movie-style posters.
Everything was linked to a dedicated campaign landing page to encourage site activity and exploration.
They collaborated with Fandango to infiltrate horror film and cinema screenings to guarantee the arbitrage of the right audience at the right time.
What made this campaign genius was its fearless attitude, fantastic creative flair, and the fact that Booking.com didn't hold back - they had a simple idea, a vision for the creative direction, and they went at it with boldness and bravery. They completely and utterly embraced the horror-movie world, and embodied every element of the genre.
Overall, an exceptional example of a brand daring to be different.
3. THE CONSPIRACY PALETTE LAUNCH - JEFFREE STAR COSMETICS (2019)
You may not call this a campaign as such.
Still, there's no denying that this was, without a doubt, an unbelievable story of how two YouTube influencers leveraged a superfan community, a documented video series and their customer's buy-in and involvement in changing the landscape of content marketing forever.
This magic mix resulted in one of the biggest makeup product launches in history, sold over 1 million makeup palettes and generated $35 million in sales in 30-minutes. Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson achieved what powerhouses like Loreal, Estee Lauder, and the like could only dream of, and they did it all using just organic content and their owned channels.
If that isn't impressive, then I don't know what is.
To give you some background, back in 2019, Shane Dawson was a big YouTube content creator. He produced long-form documentary-style videos that usually followed or documented one person's journey, specifically, a fellow YouTuber from a specific niche. Meanwhile, Jeffree Star was also a YouTube content creator. Still, he specialised in beauty and makeup, and his videos usually centred around product reviews or promoting his makeup brand, Jeffree Star cosmetics. Together, they formed an unlikely friendship. Shane Dawson was seemingly quiet, introverted, a conspiracy theorist, and a documentary-lover. In contrast, Jeffree Star was a wildly controversial, loud, designer-clothes-loving, multi-millionaire makeup mogul.
In 2019 Shane Dawson announced his latest YouTube documentary and his unexpected intention to launch a makeup collection collaboration with Jeffree Star. That announcement alone blew up the internet and immediately made their audiences stop and take notice. The documentary would be a 9-part series and document the entire process of creating, launching, and promoting a makeup line. From the formula testing, colour selections and branding to the manufacturing, packaging process, and negotiations with top retailers. It was a 9-hour commercial, but it did something completely different and pioneered a new form of marketing that brands are rushing to replicate even today.
They followed the classic 'They ask, you answer' formula for content. It was clear that the makeup and beauty business was shrouded in mystery for years. With more and more beauty influencers launching their brands, collections and collaborations with beauty conglomerates, their audiences were asking questions like - how hard can this be? How much money are they making off this? How long does the process take? What goes on behind the scenes? Well, Shane and Jeffree answered all these questions in a no-holds-barred documentary series which felt raw, authentic and entirely for the audience, and it all seemed to be happening in real time. It made their audiences feel bought in and a part of the process.
Shane's public image and personality also had much to do with the launch's success. He wasn't a beauty influencer, but he felt relatable and like one of us. He was filming his journey of going from nothing to something - taking on a challenge to achieve his dream. The audiences supported him, wanted this to succeed for him, and felt inclined to invest in any way they could
The Conspiracy collection launched on 1st November 2019, and it crashed Shopify, bringing one of the biggest hits of traffic to their server that they'd ever experienced. Overall this was a genius marketing campaign, with a final media value of around $54 million.
The Conspiracy palette launch is a true example of what can happen when you challenge the norms, tell a compelling story, build a real emotional connection with your audience and cut through the noise.
4. SMILE (2022)
Now, here's something more current for you.
Marketing a film is an anomaly. Ultimately, there is only one goal: get as many eyes on your film as possible and get them to the cinema to see it. It's quite a simple end and requires a different style of approach.
Smile debuted in cinemas to roaring demand and recently surpassed $100 million at the box office, making it a #1 movie. The epic horror film has gone viral all over the internet, and the results are apparent in the numbers. So, what did they do, and how did they do it?
Of course, they implemented all the usual movie marketing tactics, but what took it to the next level? Actors were standing in the background of random events with creepy smiles on their faces. Yep, that's it.
The creepy photobombing campaign was so effective for a few reasons. Firstly, it stood out and cut through the noise. 2022 has been a massive year for horror films, and with Halloween fast approaching, the abundance of scary movies was growing by the minute. So Smile, and the team at Paramount knew that they had to do something different to capture attention and get eyes on their film.
Secondly, this strategy played perfectly into the storyline of the film. Smile follows the story of a therapist, Dr Rose Cotter, who witnesses a patient's suicide and endures some weird occurrences. The most terrifying is creepy people smiling at her wherever she goes; as the film progresses, this smile becomes an omen for bad things to come. It's a story of someone starting to feel like they're losing their mind. So, what better guerilla marketing strategy than to place these creepy smiling actors in the backgrounds of actual public events to make people feel like they just might be losing their minds?
Finally, it was the perfect tactic to achieve internet virality almost overnight. Immediately viewers in the US spotted these creepy smilers and posted about them on mass. They appeared in the backgrounds of The Today Show and Yankee games. The content was bizarre, sharable, sparked conversation and was even unsettling for some, which spread it far and wide in a matter of hours.
Overall the results and the film's success speak for themselves. It was a case of going one level further to capture attention and win hearts and minds, building momentum, delight and fright for its audience and doing something daring that worked - fast.
5. Ikea Singapore - THE SHINING (2014)
Leaving one of my favourites until last, back in 2014, Ikea Singapore released a 90-second remake of The Shining, perfectly renditioned and shot in their famous and immediately recognisable Ikea store.
The perfectly crafted ad released just in time for Halloween recreated the famous scene from The Shining, which follows little Danny Torrance as he tricycles through the haunted corridors of the Overlook hotel. Then, the creepy twins appear in the hall, staring right back at him. It's a culturally iconic horror-movie scene and is immediately recognizable to almost everyone.
In this reimagination, we see the child whizzing around an Ikea store in the dead of night until he's met with his mum and dad dressed as the Grady twins. The child covers his eyes, frightened, and then reality snaps back in, and the parents beckon him to carry on shopping in a light and bright, busy Ikea. The closing message? Late-night shopping, shop with us until 11 pm, and happy Halloween.
Ikea encouraged customer engagement by launching a competition in correlation with the ad release, asking their audiences to screenshot all The Shining references they could spot in the video for a chance to win big. The ad captured the same eerie, haunting and uneasy feeling as the original film once did and still does.
So, why did this work so well? Ikea has fast become as much of a marketing genius and iconic brand as Coca-Cola and Apple. Their strategy is undoubtedly all about being original, distinctive and imaginative at every point. Ikea creates an experience, not just a product, and this ad is the perfect embodiment of that - creating a harrowing, engaging and spooky experience for their customers just in-time for the scariest day of the year.
So what can we learn from these five masterful campaigns?
Halloween can be a real opportunity if it's approached in the right way. It isn't a date to just be overlooked, but a time of year to be leveraged with fearlessness and imagination.
Make it culturally and contextually relevant. Tap into global trends, focus on virality, and understand the impact of speed and hitting it at the right time and places.
Have clearly defined goals. Know what you want to achieve from your campaign, and ensure every element feeds into the outcome you want to see.
If there's ever a time for jaw-dropping and astonishing creativity, then Halloween is it. Mediocre won't do, so set high standards for your creative output.
Engage your audiences and community. Allow them to get involved and get creative in that approach.
Use all channels, platforms and tools at your disposal. Don't run something social or email only; think about how you can create maximum impact by fully integrating your campaign across all channels.
Don't be afraid to go niche.
Tell a compelling story and challenge the norms. Be brave, bold and fearless in your strategy and commit to it.
Every campaign should feed back into your brand values. So acid-test everything rigorously against your core brand story and never stray away from that.
Make it measurable, if you can.
AND SMALL BUSINESSES AND BRANDS CAN DO IT TOO.
It's easy to get overwhelmed when looking at case studies from some of the biggest brands and voices in the world today. But all these lessons apply to every business, no matter how big or small. Focus on the theories, not the vast numbers or the staggering results. The possibilities are endless if you follow the lessons set by the big brands and get a comfortable understanding of why and how it works.
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