October is here, and that means one thing – Halloween! Yes, it’s time to get spooooky and harness this horrible holiday and ghoulish event to supercharge your marketing campaigns.
If you’re looking to get inspired, you’ve come to the right place – as here we’ve compiled some of the best Halloween marketing campaigns out there for your viewing pleasure.
How to harness Halloween to boost your business sales
You don’t have to launch a specialist product or promotion for the Halloween ‘holiday’ – but given that UK consumers spend an average of £270 million around Halloween (and a whopping £474 million in 2019 alone), it’s well worth getting into the seasonal spirit and making the most of this popular period. This huge retail event can help businesses of all sizes to boost sales – so the benefits are not limited to huge corporations.
Some ideas include:- Coming up with a creative social media campaign
- Promoting a Halloween-themed promotion or offer
- Creating shareable or downloadable content with a Halloween theme
- Running a Halloween competition
- Launching a limited edition spooky-themed product or packaging and promoting in the run-up to Halloween
Our pick of the 6 best Halloween marketing campaigns
Take a look below at how these big brands made the most of this haunting holiday with some creative and highly engaging marketing magic.
ASOS
ASOS’ dwindling fortunes in recent years have been much-publicised in the fashion and e-commerce industry – but their 2020 Halloween-themed marketing campaign was a large part of their strategy aimed at turning things around. For that year’s Halloween season the brand utilised Gen Z social platform Tik Tok, using a network of carefully selected influencers who showcased Halloween-inspired looks (ASOS derived, of course) with their followers. In each video, the influencers seamlessly transitioned from their normal, casual day-time get-up into frightening fashion ‘fits, much like a werewolf gets instantly hairy and angry under the light of the full moon. As a result of their efforts the global brand experienced massive and incredibly fast growth within their target market, particularly in the UK. In total the accompanying hash-tag #ASOSDayToFright received over 2.8 billion views to date. Phew. Or should we say, BOO!
Heinz
For those of you too young to remember purple Ketchup (it was a thing, honest), Heinz has staged several semi-revivals around Halloween time in recent years. In 2020 it dressed up its standard Ketchup bottles with a devilish ‘Tomato Blood’ design. The marvellous marketing of what is essentially exactly the same product was highly influential and significantly boosted sales – it went viral on Tik Tok and Instagram, engaging young consumers in particular. Heinz repeated the campaign in 2021 and is bringing it back in 2022 along with a plant-based message to tap into the growing vegan market – signalling this spooky condiment’s simple yet effective recipe for success.
Skittles
Skittles are well known for their imaginative and memorable campaigns, and their viral 2019 Halloween campaign was no different. Tapping into the trick or treating, Skittles launched their Rotten Zombie Flavour Roulette as a limited-edition product. The freaky flavour combinations included delicious Blood Red Berry and Mummified Melon, with disgusting Rotten Zombie thrown in to repulse unsuspecting sweet-lovers. The #DareTheRainbow challenge went global and overall experienced huge success.
Skittles relaunched the campaign in 2020, resulting in another 1.4 million impressions across the brand’s social media channels.
Burger King
Burger King is well known for their out-there, influential marketing campaigns – and their 2017 Halloween creative was no different. As part of #ScaryClownNight, the giant fast food chain offered free Whopper burgers to the first 500 customers who visited (selected) stores dressed as a clown. To top it off, the accompanying campaign promoted the Whopper with ads trolling competitor McDonalds, featuring a scary clown and tagline ‘Come as a clown, eat like a King’, alongside a spooky YouTube video ad.
Marmite
Cleverly, Marmite makes no secret of the fact that the taste of its gooey black spread divides public opinion. Riding on the success of their ‘love it or hate it’ campaign, Marmite’s 2018 Halloween campaign introduced special edition ‘Trick or Treat’ packaging designs available throughout October. This creative marketing trick is simple, but effective – over 67% of consumers agree that when choosing a product to purchase they are significantly influenced by the visual appearance of what they are packaged in.
Fanta
Fanta usually goes all-out for Halloween with spooky product launches designed to exploit the novelty factor to the max. Their creepy creative campaign in 2019 didn’t disappoint – complete with scary new designs and a limited-edition Dark Orange flavour, which was totally black in colour. This followed their equally successful spooky sales drive in 2018, which featured Snapchat filters and two new flavours. According to Coca-Cola GB’s Customer Marketing Director Simon Harrison, in 2018 the company’s profits grew by a whopping 23% during Halloween – demonstrating the motivation behind their big campaigns and proof that seasonal marketing can be highly effective. Need professional help to get those creative juices flowing and harness the benefits of Halloween marketing and seasonal campaigns?
Ready to step into the future with us? Speak to us today about your creative project at: hello@candymarketing.co.uk
