Top 5 Halloween Marketing Campaigns for 2015
Halloween weekend is nearly upon us and its impending arrival has led to some frightfully good marketing campaigns from brands. This week we have unearthed some of the best that have caught our eye.
1. Target – The House on Hallow Hill
Target have launched this year’s Halloween campaign by getting creative with technology and creating a new interactive app. Users are invited to use their smartphone to enter ‘The House on Hallow Hill’ with a 360 degree immersive view that explores the corners of cobwebbed rooms as you tilt and turn the phone’s screen. You can choose from four different rooms to explore, and of course shop the contents of the video for anything that catches your eye. Have a go at using the interactive video online below and take a tour of the haunted dining hall.
2. Snickers – Hungry for Halloween?
Snickers has raised the bar for pumpkin carving this year with a new advert featuring master pumpkin carver, Jon Neill. As we watch Jon drag a dustbin bag through a moonlit field we think we might be witnessing a murder, but prepare to be impressed as he empties the bag and starts to carve some gruesome pumpkin heads. He finishes by placing a bite size snicker bar in each ghastly pumpkin’s mouth, fitting in nicely with the Snickers tagline ‘you’re not you when you’re hungry’.
3. Airbnb – The Catacombs of Paris
For perhaps the ultimate scare, Airbnb is offering the chance to win an overnight stay in the spooky catacombs of Paris. Home to over six million dead in the world’s largest grave, the lucky (?) winners will get a private dinner, concert and even breakfast as well as the exclusive chance to become ‘the only living person to wake up in catacombs’.
This rare and creepy opportunity to stay in the catacombs has certainly grabbed media attention, whilst also triggering considerable controversy with those who view it as a desecration of the graves. Applicants must write 100 words explaining why they are brave enough to survive the night in the (probably) haunted catacombs.
4. Tesco – Introducing Spookermarket
Tesco’s latest campaign ambushes unsuspecting supermarket shoppers in their worst shopping nightmare. The amusing 90 second video uses hidden cameras to capture customers surprise as they navigate the hidden tricks of the supermarket. Ghostly shopping trolleys move of their own accord whilst ghoulish butchers jump out from behind the counter, offering lucky shoppers a severed hand mixed in with their meat.
The video has managed to eclipse 10 million combined views across Facebook and YouTube in less than a week, and prompts viewers to watch different Halloween clips where they can learn to make Halloween themed crafts.
Have a look at the full frightful video:
5. Starbucks – Frappula Frappucino
Starbucks has embraced the Halloween season this year with its own vampire themed Frappucino. The wittily named ‘Frappula’ has caught the attention of many on social media and gained popularity with those who want a new alternative to the pumpkin spiced latte.
The drink starts with a dark layer of mocha sauce at the bottom, followed by whipped cream and a white chocolate mocha core. Raspberry sauce is drizzled around the edge of the cup giving the gruesome dripping blood effect and finally topped off with whipped cream. Simple but effective, this ‘fang-tastic’ frappucino is available for one week only and has a great eye catching design.
