6 Wickedly Clever Halloween Campaigns To Learn From

Key lessons to takeaway from the campaign

Invest in seasonal marketing:

Focus on dressing your app, website or creative content in Halloween costumes if you cannot launch new apps to help customers celebrate and make it a Halloween party! Add seasonal Halloween elements and Halloween decorations to your mobile apps, better yet! Add a small Halloween element to your app icon. This will help your app stand out amongst a sea of others occupying your customer’s mobile screen.

Focus on a smooth connected experience:

The brand made an app available when customers visit pubs and buy the drink so they can drive website traffic. They ensured that they have multiple touchpoints across different channels to keep their customer engaged throughout their journey.

Don’t treat it like a one-day event:

Halewood Artisanal Spirits’, business development executive, stated: “We are seeing an increase in consumers looking to celebrate occasions like Halloween for longer, meaning that it is becoming more than just a one-day event.” This also means, you as a brand marketer can let your seasonal marketing campaigns work for you longer.

Key lessons to takeaway from the campaign

Invest in Gamification:

Burger King’s in-app game discounts, influencer marketing, and Halloween parties led to 200K+ played games in two weeks and a 6% increase in new menu orders. More and more famous brands are investing in gamification to connect with their customers which garnered scary good results.

Connect offline and online channels to increase engagement:

Leverage an app to give customers more ways to interact with you and to reinforce your offers and messages at stores. Connect all digital and offline channels to make online offers easily accessible in-store. Make use of geofencing to promote in-store offers. The right approach to sustainable engagement is an omnichannel one.

Promotional discounts and coupon codes still work:

Creating promo codes and coupons on your seasonal campaigns draws shoppers to purchase from your brand and participate in the seasonal campaigns brands launch. During a period where cost of living has seen a huge increase, offering savings is a fantastic way for you to reduce consumer desire to look for alternatives.

Key lessons to takeaway from the campaign

Create interactive content:

Interactive content is a popular trend with millennials and GenZ who constantly refresh their social media feed to see what’s new . The first video was viewed over 2000 times and the fifth 17000 times. The brand was smart to jump in as an early adopter and test the ability to drive engagement over a period of time with an interactive story. A strategy that will make the content more memorable and raise brand awareness.

User generated content:

Including user generated content as part of your Halloween campaigns is a great way of ensuring constant engagement, which is what the Candy brand did! With the intense competition brands are facing brands have to stand out to be seen. As a result customers are more weary about brands they interact with, especially GenZ and Millenials. User generated content is a great way of building an authentic brand that your audieance is keen to buy from.

Focus on the distribution of your campaign:

The brand distributed and promoted these videos consistently through Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Promote your campaign on all the channels your customer is present on.

Key lessons to takeaway from the campaign

Use Push Notifications:
Push notifications are a great way to engage with customers. The channel offers marketers meaningful and effective ways of engaging with customers throughout their journey. For Halloween, most brands use push notifications to alert customers about sales and offers.
You can further optimise push notifications based on their behaviour, their activity on your website, their previous purchase and preference etc. With lockdowns being lifted and physical stores open, push notifications can also help you send location-based messages to your customers and drive them to your store.

Stay true to your brand identity:

With seasonal marketing, most marketers get carried away building breath-taking creatives and clever campaigns while their brand identity gets sidelined. It is vital that your Halloween marketing campaigns and messaging are not contradicting your brand messaging throughout the rest of the year.

Key lessons to takeaway from the campaign

Create virality:

The success of most marketing campaigns depend on how viral they become. Brands like Svedka Vodka create controversial ads to achieve virality. Other brands evoke emotions and use nostalgic messaging to appeal to customers on a human level.

Don’t cross the line:

The Svedka Vodka campaign could’ve easily been considered bothersome because of the constant ads the customer saw. Brands should strive to be sensitive when planning their marketing campaigns.

Key lessons to takeaway from the campaign

Influencer Marketing & Collaboration:

Collaborating with influencers and bigger brands is key to expanding your loyal customer base. “In 2021, the Influencer Marketing market in Europe seems to have already reached €10b – €11b with an expected average annual growth (CAGR) of 30% until 2025!” states a report from Quentin Bordage. With more and more companies realizing the importance of having an influencer marketing strategy in place, you’d be left behind if this isn’t part of your Halloween marketing plan. How you collaborate with brands or work with influencers will depend on your goal. Some ideas for collaborating with them include guest blogs about Halloween special offerings or range, product reviews, Halloween lookbooks etc.

Key lessons to takeaway from the campaign

Seasonal App Store Optimization:

Updating your app’s product page or icon to coincide with specific events and considering seasonality in your ASO strategy can help drive more downloads. It can also help reengage old inactive users and provide app users with a new experience.

When you’re working on seasonally optimizing your app, ensure you keep the local market in mind. Keep in mind, whether the region you’re marketing to celebrates the event or not.