Clever Halloween Marketing Campaign Ideas

Now that back to school season is well underway, the next big focus before Christmas is Halloween. In 2016, Britons were expected to spend a record £310 million on Halloween, and our friends over the pond in America were expected to spend a cool $8.4 billion (yes, with a ‘B’) on Halloween. Halloween is a fun time of year for marketers to get really creative with their brand as many companies spend millions of pounds for the top marketing campaigns. We want to show you a few of our favourite Halloween campaigns that have been successful in drawing in customers and getting creative.

Ford’s Car Wash (2014)

Ford got very creative when they offered people money to let them take their car for a free wash at a local place, however once the unsuspecting participants were in the car wash, the lights would shut off and spooky things would start happening. The ad went pretty viral and it’s difficult not to see why – you’ve got candid footage of people getting scared and it’s pretty entertaining. We recommend a watch.

Snickers Horseless Headman

Year after year, Snickers have released fantastic Halloween campaigns. Their most popular one to date seems to be the Horseless Headman, which was funny, original, and probably inspired a fair few Halloween costumes.

LG “So Real It’s Scary”

In 2012, LG created a video campaign where they claimed that their monitors have ‘lifelike colours’. In order to convince their audience, LG installed a grid of monitors on the floor of a public lift and filmed the reactions of unsuspecting riders when it appeared to fall beneath them! It’s safe to say that people really jumped! The video format of this campaign was really effective in actually showing potential consumers the effectiveness of LG’s product whilst also having a lot of creative fun. Further, it was different to the usual Halloween campaigns where there are zombies, blood and other spooky scares – it actually seemed realistic. And yes, people afterwards really could agree that their monitors with ‘lifelike’ colours were legitimately true.

A Scary Night Away with AirBnB

If someone offered you the chance to stay for one night in the Parisian Catacombs, would you say yes? Even if you knew that it is an underground ossuary holding the corpses of over 6 million people? AirBnB literally told people that it is a “sprawling maze littered with skulls and bones”. People had to enter with a reason as to why they are brave enough to handle the challenge, with two winners chosen. I think we’ll pass…

What do you think? Were these campaigns a trick or a treat?