Halloween digital spend gets scary!
Is Halloween getting scarily big for brands? With the UK spending an estimated £275m on Halloween in the last year, retailers and brands are pulling out their prize pumpkins to try to capture consumers’ attention.
A Scarily Good Time For Search
Halloween search has risen 49%, on YouTube searches have jumped 103% year-on-year, with videos being viewed over 2bn times and ‘how to’ videos proving most popular.
Tesco have capitalised on this, creating content showing how to have the perfectly petrifying Halloween, from pumpkin carving and fancy dress ideas to homemade decorations, all linking back to a Spookfest microsite and supported across social media.
Vexing Video Content
Tesco also produced its Spookermarket, a hidden camera video shot in store. Shoppers were treated to gooulish butchers, possessed shopping trolleys and severed hands in freezers. Whilst the thrills were tame the shoppers did seem genuinely surprised and the video has already racked up over 12m views across Facebook and YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqWeuBJfxsQ
YouTube has also been used by ASDA to create a virtual reality house of horrors online with Google 360 for extra spookiness, along with a dedicated microsite and Halloween Party shop in shop. More frightening campaigns include Candy Kittens producing a scary Shoreditch vending machine, and online estate agent House Network offering the world’s first ghost free certification service to home buyers via its site.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51CRt7QagMo
Treats Getting Tricksy
Of course Halloween is all about the treats and the sweet manufacturers have risen to the occasion, with Swizzles teaming up with Manchester artist Mark Kennedy to create a mosaic of its Facebook fans biggest fear (spiders) from wrappers and lollies.
Proving that Halloween marketing starts early these days, Haribo’s social channels have been taken over with Halloween since the 7th October with a never-to-old to trick or treat campaign, mixing memes and video content to tie in with their TV campaign.
An American Horror Story
As ever, though, with Halloween it seems the Americans still do it best, with Google launching Frightgeist, monitoring trending searches to show the most popular costumes in your region and Target’s Treatster where users up-vote houses giving away the best candy (a great way of winding up your Halloween hating friends).
But Halloween isn’t just for kids, as proved Wine matching app Vineo who have released a Candy and Wine Match Maker, no longer will you have to wonder if your Snickers goes better with a Shiraz or a Chardonnay.
Trick or Treat?
With Halloween these days, somewhat scarily it seems brands and retailers either ‘go big or go home’ with an empty sweet bucket. The days of a frightful Facebook post or tricky tweet are dead, it seems brands need to dig much deeper to unearth the audience.
We’ll be sleeping with one eye open for the next few days keeping an eye out for any spooky shocks as the night gets closer…