Halloween 2024: Our Favourite Marketing Campaigns
Thursday 31st October 2024
by Beth Perrin
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It’s Halloween today, the perfect time to share some of our favourite spooky social media campaigns and outline what your brand can take away from them in terms of seasonal marketing ideas. Halloween presents lots of opportunities for brands to promote their products and services in fun ways, and a chance to get creative with themed imagery, graphics and content, making it an important event to consider within your Q4 calendar.
UK consumers are expected to spend over £775 million on Halloween-related products this year (a significant increase from 2022 but a slight drop from 2023), with decorations, clothing, confectionery and other food items naturally being among the most popular choices. Gen Z and Millennial consumers are predicted to have the highest Halloween budgets, with both generations projected to spend over £40 per person - so if either of these age groups are within your brand’s target audience, a Halloween marketing campaign could be highly lucrative. Let’s take a look at a selection of great content from this year!
B&M: Halloween Cocktails
Discount retailer B&M chose to mark the occasion by sharing an Instagram Reel containing a selection of colourful and spooky cocktail recipes that feature a range of spirits, mixers and sweets that can be found in store. The hero product of the video is a limited-edition ‘Pumpkin potion’ that comes in a special light-up container, ideal for putting on display throughout the season.
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If your brand is in the food and drink or hospitality industry, sharing recipes is a fun way to engage your social media audience during seasonal events. This could either be in the form of an instructional graphic, a text post with a photo of the finished product, or a how-to video, which could then be broken down into bitesize clips for TikTok or Instagram Reels.
Don’t forget to encourage your followers to share photos or videos of themselves trying out your recipe and how theirs turned out - you could even combine this with a competition and give away a prize for the best-looking Halloween dish.
Starbucks UK: The G.O.A.P
Starbucks set out to find the ‘G.O.A.P’ (Greatest Of All Pumpkins) via a competition with an exclusive Halloween-themed £150 gift card as the prize. To enter, customers were simply asked to share photos and videos of themselves enjoying drinks from the brand’s iconic Pumpkin Spice range using the campaign hashtag #PumpkinSpiceYourWay and tagging @starbucksuk in their content.
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Competitions and giveaways are a great way to encourage engagement, new followers or UGC (user generated content), or to grow your reach and impressions - and including a campaign-specific hashtag is the best way to collect all entries in one place and generate a buzz surrounding your brand.
Sainsbury’s: Candy Salad
Candy salad - aka a big bowl filled with a mixture of your favourite sweet treats - has been a big trend on TikTok this year, with many videos under the #candysalad hashtag racking up over 10 million views. Sainsbury’s chose to jump on this trend for Halloween, sharing a video of a candy salad that’s perfect for trick-or-treaters and made using a variety of sweets from the brand’s own confectionery range.
@sainsburys We’ve all heard of the viral candy salad, but what if we made it spooky?🍬🎃 Using a combination of our Halloween sweets, it’ll be perfect for trick or treaters this Halloween! 🧡 We’ve used: 🎃Zombie brain mallows 🎃Messy monsters 🎃Fruity blood bites 🎃Fizzy jelly skulls 🎃Sour spiders 🎃Milk chocolate popping candy eyeballs 🎃Sour monsters What will you be giving trick or treaters this year?👇 #HalloweenFood #ViralFoods #HalloweenSweets #PartyFood #candysalad #spookyseason ♬ suono originale - 🫶🪐
This is an excellent example of ‘trendjacking’, which means monitoring each social platform for trending content, memes and pop culture moments, and finding a way to link that trend with your brand in some way. Trendjacking can either be done by simply leaving a humorous comment on a viral post in order to boost your brand visibility, or by creating your own piece of content based on the trend, like Sainsbury’s has done here.
Sainsbury’s: Dinner Party & Decor
Sainsbury’s also collaborated with food influencer Holly Dingwall (@foodieholly) to show customers how to host a Halloween themed dinner party featuring food and decor from the brand’s seasonal range, making use of Instagram’s Collabs feature to ensure the Reel appears on both parties’ pages.
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Influencer marketing has become a driving force in the social media landscape, with both big and small brands harnessing the power of relevant creators to ensure their content gets seen by their target audiences. Partnering with an influencer who’s a good fit for your business and has a highly engaged following can widen your reach, introduce newcomers to your brand, increase authenticity and generate tangible ROI in the form of sales and referrals.
Plus, with 69% of consumers agreeing that they trust influencer recommendations, you can rest assured that a partnership campaign will be a hit with your followers - especially during key shopping periods like Halloween and other seasonal events.
M&M’s x Ring Doorbell
M&M’s teamed up with Ring Doorbell to launch a series of special Halloween-themed ‘Quick replies’ which involve Red, one of the M&M’s characters, saying spooky lines through the doorbell speaker to greet trick-or-treaters if you’re unable to answer the door or need a moment to grab some sweets - such as “I don’t mean to ghost you, but I can’t come to the door!” and “Let’s see your most haunting howl!”. The replies can be set up with just a few simple taps in the Ring app and are only available for a limited time during the spooky season.
To announce the feature and demonstrate how it works, the brands shared a collaborative Reel on Instagram with a fun animation showing another M&M’s character giving it a try, and directed viewers to check out the link in their bio to learn more.
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Cadbury: Crafts & Charity
As well as sharing a fun craft project that shows customers how to transform their Heroes cartons into spooky glowing lanterns, Cadbury posted a tutorial for some chocolate finger spiders as part of its ongoing initiative with the National Deaf Children’s Society. Throughout the video, the brand shared top tips to make trick or treating more inclusive for those with hearing impairments so that everyone can take part in the fun, and directed viewers to visit the link in their bio to learn some Halloween-themed British Sign Language phrases.
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Almost half (45%) of consumers say they are more likely to buy from brands that have partnered with a charity - and brands with greater inclusivity in their advertising have a 62% higher chance of being a consumer’s first choice. This means it’s essential to focus on accessibility within your marketing and consider supporting an organisation that’s relevant to your business, whether that’s just for a single campaign or as a long-term partnership.
Poundland: Staff’s Favourite Picks
Poundland chose to get into the spooky spirit with some EGC (employee generated content) featuring a selection of staff members acting as brand advocates by showing their favourite Halloween items in store.
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Unlike in the past, where people were satisfied with very basic and direct messaging from companies, modern consumers are seeking more personal connections with brands and are much more likely to buy from people instead of faceless corporations. That’s why it’s a good idea for someone to be the face of your brand and appear in some of your social content, whether that’s you, your founder, or your team members like Poundland has done here. This will help you humanise your business and therefore make it more relatable and approachable to customers.
Poundland - Boo Bag on a Budget
Poundland was also mindful of the ongoing cost of living crisis, sharing a budget option for a ‘Boo Bag’ - a DIY bag filled with Halloween goodies that can be given to a loved one as a gift, or as a treat for yourself. The brand teamed up with lifestyle influencer Kara Southall (@theonlywayis_pink) who created a Reel showing viewers all of the spooky products they can find in store totalling just £5.
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60% of consumers believe that brands should show more sensitivity towards people’s financial struggles given the current climate and 53% say they are willing to switch brands to save money, so incorporating budget-friendly options, savings and discounts into your marketing strategy has never been more important, particularly during major shopping events like Halloween and the festive season where customers may be feeling the squeeze even more than usual.
Summary
Whether you’re hoping to increase your reach, engagements, followers or sales, we hope that the campaigns we’ve shared today have given you the inspiration you need to create some fun and impactful social media content for the spooky season next year. From competitions and giveaways that will excite and intrigue your audience, to DIY projects and tutorials that will encourage them to try something new, Halloween offers a chance to show off the lighthearted side of your brand and boost your connection with your followers.
Don’t forget we’re here all year to assist with Sentiment Analysis if you want to find out how people feel about your seasonal marketing campaigns and to learn which types of messaging generate the best results for your business.
