Best & Worst Halloween Marketing Campaigns

Spooky season is almost upon us, so it’s a good excuse to dive into the digital depths and resurrect some scarily good (and a few shockingly bad) Halloween marketing campaigns from yesteryear. 

Take a look, and you might uncover some inspiration for your own website to give your website traffic and sales figures a bump (in the night). Need a marketing partner to take your strategies to new heights, not just for Halloween but all year round? Choose ICAAL. 

Bloody Good Ketchup 

In 2021, Heinz unveiled a temporary rebrand of its classic condiment, changing tomato ketchup to “Ketchup Blood”. Pairing its striking red packaging with a bloodthirsty redesign was a match made in heaven (or the other one), and it made customers take a fresh look at an established brand on supermarket shelves. 

Good marketing isn’t afraid to overhaul its branding, even for a small part of the year – and even something as recognisable as tomato ketchup. Most companies wouldn’t want to be associated with blood, let alone a foodstuff, but Heinz embraced its blood-red packaging and demonstrated savvy self-awareness to stay ahead of the competition. 

Monstrous Marketing 

IKEA is world-famous for its furniture and for getting its products – and its name – into everyone’s homes. So for Halloween 2023, the Swedish giants (of their industry, not literally) swapped meatballs for monsters with their “Monsters Not Included” campaign. 

On paper, suggesting to parents that your child’s new bedroom wardrobe might be full of creepy crawlies and nightmarish horrors isn’t the best marketing strategy, but it works. It creates an emotion, and that’s what encourages customers to engage with a campaign and to really think about you and your products. 

Your Mileage Mayo Vary 

We won’t pass judgement on whether this one is good or bad, because it’ll really depend on your own tastes – for the campaign, and for your sauces. Heinz (who are clearly on the ball when it comes to Halloween, as this is already their second entry on the list) recently unveiled Monster Munch Mayo through a partnership with Aldi. 

Frankly, given how love-it-or-hate-it it was, it may as well have been Marmite, with some customers appreciating the novelty while others seemed pretty appalled by the concept (a slight overreaction for what is still just mayonnaise. The difference between this and Heinz’s ketchup campaign was stark: rebranding something everyone already loves vs creating something new to tie into the spooky theme. But you can’t please everyone. 

King of Clowns 

In 2017, Burger King started their Scary Clown Night campaign, which featured (yep, you guessed it) lots and lots of clowns. This in itself is pretty scary, as anyone suffering from coulrophobia will be sure to tell you. But there’s a cheeky extra meta layer when you remember the mascot of their main competitor, who probably wasn’t lovin’ it.

The promotion encouraged customers to visit their local store dressed as a clown, with the first 500 people who turned up bagging themselves a free burger. It’s a whopper of an idea – so good that they brought it back several times since. Clever marketing takes something seasonal, sprinkles it into their own brand, and if they can make a sideswipe at the competition, then even better. 

Although, given the widespread fear of clowns, it wasn’t without its critics.

What Goes Up 

Sometimes, things get a little too real when you mess with people’s emotions. Like with Burger King and clowns, LG promoted their new hyper-realistic screens by installing them in the floor of an elevator. When the lift was full, the monitors showed the floor tiles cracking and falling away into the lift shaft. 

The passengers were understandably scared, and the prank caused genuine panic. LG received plenty of criticism for the “prank”, which was a far cry from dressing up in a silly costume and slapping on some ketchup as fake blood. There’s a fine line between funny frights and traumatic experiences that’ll leave you scared for life, and not even the HD TV screens could make that clear enough. 

Digital Marketing Campaigns for Halloween 

You’ll want to tailor any digital marketing strategies so they closely align with your brand. Not everyone can completely rebrand like Heinz or set up an elaborate elevator prank like LG. But finding small, clever ways to tie in to the spooky season is a great way to show your customers that you’re relevant, fun and that there are real people behind the website. 

It could be as simple as a themed social post; dressing up in the office and sharing a pic on social media (although maybe not as clowns); or a clever tagline that connects with the cultural zeitgeist. 

Whatever it is, make sure your digital marketing makes the most of topical trends and seasonal goings-on to grab your customers’ attention and turn it into visits and sales. Need marketing support that’s scarily good? Talk to ICAAL today.