13 Halloween marketing campaign ideas to make your audience tremble with fear
New: Discover our ideas for Halloween 2021
Well, it’s no news: the spooky season is a special time for marketers. Every year, brands spend millions and use their creativity to find the best Halloween campaign that will blow their fans’ minds.
Why not choose interactive marketing this year? To help you find inspiration, we’ve got a host of innovative campaigns to boost engagement, drive action and make your consumers tremble with fear. We’ve put together 13 interactive marketing campaign ideas and real examples from big brands to help you get ready for Halloween.
[Sensitive souls refrain…]
The tasty puzzle
What would be Halloween without candies? Nothing! Set up an interactive puzzle with your own image in minutes and challenge your audience to solve it.
What about you? Will you manage to finish the puzzle in less than 1 minutes? 3,2,1…let’s go!
The authentic UGC
This year, involve your consumers and give them the opportunity to speak by generating authentic UGC.
1. Halloween means original and super scary costumes. To make your UGC even more authentic, encourage your consumers to dress up their dog, cat or any other pet they have and share their picture online for a chance to win a special prize!
2. Halloween means pumpkin season! Launch a UGC inviting your community to pimp their pumpkin by engraving your own logo on it. An original way to increase your brand awareness while giving your audience an exceptional challenge.
3. Halloween also means scary stories, bouuuuh. Imagine a writing contest in which participants would have to invent the continuation of an horror story you made based on an image, a video, a song, a text or even a GIF.
The creative shell game
What Center Parcs did: from 21 to 31 of October, Center Parcs launched a shell game campaign. Three doors were displayed on the screen and participants were invited to click on the door they believed was holding the prize. Each time they played, the prize was placed behind another door so it could go on forever! To participate, players had to fill out a form with their contact information and an opt-in for Central Parcs newsletter was also offered.
The amusement park contest
You’re not the only one to dress up for Halloween, amusement parks also like that! Have you ever been in a haunted park? It’s super scary and crazy! The Belgian supplier of electricity, Lampiris, made a partnership with theme park Walibi and offered its consumer the opportunity to win 4 tickets for…a night in the park!
The horror test
Everyone love personality tests, that’s a safe bet. Invite your participants to find out the role they would play in a horror movie, how they would die, the costume that best matches their personality, the Halloween creature they are, etc.
Even better, use branching to make a more personalised test or a sudden death quiz, excluding participant as from the first wrong answer, to add more suspense to your test. And you, how long would you survive in a zombie movie? Take the test!
The horror movie swiper
If you are working in the movie or entertainment industry, what about a battle or a swiper between two or more horror movies? Ask your participant to choose the movie they would love to see at your cinema to collect preference data, retain and engage them better!
Memory around the world
Halloween is one of the world’s oldest holidays and is still celebrated today in a number of countries around the globe: Mexico, Ireland, Canada, the United States, etc. Take advantage of this opportunity and challenge your audience’s general culture with a memory!
The bewitched rebus
Imagine a rebus to increase your virality and drive engagement! Turn the text of your choice into a fun little picture puzzle and ask your audience to name the words represented. Here is an example for Harry Potter fans ?
The musical quiz
Create your own spooky blind test campaign by adding music samples to your quiz or contests. Invite your participants to listen to pieces of music or watch a video clip and find the artist, the title of the song, a missing word, either among the given proposals, or by typing the right answer. For more challenge, add a time limit! You can put as many questions as you want in your quiz and/or display them on a single page.
The haunted checklist
Engage your users with a simple and playful format: the checklist. Participants are invited to check the elements they agree with among a list of suggestions. At the end of the list, depending on how many boxes were ticked by the participant, a personalised message appears, which can then be shared on social media.
The ghost labyrinth
Halloween also means also holidays. You can generate special Halloween discount coupons to add to your interactive campaigns and reward users who participate or create a contest to win a trip on a paradisiac Island. If you are working in the tourism industry, this period might be an excellent opportunity for you. Express your creativity!
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