Our 5 best examples of Halloween-themed content marketing

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It’s the first of November, which can only mean two things. Christmas is 54 sleeps away and Halloween has been and gone for another year.

Halloween or Hallowe’en (also known as Allhalloween, All Saints Eve or All Hallows Eve) isn’t nearly as big in the UK as it is across the Atlantic. However, like the Black Fridays & Cyber Mondays the American festive periods and holidays are slowly creeping into British Culture.

Halloween should be a key date for any marketer and should be treated in a similar fashion to Christmas or Easter. Over the last few years, there have been some great examples of content marketing efforts from global and UK based brands. Likewise, there have been some pretty terrible examples of brands jumping on the Halloween bandwagon in an effort to engage with an ever-increasing digital audience.

One example that springs to mind for the latter is US-based fast food chain Arby’s #TrickorMeat campaign from 2014. The hashtag is a bit suspect, however, it WAS a free bacon promotion so I guess we can let them off this time.

1. Airbnb’s Halloween Night in the Paris Catacombs

This was a campaign first run last year but was rebooted for 2016 with a slightly different twist. For Halloween, Airbnb offered a competition for visitors to win a night amongst the 6 million skeletons that fill the Paris Catacombs’ expansive tunnels ). Complete with a “real bed”, private concert with dinner and breakfast in bed.

2.  SPURS vs ZOMBIES | Halloween 2016

Remember House of the Dead? The Sega rail-shooter game, not the film released in 2003 starring Jonathan Cherry scoring a very kind 2.0 on IMDb.

Let’s replace the infamous House of the Dead pistols with footballs and the eerie setting with Spurs training ground. Still not making sense? Just watch below:

Some of the premier league teams have really upped their game when it comes to digital marketing. Obviously taking notes from the years of success Manchester City have seen with their digital marketing efforts.

With many of our team members being Arsenal supporters, I’m no doubt going to get terrorised for featuring Spurs. But I thought this was something different and pretty cool.

3. Tesco Halloween: Introducing Spookermarket

Last year, Supermarket giant Tesco rigged one of its stores in a Halloween theme for unsuspecting customers with jumpscares and ghost-controlled trollies dubbing it the “Spoookermarket”

Disappointed there’s no feature of “cereal killers” or “sandwitches” though. I’m sorry.

4. Ford’s Haunted Car Wash

Another video entry aimed at scaring members of the public with a pop-up haunted house – this time, in a car wash. Ford invited passengers to get a car wash and then surprised the unsuspecting drivers with meeting members of the undead. 1.8 million views in 2 years? Not bad for a piece of “branded content” eh?

5. M&M’s “Dark Movie Challenge”.

This is now a decade old and was created even before the term “content-marketing” had be dubbed. 10 years ago M&Ms released a digital game in the form of a 15^th-century painting. This required users to identify visual references and surreal riddles from 50 classic horror films.

This content also incorporated a timer adding to the challenge, encouraging users to compete and revisit. It was dubbed as “Dark Movie Challenge” making this highly relevant to the brand since it announced it was making dark chocolate a permanent product of its line.

This is no longer live, but thanks to WayBackMachine/Internet archive you can still play it today.

So that’s some of our favourite Halloween-inspired content marketing examples from the last few years. Got a favourite that deserves an honourable mention? Tweet us at @MintTwist and we will feature some of the best.

If you’re interested in ramping up your businesses content activities or are looking to develop a digital strategy that brings in results, get in touch with us here.