Halloween marketing: Pumpkin spice up your brand
Here at ROI Media Works, we not only work in marketing, we love it too. That’s why we’re going to bring you a list of the best seasonal marketing campaigns we’ve seen every month. In this edition of Pumpkin Spice Up Your Brand, we’re going to take a look at Halloween marketing, which can be seen to wear many different masks hats.
Halloween was last week. Like many of you, we’re still powering through the remnants of leftover candy from that night. We trick-or-treated the digital way while we ate, finding a collection of Halloween marketing campaigns. Like chocolate bars, they come in many different types.
One of the first types we saw are known as Easter Eggs. These are defined as cosmetic changes that a consumer was not expecting, but serve as a treat for them. For example, Snapchat included an Easter Egg for those who use the Snap Map feature. The more traditional map colours of green and blue have been replaced by the topical black and orange in addition to some other treats. As we wrote, Snapchat is using contemporary advertising techniques to stand out amidst heavy competition in their industry. Halloween marketing is just the latest example.
Whereas for Snapchat this is an example of a way to stand out, Halloween marketing is vital for a company like Mars. For Mars, and it’s collection of subsidiary candy offerings, this is crunch time for their fiscal year. Cue “Bite Size Horror,” a quartet of short horror films presented by the company. Not only does this work through fear – scaring people is as Halloween as Halloween gets, after all – it works on an advertising level. Mars branded the films and “Bite Size” relates to both the length of the film and the iconic small bars handed out to Trick-or-Treaters. This is, albeit loosely, inbound marketing. Something your business can easily do. The next time you’re creating an advertising campaign, try to tell a story.
Telling a story is exactly what Landwirth Legacy Productions did in a PSA they put together for Halloween. Telling a story helps bring the human element to advertising. Connecting with consumers at an emotional level is a key part of seasonal marketing campaigns like Halloween Marketing, as you may recall. Have a look for yourself:
Think about how you could bring these ideas to life in your business. Inspired by what you read and want to create a seasonal marketing campaign for yourself? We can help! Drop us a line at hello@roimediaworks.com.