Halloween invites creativity and oddities in marketing campaigns

Halloween may just be over, but for CPG brands who rely so heavily on holidays, the costume-laden festivities make Halloween the third largest holiday behind Christmas and Easter. Several brands used the opportunity to release innovative marketing campaigns, often using social media channels to create an interactive environment with consumers.

Target heavily leveraged Instagram, a favorite channel of the brand, to highlight the DIY spirit of the holiday and to create an extension of the in-store marketing push. Specifically, they had a virtual neighborhood of “Halloween Hills” with 15 taggable images that took users to different profiles – “tricks” linked to crafts and “treats” linked to themed recipes. Overall there were 30 tutorials and 300 photos for the campaign. Knowing that pet costumes are of particular interest, Target even leveraged Like2Buy from Curalate to allow followers to purchase the costume worn by Bullseye, the store mascot.

Crest, not normally a brand associated with Halloween, took to Twitter and developed videos that spoke to the realization that kids will bekids and candy will be eaten. Yet at the end of the day, Crest has their teeth covered, so that parents ultimately don’t need to worry. In the video kids in costumes are treated to endless amounts of candy, with the expected outcome of a room full of hyperactive little monsters. Video stills and short clips were also distributed via Twitter.

Through the “Oreo Laboratorium,” social media followers wereinvited to suggest names for the “nomsters,” choosing different winners on different channels. Oreo utilized Vine and Instagram (with its own account at @OreoLab) to share stop-motion videos of the transformation of the plain cookie into the Halloween-themed creature. Halloween is a fun holiday that invites creativity and has less boundaries than Christmas and Easter in particular, and it’s clear marketers took advantage of the opportunity to push some of their odder ideas.