Don’t let Halloween Marketing creep up on you this year
Spooks and ghouls, and things that go bump in the night… There’s plenty of things that will leave you quaking in your boots over the Halloween period, but a poor marketing strategy shouldn’t be one of them.
Halloween is now our fourth most profitable seasonal event in the UK, after Christmas, Easter and Valentine’s Day, with an average spend of over £600m in 2022. And its growth has been rapid. In the ‘90s and early 2000s, Halloween was still seen very much as a US import, but since the start of the Twenty-Teens, we’ve seen a massive upswing in Halloween’s popularity and people’s willingness to buy into this spooky season. And it’s not just the essentials - pumpkins, fancy dress, and sweets - that have us opening our wallets, but all things autumnal and seasonal, from pumpkin-spiced coffees, to autumn-themed candles and ‘fall’ home décor.
With this in mind, it’s worth considering how your brand is approaching this Halloween, and whether your Halloween marketing strategy is more profit-raising than hair-raising. Here are our key marketing ideas for Halloween 2023:
Know your audience
Halloween is very different to lots of people; the over 50s still see it as a US import and have less engagement, whereas ‘millennials’ and ‘gen-z’ have enjoyed a more commercial Halloween through their childhood years so have continued engagement as adults. If your brand is reaching a particular demographic, consider how they are likely to respond to your marketing and whether you need to tone down the Halloween theming in favour of a softer, more autumnal angle; if you cover a wider scope of age ranges, have the option to ‘opt out’ of Halloween-themed marketing so as to not turn-off older customers.
Are you selling, or just joining in?
Halloween is a great revenue boost for brands and products, but sometimes it can feel like brands are over-stretching the theme to seem relevant. That FOMO leads to weak marketing and poor engagement. Sometimes less is more, and if you really don’t have a great selling point, then just join in! Customer engagement doesn’t always have to be a hard sell. Join in with a giveaway, or a fun competition, or some strong brand messaging for likes, rather than trying to shoehorn an unrelated product into some weak advertising gimmick.
It's the most PUN-derful time of the year!
Spook-tackular puns are eerie-sential for a ghoulish Halloween strategy. The more, the better. Halloween has become synonymous with puns and wordplay. Whereas most of the time marketeers would suggest steering clear of overly corny and hackneyed phrases, at Halloween you can pull out all the stops and really throw those puns and clichéd phrases around. Have pun with it!
Don’t be scared to stray from your colour palette
Halloween is very visual, with a strong emphasis on black, orange, and green. If these are your brand colours, then great. But if they’re not, don’t be afraid to shake it up for a few weeks. Strong, established brands often add a Halloween colour scheme for extra marketing clout. Take the ‘Scream Egg’, for example – Cadbury’s were brave enough to take their iconic Crème Egg, with its red and yellow branding, and change both the wrapping and the actual product, adding a green fondant yolk and changing the foil wrapper to black and green, to create an exclusive product that is only ever on sale over the autumn period. In recent years, cake producer Mr Kipling has also got on board, changing the name, packaging, and decoration of some of their more iconic cakes to fit a Halloween theme. Dressing up is all part of the fun, and that goes for your brand, too.
Keep it tasteful
Remember, horror isn’t for everyone, and it can be an easy misstep to go from camp and corny to gruesome and gory. Keep it light and fun, and conscious that online or in reality, you might come into contact with younger audiences and vulnerable individuals. Keep the disembodied heads and gut-gobbling zombies for home and stick with family-friendly as a good tide-mark.
If you’re interested in upping your Halloween marketing strategy this year, then why not get in touch and see how we could help. With photography, CGI, design, copywriting, and post-production professionals on hand, we can scare up your best Halloween campaign yet.
