What's your brand being for Halloween?

Welcome back to Digital Gravity 💪

Every Friday, we share strategies to help you grow your business with content marketing and reach ‘critical mass’ in the great online game.

This week, Katie shares her take on Halloween marketing

Enjoy 👇

🎃👻 Trick or treat and tips 👻🎃

By Katie Conover

Halloween is my favorite time of year.

The trees change color, the weather gets chilly, (Reese’s Cups are pumpkin-shaped)… and most importantly, there’s an air of silliness online.

Everyone knows about festive marketing during December, but the best marketing I see is in the sweet spot between back-to-school shopping and the Christmas/Hanukkah Holiday Rush.

It’s the most creative time (for marketing) of the year.

People get weird with it.

In the Airheads Decoy Boy ad on YouTube, Airheads finds a solution to the problem of aging out of trick-or-treating. 

Adults can now use a Decoy Boy robot to act as their child, and viewers of the ad have a chance to win it for themselves.

The comments on the ad were entirely positive, with one commenter stating: 

It touches on nostalgia, on people’s love for Halloween, and the explicit weirdness that some (me) crave in their advertisements. 

Halloween isn’t tied to strict rules or traditions. You can throw a curveball at your audience and surprise them with how inventive you can be. 

And you don’t need to be a brand tied to candy like Airheads or Gushers (who made a full-on short film this year) to get artistic this month.

Other campaigns I saw this year were from Heinz (Halloween-style) Mayo,

Clash Royale’s skeleton/ organ donation collab,

and my personal favorite, Xfinity’s Frankenstein Commercial, which showed Frankenstein’s monster learning how to speak through TV shows and fast internet.

This one also had mostly positive comments.

These ads are full of so many creative liberties that they feel fun and enjoyable to watch.

That’s the magic of Halloween marketing. It’s fun!

And you don’t have to set up your video camera to be part of it. 

Your Halloween campaign could implement countdown timers, referral programs, themed bundles, or free gifts.

You can even go crazy with your email subject lines:

 Something along the lines of “No tricks, just treats: 20% off costumes!” or “Don’t ghost these Halloween deals!” or other personalized messaging.

The idea is to simply make your viewers/listeners smile and share.

It’s a great way to grab the reader’s attention, and let them know that you’re a halloweener too. And that you’re fun and can be imaginative.

Audiences need to know you’re human, too.

So don’t be scared…

Use this spooky season to your advantage.

–Katie