Halloween-themed campaigns: more than just pumpkins

Destination marketers in the US look forward to the busy Halloween weekend, but elsewhere others are finding ways to adapt local tradition. Andrew Hennigan reports

Though the American-inspired commercial Halloween of pumpkins and witches is not celebrated everywhere, destination marketers address a global market. As a result, most make some effort at least to recognise the holiday, though the way they do this varies quite considerably.

Take Iceland. It does not have a Halloween tradition but like many places around the world this is changing. More people are dressing up as witches and most grocery stores have started stocking pumpkins in October; this was unheard of four or five years ago. Taking a cue from this global shift, Iceland Travel has found a way to unite the popular Halloween with authentic local traditions.

“Our audience is from all over the world so we need to find a way to make something that will work for everybody, something that connects the theme with the destination,” says Guðrún Helgadóttir at Iceland Travel. “We don’t have bats, wolves, werewolves, mummies or walking skeletons in Iceland so the Americanised Halloween doesn’t really work here but what we do have is a rich tradition in storytelling.”

Iceland has many folk tales about ghosts and in recent years people have been collecting and publishing modern ghost stories. Since Iceland is very dark in the winter months and the landscapes so mysterious to outsiders it isn’t hard for people to let their imagination run away with them.

“Our plan this year is to focus on Icelandic ghost stories, writing a Halloween blog and using social media to drive traffic to our website,” explains Helgadóttir. “We will visit the ghost centre in Stokkseyri and shoot some short videos for Vine and pictures for Instagram. This will be featured on Facebook as well so that all media is in sync.”

Iceland Travel is also monitoring the reaction to these social campaigns to weigh interest in Icelandic ghost stories with a view to organising ghost-themed tours in future – a curious example of how social media can work both ways.

Feeling the heat

But this approach doesn’t work for everyone. On the other side of the world, Tourism and Events Queensland (TEQ) will mark the holiday with some themed posts on Facebook and Twitter, though this is mostly for the benefit of audiences elsewhere. 

“Halloween isn’t a widely celebrated holiday in Australia like it is in North America,” says TEQ’s Kate Duffy, “so we rarely co-ordinate a special campaign at this time.”

Australia in October doesn’t have the same natural spookiness of Iceland, for example, so they tend to focus more on other things like sun, beaches and diving.

“Australians don’t really care about Halloween but we are used to seeing it in our newsfeed, especially as internet has made world more global.”

Unsurprisingly in the US, where Halloween is a major holiday (and big business), plans are more ambitious.

Halloween sells itself

Jeff Guaracino, Executive Director, Atlantic City Alliance

Airbnb is following their own tradition of organising a real-world Halloween themed event to drive traffic to their website and to create themed content for their digital campaigns. This year the company is giving two lucky – or unlucky, depending on how you look at it – customers a unique opportunity to spend a terrifying night 65-feet underground in the Paris Catacombs, the ancient cemetery under the city that is home to millions of skulls and bones.

To win this unusual experience, consumers were invited to visit the Airbnb listing for this property and tell the host why they are brave enough to spend a night in this creepiest of underground graveyards. After a private tour of the catacombs, guests will enjoy dinner to the sound of violins; then at bedtime a storyteller will read them some catacomb legends.

While the Airbnb campaign looks like an excellent way to drive traffic to an online property, in the real world not everyone is convinced that this kind of effort is necessary. Atlantic City Alliance is running a two-week social media campaign around Halloween trips to the city.

“Halloween is on a Saturday night this year which will make the US’s second biggest holiday in terms of spending, behind only Christmas - a real win for destinations,” says Jeff Guaracino, Executive Director at the Atlantic City Alliance.

Atlantic City is using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for their Halloween campaigns.

“We are seeing that Instagram is taking over from Facebook as our primary social channel around hot current topics like Halloween,” says Guaracino. “But otherwise we don’t plan any social promotions or ad buys around the campaign. Halloween sells itself”.

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