Halloween is the UK’s fastest growing retail event, but no soft drink targeted it. Our goal was simple- to make Fanta as well-loved at Halloween as Coca-Cola is at Christmas.

In 2017, Fanta’s award-winning VR experience Fanta: The 13th Floor helped the brand achieve record sales growth. Repeating success is tough, but it’s crucial to building long term brand growth. In 2018 we needed to cut through competitor noise, be more impactful, more memorable, more Instagrammable and above all, more terrifying than ever before. So in 2018, we needed to reimagine our Halloween Fanta strategy.

Today’s youth have grown up in a world of unprecedented societal change and upheaval. With real-time earnings in decline and future prospects tough, they value more than material goods: experience and connection (Ipsos Mori research).

Success lay in harnessing these audience needs… along with one more thing: FOMO! In a digital world where your social status is dictated by where you’ve been, snapped and double-tapped, we set out to add in (and capitalise on) ‘fear of missing out’. By giving our customers enchanting experiences and captivating content, we could infiltrate their newsfeeds and lives.

Welcome to The Fanta Twisted Carnival: a travelling, immersive Halloween show of thrills and chills!

The walk-through experience would pop up at various destinations around the UK, such as Thorpe Park (already famous for its Halloween Fright Night) and Westfield London (the largest shopping centre in Europe, attracting nearly 1 million visitors per week). We were to create free, unforgettable Halloween experiences for a demographic who desired exactly that- and were itching to share it. Every exhibit was to be brilliantly Instagrammable and would go far beyond scaring only those who visited.

We wanted to create mass reach - and mass terror - amongst our audience. Through social and influencer content, the experience could visit people wherever they may be. We created a Snapchat lens and portal which recreated the physical experience virtually, allowing us to reach our target audience and play on their desire to share.

Imagine it, if you dare: Pitch darkness. Terrifying sounds. ‘Flies’ buzzing around your head. Something brushes past you. A screaming vending machine ‘prisoner’ emerges. All this, but no blood, gore or zombies – the dread of this experience lay as much in the minds of the visitor as in what they could see.

Visitors were guided by our eccentric Master of Ceremonies, faced with curiosities such as the Perilous Pit and the Pickled Mystery (in which you could display your own head in an orange pickling jar!).

We leveraged social to terrify people at scale. Video content of brave visitors was shared, and we also invited YouTuber Joe Tasker and infuencers from LadBible to explore and film their own reactions, driving real engagement across our social channels.

We complemented the nationwide immersive event with a Snapchat Portal and Lens, allowing users to interact with a virtual replication of the experience.

The Fanta Twisted Carnival led to another year of strong growth for Fanta. It beat their first year in the Halloween arena, elevating the brand’s cultural relevance.

• We reached 84% of 16-24 years olds with 25 opportunities to see per person

• New drinkers were attracted to the brand, with value share and volume share increasing by 1.8% and 0.39%

• 1m more unit cases sold than the previous year (equivalent to 16.5m cans), a 19% increase in sales YoY

• Penetration increased by 2.4% for out-of-home consumption and 0.9% for in-home consumption

• Over 8,500 people experienced the Twisted Carnival in 2018 (an increase of nearly 20% year on year), with people queuing for over two hours

• Content was viewed over 10m times on social platforms, our Snapchat lens receiving the highest playtime ever seen by Snapchat in the UK: 35”