2020 has been a year of cancelled events and disappointments for kids. On Halloween, that disappointment would only grow. Due to stay at home orders and COVID-19 safety concerns, there would be no trick-or-treating, no parties, and no haunted houses. Talk about a scary Halloween.

To save the day, parents were desperately looking for a fun AND safe way to celebrate the holiday as a family without having to leave home. Netflix, as the leader in home entertainment, wanted to help.

Netflix Haunts Your House is a multi-lens mobile A/R experience on Snapchat that turned the inside of every house into a haunted house—filled with family-friendly Netflix characters.

Our target was parents. To learn their concerns around Halloween during the pandemic, we did social analysis and studied mommy blogs. We found that the two main topics of conversation were keeping their kids safe and happy/entertained during the holiday.

Also, we dug into our parent demographic (Male and Females, 25-45) on Snapchat. Snapchat’s estimated monthly reach was 25M and on a regular basis 85% of their demographics time was spent on the lens carousel. This made Snapchat a great place to reach our target. me on the lens carousel on a regular basis.

We partnered with Snapchat to deliver a story-driven A/R scavenger hunt. Prior to Halloween, parents were given Snapcodes to put around the house via a website (NetflixHauntsYourHouse.com), and then on Halloween Day, they joined their kids to find and unlock them,

The experience had a narrative. On Halloween night there would be a rare blue moon, a global event that hasn’t happened since 1942, so to add cultural relevance, we created our story around the moon. The blue moon also served as our spooky yet friendly narrator. At the end of the experience, kids were even rewarded with what they wanted most: lots of candy.

To get the word out we relied on mommy influencers and blogs. We also leveraged Netflix social channels and created relatable memes featuring moms like Joyce from Stranger Things and Moira from Schitt’s Creek inviting people to participate.

The Halloween experience launched on Halloween Day. We received a total of 150K organic snap views and 201k total snap uses. Our lens time spent was 28% more than average.