Acknowledging mobile as a shared family device, we created Sainsbury’s Halloween costumes interactive with Spooky Speaker - a free smartphone app for iOS and Android that brought kids’ characters to life in a spooky and unique way this Halloween.

The app used voice distortion technology to transform speech, simply by recording a phrase and playing it back in one of 6 spooky voices, complete with wonderfully animated mouths crafted with Poked Studio to match each of the costumes available in-store.

We promoted the app in-store through point-of-sale communications, as well as across Sainsbury’s social channels and owned print titles.

The results were scarily successful. Along with a 5* rating on the App Store, we achieved almost 40,000 downloads across both iOS and Android over a 3 week period. Considering the fact that 90% of branded apps receive fewer than 10,000 downloads, it’s safe to say that kids and grown ups around the UK were eager to get involved with Spooky Speaker.

The app generated over 90,000 sessions, which averaged at 1.7 sessions per day per user, showing that most people opened and used Spooky Speaker more than once.

The majority of downloads came within the 35-54 age bracket, indicating that our app was relevant to parents who shared devices with their young kids.