Transfer over, pumpkin spice. Orange soda is right here to say its spot because the true drink of spooky season.
“Halloween must be to Fanta what Christmas is to Coke,” Ibrahim Khan, world vice chairman of selling for Fanta at The Coca-Cola Firm, informed ADWEEK because the model launched its biggest-ever world promotion across the event.
In partnership with Common Photos and indie horror manufacturing store Blumhouse, Fanta will deliver 4 horror icons, together with Chucky, Freddy Fazbear, and M3gan, to cans in additional than 50 markets, together with the U.Ok., U.S, and India, within the run-up to Oct. 31.
In honor of the vacation, a brand new taste, “Chucky’s Punch,” has additionally been launched to Fanta’s line-up. QR codes on the aspect of the cans supply followers entry to unique content material and experiences themed across the characters, stopping at nothing to get their fingers on Fanta.
The tie-up shall be amplified via retail advertising and marketing and a mixture of paid, natural, and influencer campaigns on platforms together with TikTok. Broadcast will characteristic in some markets, with a stay occasion deliberate in New York Metropolis.
Bringing Fanta again to life
The Common partnership follows Fanta’s Halloween 2024 Beetlejuice collab with Warner Bros.
Khan stated Fanta has activated round spooky season for nearly a decade, however in a “very fragmented means.” Final yr’s effort marked the primary time the model ran a worldwide marketing campaign.
“It was massively profitable, it didn’t simply deliver the lifeless again to life, it introduced our enterprise again too,” he stated. “So it’s no shock we wished to construct on that this yr.”
“Halloween as a competition is turning into insanely massive and world,” added Khan, even in markets the place it’s not a standard second within the calendar.
Per knowledge from the Nationwide Retail Federation, Halloween spending within the U.S. hit $11.6 billion in 2024.
Khan stated the “teen-centric” vacation was turning into “very massive and really core” to Fanta’s model technique.
His mantra, “Halloween must be to Fanta what Christmas is to Coke,” highlights how the model desires to cement itself on the heart of the vacation, constructing anticipation for its annual marketing campaign in the identical means the sister model does with its well-known “Holidays Are Coming” Santa spots.
The expertise period
Embedding advertising and marketing into Fanta’s bodily product via scannable codes was an intentional transfer geared in direction of thirsty Gen Z and millennial shoppers, stated Khan.
“As manufacturers, we don’t maintain the mic anymore; the times of placing a 30-second spot on TV and having a captive viewers to talk to are gone,” he added. “Our audiences now maintain the mic.”
For Khan, gross sales would be the “final KPI.”
“If we aren’t capable of develop the enterprise throughout that Halloween interval, I don’t suppose we may have achieved our core goal. That’s the purpose,” he stated.
Fanta additionally desires to construct affinity with Gen Z.
“Final yr, the response on social took us abruptly,” Khan stated. “This yr, we hope it takes us abruptly once more.”
Coca-Cola doesn’t escape Fanta’s earnings, however the model is among the many soda large’s portfolio of “billion-dollar manufacturers,” producing over $1 billion yearly.
In Q2, Coca-Cola’s revenues surged 58% year-over-year, reaching $3.81 billion for the quarter.
