Ghouls, ghosts and a whole load of pumpkins stole the show this week – all in celebration of Halloween, of course! While many of us use October 31st as a light-hearted excuse to dress up and eat copious amounts of sweets, it’s also a great opportunity to deliver frighteningly captivating experiential activation.
A campaign that highlights just how much fun brands can have around this time of year is an amusing stunt by Burger King that managed to get passers-by laughing and feeling scared at the same time. Job well done!
The fast food chain playfully covered one of its restaurants in Queens, New York, with a giant take on the classic white bed sheet ghost costume – cutting two holes for eyes which revealed its famous logo.
But the fun didn’t stop there. Burger King riskily painted the famous golden arches of its rival on to the sheet, scrawled McDonald’s in big letters for all to see, and then produced eerie smoke which poured out of the restaurant. The result: a very spooky ‘Ghost of McDonald’s’.
To take the joke that one step further, it had a light up sign that said “Booooo! Just kidding. We still flame grill our burgers. Happy Halloween.”
We like the simplicity of this campaign, which uses experiential to enable Burger King to differentiate itself from its just-as-popular rival in tongue-in-cheek fashion – while ultimately getting across its key USP of flame grilled burgers.
We’ve seen other brands create successful nod to the competitor stunts to great effect. Last year, Microsoft employees memorably sang carols outside of rival and fellow tech giant Apple’s Fifth Avenue store.
Both examples are simple, entertaining and get people talking.