Dive Brief:
- Coca-Cola brand Fanta celebrated Halloween with an immersive escape room experience Fanta Presents Flavors That Thrill at Escape Entertainment in New York City on Oct. 25, according to a news release.
- The event featured Eva Gutwoski, an influencer, author and member of The Fantanas, the brand’s mascot song-and-dance group. Fans had the chance to solve challenges and puzzles in the Fanta-inspired escape room with clues that focused on specific Fanta flavors.
- Fanta also unveiled Halloween-themed, limited-edition cans, featuring designs by artist Ty Mattson of a vampire, mummy and werewolf. The characters appear on packaging for Fanta Orange, Fanta Strawberry, Fanta Pineapple and Fanta Orange Zero, which are available through Oct. 31, and the brand promoted the editions on social media, point-of-sale and outdoor advertising. Consumers can use their smartphones to scan the sip & scan icon on the packs to uncover character animations at Fanta.com and enter codes to unlock free FandangoNOW movie streams.
Dive Insight:
The colorful and stylish limited-edition cans with iconic Halloween characters and social media, point-of-sale and outdoor promotions could help Fanta boost brand awareness and drive sales during an increasingly important holiday. This year, consumers were projected to spend $9 billion on Halloween, according to the National Retail Federation, the second-highest in the survey’s 14-year history.
Experiential marketing is becoming a go-to tactic for brands seeking ways to engage with consumers in real-life situations through immersive, memorable and unique experiences. The events usually feature interesting branded visuals that inspire selfie-taking and social media posting. Fanta’s Flavors That Thrill experience aligns with that trend, and the brand is the latest to jump on the escape room trend. Mars candy brand Snickers also unveiled an “intense” escape-room style pop-up in June to celebrate the release of three new limited-edition flavors. Visitors completed challenges to receive a “flavor diagnosis” that identified the new flavor to help them “ward off intense hunger.”
Fanta also released an experiential Halloween-themed campaign last year. The soda brand unveiled a four-minute elevator ride at Westfield mall or Thorpe Park in the U.K. that leveraged virtual reality, sound, lifelike rumbling and whooshes of air to create a 4-D experience that simulated an elevator breaking down and stopping at different floors. Consumers could also experience “Fanta: The 13th Floor” via 360-degree video online.
