Halloween has become a key sales occasion of the year for Fanta and an increasingly important date in the social calendars of its core teen target in Spain.

Fanta wanted to own the night of Halloween in Spain and engage its Gen-Z in a disruptive, meaningful and fun way.

The original brief was to help promote its limited-edition Halloween product which has now reached over 52 million themed cans distributed in over 30,000 points-of-sales across the country.

To stand out in the crowded media landscape with a disruptive and innovative format that would surprise the target audience and resonate with them during one of the most dates of the year for both them and the brand. We wanted to engage Gen-Z through an authentic tone-of-voice, speaking to them on their terms using people they could identify with, whilst reinforcing perception of Fanta as a playful fun-living brand.

A live digital event blending the languages of cinema, reality TV and YouTube, and broadcast live on Twitch, curated and crafted for a Gen-Z audience.

Our key ingredients for this Netflix-style production were a fun yet frightening cinematic script with the brand subtly woven into it, a Halloween themed venue, actors, a famous streamer as MC to elevate the action and interact with the online audience, a group of influencers as the protagonists, and a 20-camera set-up to film all the action.

One year an abandoned hotel the next a haunted house, our hybrid venue blended the functions of film set, maze-like escape room and physical consumer experience.

Movie-style teasers and influencer content and were used pre-event to generate interest and build conversation, with cliffhangers, previously unseen footage and an ending decided by the audience through social listening used to maintain engagement post-event and keep Fanta relevant all throughout Halloween.

Using owned and 3rd party tools, our media and audience research showed that Spanish Gen-Z are Europe’s biggest users of live streaming. 2 in 5 watch live streams on a weekly basis. Among the live streaming and content platforms we identified Twitch as the most popular with some of the Top 10 streamers worldwide being Spanish speaking.

These digital natives also look for authenticity and quality in the brands they trust and purchase from. Over 60% follow brands they like on social media.

They also regard influencers they like as trustworthy and relatable, hence are more likely to purchase a brand through an influencer endorsement.

These insights led us from an initial digital event designed to support the promotion of a limited-edition Halloween to a fully integrated strategy with has helped Fanta dominate Halloween audience figures and reinforce Halloween as an important sales period for the brand in Spain.

Fantasmagoric Night was initially planned as a single edition, but it’s impact and popularity were such that three more editions have been made. Moving from a singular content driven event to a fully integrated strategy built around an owned live digital event and activated through October to November has helped establish it as a disruptive Halloween format and reference event among Spanish teens.

Results:

- One of the first live events on Twitch in Spain created entirely by a brand.

-Average yearly live audiences of 90K

- Average yearly live peaks of up to 120K

- Approx. 500K accumulative live audience

- +58K Coke app downloads (Average 2022/23)

- +100K participants to win a visit to the consumer experience (Average 2022/23)

- +30M campaign impacts (Average 2022/23)

- 1M views in less than 24 hours (Average 2022/23)

- 52M Fanta Halloween cans distributed in POS (Average 2022/23)