Leveraging our target’s behavior, we set out to scare them where they spend the majority of their time – online and on their social channels. The scare tactic took the form of Cookies and re-targeted banner ads. Brands will find you with gentle reminders of what you need to buy to make your life complete. Because SVEDKA thrives in the realm of irreverence the wheels were put in motion to use this technology to our advantage. The idea was to be very transparent that the brand was stalking its consumer target with an open display of how we were using data to track every single one of them. We were creepy yet, irreverent. If you look at some of the best modern horror work, such as “Scream” or “Get Out”, it manages to scare its audience while also making them laugh. This campaign walked the same line.

The SVEDKA Banner Curse was born: Innocent vodka drinkers are ‘cursed’ with a Cookie and get continuously haunted and followed by creepy retargeting banners for the duration of the campaign.

Like where people were, if they were up late, or on their phone or tablet, if they were watching a video, or in private browsing mode. Banners were also triggered by what people posted on social. Meaning, if people talked about the wrong vodka, or posted a pic of their Halloween costume, they got served a banner ad that called that out.

To break the curse, people had to visit the SVEDKA site and spread the curse.

The campaign drove SVEDKA to its best Halloween results ever.

1. Drove baseline gains by 41% for brand favorability and 14% for purchase intent vs. YOY

(Source: Kantor Millward Brown SVEDKA Phase 3 Report, 2017)

2. YOY Halloween campaign traffic to the site increased 4x over last year

3. Campaign engagement of sharing content (‘the curse’) from the hub increased over 10x during the two-week campaign period vs. YOY 

4. Overall CTR: 0.47% vs. an industry benchmark of 0.10%