Coca-Cola
- Coca-Cola’s Fanta is going big on Halloween with a haunted house with Universal and Blumhouse.
- It’s the latest example of how it’s using Halloween as a way to get to Gen Z.
- Fanta wants to be to Halloween what Coke is to Christmas.
This Halloween, horror fans will be invited to a live experience from Coca-Cola’s Fanta, where they’ll be spooked by iconic scary movie characters like Chucky and M3gan and challenged to navigate a series of escape rooms.
The Haunted Fanta Factory, open nightly in New York from October 29 to 31, is the product of a Coca-Cola partnership with Hollywood studio Universal Pictures and its production partner Blumhouse. There will also be soda cans sporting movie characters, a limited flavor sold at AMC theaters, and other live events around the world.
It’s Coca-Cola’s second year of celebrating Halloween on a global scale. Coca-Cola has been leaning hard into Halloween as it tries to replicate the flagship brand’s long-standing association with Christmas. Fanta is the way in because it’s the company’s play for Gen Z, and Gen Z particularly loves Halloween.
“We are trying to make Halloween to Fanta what Christmas is to Coke,” said Ibrahim Khan, global VP of marketing at The Coca-Cola Co.
Halloween has become a big holiday for brands as people spend more and start earlier every year. The National Retail Federation estimated people will spend a record $13.1 billion on Halloween this year, up nearly 13% from last year, even with most people expecting prices to be higher due to tariffs.
Brands have had their share of missteps marketing around the holiday, from Dunkin making creepy spidery donuts to Heinz making an ad that some said took on racist overtones, for which it apologized.
Khan said his team was deliberate about making sure the campaign fit with Fanta’s image of being fun and lighthearted.
“We were also very deliberate about leaning into what we call horror comedy, not a sort of hard, gory, slasher kind of world,” he said. “And Universal Pictures and Blumhouse know this world significantly better than we do, and they kept guiding us along the way.”
Coca-Cola has been an early mover using AI in its marketing, sometimes to negative reactions. Khan said AI didn’t play a big part in this campaign, owing to its complexity.
“This campaign goes up in 50 markets simultaneously, millions of and millions of consumers, and thousands of associates touch it. I would be remiss to say that we are ready to take all of that on using AI right now at this moment,” he said. “Also, when we feel the capability is ready at our end, we will, 100%.”
Coke is trying to tap into fandom to be relevant to Gen Z
Leaning on Hollywood to court Gen Z might seem counterintuitive, given its apathy toward theater-going. But Khan says it’s more about tapping into people’s fandom, whether they’re actually going to the theater or not.
People are increasingly avoiding TV ads, and Coke and other brands know they have to be more creative when it comes to getting their message out. To that end, Coca-Cola has shifted spending from TV advertising to digital media and live events like this Halloween’s haunted house.
“In this day and age, where our ability to speak to a captive audience on a television set is gone, we have to find different ways of connecting with them, and social media is where it’s at, and product experiences are what they talk about,” Khan said. “So Gen Z may not go to the theater to go watch ‘Star Wars,’ but they will watch it or they will be aware of it, or they will have some connection with that icon in that IP.”
The Universal pact is also notable as the latest example of how the soda maker is using a full range of Hollywood studio IP in its marketing, rather than just one part as it has in the past. Earlier this year, Coke put out limited edition cans and bottles featuring dozens of characters from Disney’s “Star Wars.” Last year, it partnered with Disney’s Marvel on a TV spot and put characters like Captain Marvel and Deadpool on cans.
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