Halloween. You either love it or you hate it. You might spend hours carefully carving a face for your pumpkin or alternatively dressing up might fill you with dread. Still, there’s no denying that brands can use the 31st October as a great excuse to engage with their customers in creative and inspiring ways, both online and in store.

Brandwatch has taken a look at the activity of supermarkets, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Aldi, Lidl, Waitrose, Morrisons and Asda, around Halloween to see how successfully they have captured the attention and imagination of consumers.

Tesco beat its competitors by a huge margin, with over 3.5k mentions on social media. The chain’s success appears to have been generated by its “spookermarket” campaign, a video showing members of staff playing Halloween inspired pranks on their customers.

 

Sentiment analysis using Brandwatch showed that Morrisons received the least positive response in relation to the day. Some social media users seemed to think the brand was too keen to move on from Halloween before it had even begun. There were also complaints about mouldy pumpkins and the apparent permanence of its fancy dress costumes for children! Waitrose drew the most positive sentiment in discussions over Halloween with its #autumnwarmers recipe competition. Followers were invited to send in pictures of their best treats for a chance to win a £150 voucher.

 

According to Brandwatch’s findings, the majority of those discussing the Halloween supermarket spoils on social media were women (62%) and the top interests of authors were family & parenting (12%) followed by food & drink (11%).

 The brands that spent time creating content and offers inspired by Halloween saw frightening success on social media. There is a real opportunity here for brands to jump on calendar hooks and even though Halloween has traditionally been a phenomenon in the US, we are seeing more and more brands cleverly highjack the hook. Next on the calendar is Black Friday, so watch this space.

 

By Hannah Emanuel, PR Manager at Brandwatch. 

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