Hails & Fails – November 3rd 2023
It’s Halloween week and there have been some ghoulishly great PR Campaigns in honour of the annual All Hallows Eve celebrations.
Kraken had our heart rates racing, Meta gave us 3D ‘thrillboards’ and Tesco gave us treats with no tricks. It was a horror-show of a week for Marks & Spencer though as a social post to launch their festive campaign massively backfired.
HAILS
Scream for booze
Kraken Rum hosted an immersive experience, where the cost of your drink was determined by your heart rate.
Invited to take a run along a hyper-scary horror gauntlet, volunteers wore heart rate monitors to measure how resilient to fear they were.
And the more their hearts pounded, the more they paid for their drinks.
The horror experience was staged at The Clerkenwell Catacombs in London and has won loads of coverage while almost certainly racking up wads of cash as terrified drinkers paid top dollar at the bar.
Meta launches thrillboard campaign
Meta marked the launch of a brand new virtual reality headset with some impressive 3D immersive “thrillboards” in the capital this week.
Taking inspiration from Ghostbusters and The Walking Dead, passers-by were able to step into the billboards and become a part of the two worlds. The billboard campaign resulted in loads of attention online and a decent chunk of media coverage too.
Tesco treats with no tricks
Tesco created a treat-fuelled in-store experience to get shoppers buying its Halloween toolkit.
Bringing the kit’s Halloween characters to life, the experience drew people in with Halloween-themed samples from a range of famous supermarket brands.
After indulging in goodies, customers were invited to embark on a witch hunt through the aisles, using clues to figure out mystery words.
FAILS
M&S faces backlash over insensitive social post
Marks and Spencer faced a significant backlash after a now-deleted social media post for their Christmas campaign was branded as insensitive.
The post showed a set of party hats in the colours of the Palestinian flag being thrown into a burning fireplace as part of its ‘This-mas Not That-mas’ festive advertising campaign.
The campaign’s TV ad features actors Hannah Waddingham and Tan France doing away with the controversial Christmas traditions they don’t enjoy, ranging from party hats to board games.
But the focus post-launch has all been on the brand’s huge social faux pas.
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