Maria Vardy on Pepsi's Monster Marketing

In 2014 brand advertisers came to the fore at the end of October once again to promote their products at Halloween. One of those was Pepsi, which pulled off a cool piece of marketing at a late-night cinema veiwing in London and below, Jaywing's managing director brand comms, Maria Vardy, looks at why it was a success and how Halloween is becoming ever more popular for marketers in the UK.

Last Halloween, Pepsi Max unleashed a frighteningly good Monster Mirror activation. Innovative and spooky in equal measure, the activation saw consumers gazing into mirrors and having a monstrous face reflected back at them (below).

With the increasing popularity of Halloween, it was great to see a brand taking advantage of the seasonal news hook whilst exploiting technology to develop a campaign that was genuinely effective and not just cheap thrills. Encouraging people to interact with their other self, it proved engaging and highly shareable.

The activation was doubly striking as it built on Pepsi Max’s brand reputation in an innovative way, rather than being overtly sales-orientated. It aligned cleverly with the brand’s quirky identity and ongoing comms activity rather than being just another random stunt – a risk when exploiting shorter calendar events like Halloween.