Halloween Starring You

Last year, Fanta scared the public silly with the biggest ever upload of real-time photos to the Piccadilly Lights, bringing the scares to the big screen with the SpookBooth, a photo booth with a frightful difference.

This year they returned, with a sequel - The Haunted Mansion - under the Piccadilly Lights. However this wasn’t a movie, this was real, with even more scary surprises; Making the public the stars of the show, with their horrified expressions displayed on the largest advertising screen in Europe.

The integrated Halloween campaign, with the Piccadilly Circus activation at its heart, was created by VML. Running from Friday 27th to Tuesday 31st October 2023, the Haunted Mansion installation has been supported by social media, out-of-home, press, and influencer activity.

Out-of-home activity before the event teased the Haunted Mansion, using ghostly movie poster-style graphics and pseudo reviews like ‘scarier than pineapple on pizza’ and ‘more horrifying than arriving first at a party’. Teasers also appeared in The Metro, with a front-page advert and a feature on their property pages to encourage the public to visit the inside of the Mansion.

The experience itself brought people into the Fanta Haunted Mansion, sat below the big screen. The ‘victims’ were guided through the house by a creepy host, with spooky surprises along the route that built up to the final jumpscare. As they entered the lounge, visitors to the Mansion could get a spooky photo… or so they thought. As the shutter clicked, the lights went out and came back on to reveal actors dressed as the Mansion’s residents - a possessed maid, a bloodied chef and a ghostly grandmother. The shocked faces of the visitors were then beamed directly onto the giant Piccadilly Screen, making them the starring role in this year’s Fanta Halloween activation.