The Best Halloween PR Campaigns (23 Great Examples)

As Halloween approaches at the end of the month, and we know that PRs love a Halloween themed campaign, I've gone through my archive of campaign Inspo to share some of my favourite examples of Halloween themed PR campaigns.

Product PR Halloween PR Campaign Examples

Free “Invisibility Cloaks” For Sale by Poundland

When I think of Halloween PR campaigns this super fun campaign that Poundland did in 2019 is always the first one that comes to mind. The plan - select Poundland stores to offer free invisibility cloaks for Halloween (this could genuinely be a Nathan For You skit). Sometimes PR campaigns take months of time, stress and mind-bending spreadsheets to produce, and sometimes they can be a genius idea like this that only requires a super simple execution.

I love how they’ve had fun with their press release too, with Poundland trading director Tim Bettley quoted as saying - “We intended to trial this item last year, but couldn’t find it in the distribution centre. But now we’ve found it, we think our customers will see the value, if not the cloak.”.

I also found this review of the invisibility cloak published on JOE which is fantastic in general, but especially this line - “Annoyingly, there aren’t any changing rooms in Poundland, so I had to try the cloak on beside the rack. I was alone at the time, so asked a nearby shopper if she thought it looked okay. I was ignored, so took that as confirmation that the product worked.”

Sheriff Dewey Riley hosts thrilling Halloween overnight at the SCREAM house by Airbnb

📊 80 Referring Domains, 32 DR 50+

Halloween offers some great opportunities for creative Product PR, so naturally the masters of Product PR campaigns, Airbnb, have regularly taken advantage to create some great Halloween themed PR campaigns. Airbnb are probably one of the best examples of brands finding a format that works and figuring out seemingly infinite ways to repurpose a great idea into different campaigns built around the same concept - combining pop culture with Airbnb stays.

For this campaign, Airbnb gave a small number of lucky fans the opportunity to experience a one night stay at the SCREAM house hosted by Sheriff Dewey Riley, perfectly timed to also tie in with the then upcoming release of the new SCREAM film.

Obviously not all brands have the ability to execute brand collabs that involve getting famous actors on board with their campaigns. It is however a great case study on the power of brand collabs, along with finding clever and creative ways to make your brand’s product the focal point of a campaign while still capturing both audience and media interest.

As mentioned, Airbnb are the masters of getting the most out of a successful idea, with this being a format that they’ve adapted in different years for Halloween such as stays at the Beetlejuice residence, and a night at Dracula’s castle.

Matching Halloween costumes for you and your dog by Boohoo

This is a great example of how fashion brands can use seasonal events such as Halloween to their advantage by putting their brand front and centre of shopping articles during spooky season. In 2021, Boohoo put a creative spin on Halloween costumes by launching matching costume sets so you could pair your look up with your dog.

This is also another really good example of a format that has legs far beyond just one individual campaign. It can be replicated for many different seasonal events, and also repeated with new products in future years. For example, years earlier, Boohoo also released matching Christmas outfits for you and your dog.

Another slept on benefit of Product PR campaigns like this is that you can directly tie them in with commercial goals since the story is literally promoting sales of your products, on top of the great PR and SEO results you can earn from the coverage. Even if many of the links you get are affiliate links, what you may potentially lose in SEO benefits, you will likely more than make up for in sales from referral traffic, which is a far more impactful metric to be able to report on when showing the value of your PR activity.

Bath & Body Works Halloween Collection by Bath & Body Works

📊 129 RDs, 53 DR 50+

Halloween collections can be a super valuable sales strategy for e-commerce brands in pretty much any industry, that also offers great PR opportunities to get your brand in front of your target audience on relevant high authority publications. Bath & Body Works are a great example of this. Since 2017 they’ve had a Halloween collection of products such as candles and beauty products that has built up a very strong SERP presence off the back of PR activity.

The category page now has 216 backlinks from 129 referring domains such as Good Housekeeping, Bustle, and Well+Good, which goes to show that brands can get non-affiliate links into commercial pages from top news publications. Obviously some of these links will be picked up organically and made easier by the brand equity that Bath & Body Works has, but I’m sure that PR activity promoting the new products every year is a big driving force behind the consistent growth of the page’s backlink profile, which has close to doubled in the last 12 months alone.

Another big advantage of being able to link commercial products and PR activity together in this way is the impact it can have on keyword rankings and organic traffic. According to Ahrefs, the page earns 1,600 organic sessions a month, which is undoubtedly significantly higher during Halloween season. Although many of the keywords are branded searches, the data shows that the number of branded searches are increasing each year, going from a peak of 1,500 in 2019, to a peak of 16,400 last year. The page also has a strong SERP presence for non-branded keywords such as “halloween soap” (1,000 MSV) and “halloween scents” (400 MSV).

Kids Adaptive Halloween Costumes by Disney

Product PR can also be used for purpose-driven PR, with a great example of this being Disney and their adaptive Halloween costumes for kids. PR shouldn’t just be about racking up coverage numbers and earning backlinks, at it’s best PR can also be used to make the world a better place, or at least in possibly more cynical terms, be a great tool for making brands more likeable and boosting brand perception metrics.

I’m by no means an expert on the topic of adaptive kids costumes and how widely available they are, but Disney launching their own collection definitely feels like a lovely feel good PR story, and the type of PR story that also perfectly fits the Disney brand. The costumes themselves also look really cool, especially the ones designed for wheelchair users.

The page was also a strong performer in SEO terms too. The original adaptive costumes page earned links from 110 unique referring domains including The Today Show, People, CBR, and a bunch of U.S regionals. The page however now redirects to their main Halloween costumes page with the adaptive options part of the filters and no longer on its own unique url - which I feel like makes them a tad harder to find.

It also seems to have lost them some organic visibility for the previous urls top keywords. For example, a year ago the original url ranked on page one for “wheelchair halloween costumes” (1,400 MSV) and “adaptive halloween costumes” (70 MSV). According to Ahrefs, Disney no longer ranks on page one for either of those terms (and probably many more).

Tomato Blood Ketchup by Heinz

This final Product PR example that we have comes from Heinz who cleverly rebranded a limited release of their Tomato Ketchup bottles as Tomato Blood Ketchup. It’s another great example of how effective Product PR can be when blended with a scoop of creativity from PR teams. The campaign is essentially just promoting the brand, but as is the case with all good advertising, it works so well because it doesn’t feel like brand promotion.

Heinz originally launched the limited edition bottles in 2021, and then brought it back again in 2022, another great case study in building on the success of previous campaigns that performed well and squeezing more juice out of them. They also did a great job with the follow up version In terms of making a PR campaign also work for other channels. They enlisted a TikTok influencer for video content, playing a vegetarian vampire which is a cute twist. This helped Heinz to turn the campaign into a multi-channel campaign that allows the PR story to reach a far bigger audience.

Data-Led Halloween PR Campaign Examples

The scariest movies - according to Science! by broadbandchoices

📊 557 RDs, 223 DR 50+

Moving on to data-led Halloween campaigns, this is one of my favourite examples of a Halloween themed campaign based around a data study. broadbandchoices’ Science of Scare study ranked the scariest movies based on how much people’s heart rates increase while watching each film. Nowadays it feels like many campaign budgets have decreased which makes scientific studies like this that involve heart rate monitors and paying people for their time a less feasible option. But when executed effectively, studies like this can make for really great PR campaigns if you can nail the storytelling aspect.

Which this campaign does a really good job of doing. It’s got the pop culture aspect which helps to make any campaign more eye-catching, it’s evergreen but also has a strong seasonal element too it that helps to make it more newsworthy during Halloween season, it’s a unique study, and it answers a genuine point of intrigue with audiences of what the scariest movies actually are.

I also love that they updated the study each year between 2020 and 2022 to help give them a fresh round of outreach every year, a big factor in why the campaign has such a large number of referring domains. For context, the page had 293 unique referring domains after one year, 452 after two, and 519 after the third year. And even after the study stopped being updated, it still picks up new backlinks from all around the world.

What's the cost to live on a Halloween named street? by GetAgent

📊 0 RDs, 0 DR 50+

So this campaign doesn’t show up as having any backlinks according to Ahrefs, but it is a good example of why not taking numbers from backlink tools as gospel as the only way of evaluating campaign performance Is important. If you Google the campaign you will find coverage that it picked up, but as the coverage doesn’t include backlinks it will look like a total flop if you only evaluate its performance based on backlink tools.

It’s also a great example of a story that gets done every year, but continues to pick up coverage every year too, usually for different brands each time. Using ONS data on the cost of houses in the UK and their street name, GetAgent analysed the cost of houses on streets with scary themed words in the name, finding that houses on streets with “grave” in the name sell for 53% more than the UK average (a great example of using a comparison point to make data easier to understand).

If you have a Google of searches such as halloween street names, you’ll see examples of very similar campaigns being covered every single year. When coming up with ideas for campaigns based around a seasonal topic, looking at what stories your target publications covered in previous years is a great method for finding what they’re likely to cover this year too. Obviously the downside is your content will be less unique and you have the threat of another brand launching a very similar idea, but it will show you content ideas that there is an annual opportunity to take advantage of.

Don’t just limit yourself to doing this just based on your home market either. If you’re U.S. based then use a VPN to search from a different country such as the UK to see how publications in other countries cover a topic (or use Ahrefs Content Explorer and add site:co.uk to your search to just see pages on .co.uk domains. This may give you ideas that have worked well elsewhere and also have less competition in your home market.

The hardest horror villain to escape from by SportsShoes

While purpose-driven PR campaigns are amazing, and can definitely work with Halloween themed ideas, I think Halloween campaigns are a great opportunity for brands to do something a bit different, and more on the fun side of things. Here, SportsShoes have conducted a scientific study to work out which horror villains would be the hardest to escape from.

They did so by calculating each villain’s height, stride length and how many steps they were seen to have taken during the chase. Their research found that Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre apparently ran at over 7 miles an hour, making him the hardest horror movie villain to run away from. I love a well executed data campaign but I also ideas that are a bit camp and tongue in cheek, and this campaign does a great job of hitting that ideal middle ground between the two.

The Worst Horror Movies for Nightmares by Mattress Online

📊 3 RDs, 2 DR 50+

Horror movies are a great starting point for coming up with Halloween themed campaign ideas. They have that pop culture element that make headlines eye-catching, and can be a great way of targeting national news publications, along with some more niche entertainment sites that you might not usually have relevant campaigns to pitch to. Obviously the key here is relevance. But there are plenty of ways for brands who movies aren’t their core product to connect their core topics with movies. We’ve just seen a great example of it above with SportsShoes tying horror films in with running shoes, and this is another good use of combining two topics together.

Mattress Online as you can probably guess is a brand that sells beds. So how do you connect topics like beds and sleep with horror films? Nightmares! Finding those common trends between two different topics is a great ideation technique for finding relationships that can be expanded to form campaign ideas.

Here, Mattress Online analysed iMDB reviews for 50 popular horror movies to reveal which reviews included the most mentions of nightmare and sleep related words. I love a data campaign that analyses user reviews which are such valuable audience insights data, and this is a great example of how to do it with movie reviews. The research found that the most nightmare-inducing horror movies are Insidious, Scream, and The Blair With Project.

The UK’s Spookiest Castles by tombola

📊 35 RDs, 30 DR 50+

This next data-led campaign is another one that utilises user reviews to create an index ranking. In this instance, tombola have ranked the UK’s spookiest castles by analysing the number of mentions of “spooky”, “scary”, “ghost”, and “haunted” in TripAdvisor reviews of 43 of the UK and Ireland’s most haunted castles and buildings.

As well as creating their overall ranking, they’ve also ranked the top castles with the most mentions of each individual word, for example the castle with the most ghost sightings and the castle with the scariest reviews. This is a great way of creating extra angles from your data and being able to call different castles “the top…”, perfect for making your story more relevant to a wider range of local media.

The Most Haunted Universities in the UK by The Knowledge Academy

📊 72 RDs, 52 DR 50+

Finding ways to create a Halloween themed campaign that is relevant to the industry that you’re working in can be challenging, but hopefully between these examples we’ve managed to show you how a drop of creativity can help to make a Halloween campaign work in practically any industry. This next one is a particularly creative example by The Knowledge Academy, a brand that provides training courses, hardly the most organic link to Halloween.

I would argue however that the more creative links that come from sectors like this actually produce the most interesting campaigns. In 2023, they ranked the most haunted Universities in the UK, with The University of Liverpool coming out on top. The index is based on a number of ranking factors such as how old the University is, the number of nearby cemeteries, and the number of paranormal activity reports within two miles of the University.

The campaign was a big hit with links on relevant sites like The Tab, lots of regional news sites, and this scorcher of a link on The University of Liverpool’s website talking about being ranked as the most haunted University in the UK. Whenever you’re ranking the top places for whatever the idea is, it’s always a good idea to send the story to the place at the top of your ranking. There’s a good chance they may share the story on their socials, or ideally on their website too. Obviously not every example of this will land you with a .ac.uk link, but even lower DR sites that are relevant could be valuable new referring domains to add to your backlink profile.

The Cost to Buy a Haunted House in Cities Around the U.S. by Joybird

📊 1 RDs, 1 DR 50+

This next campaign doesn’t appear to have been a massive hit in terms of backlinks, but I’m sharing it because I think it’s a really well executed data campaign with a great methodology. Similar to the GetAgent campaign above, home decor brand Joybird analysed the cost of haunted houses in America, and compared their value against the average home price in that city to reveal the cities where owning a haunted house can make your house more valuable.

With most campaign ideas there’s always more than one way to execute the methodology. For the GetAgent campaign, they analysed the house value of properties on streets with Halloween themed names, whereas Joybird have used Housecreep to find haunted properties and then analysed Zillow data to discover the value of the property. Spending time researching different data sources that you could use for campaigns is a great way of finding content inspo that could potentially open up new doors for creativity.

Theoretically, a campaign like this should do well with the volume of unique angles that the data presents. As well as New Orleans ranking as the the city where haunted homes have the highest spike in house value, you can also create stories for each individual state and city that is included in your data.

When analysing the performance of campaigns, it’s also important to remember that there can be so many other reasons for a campaign not appearing to be a big hit besides it just didn’t connect. For example, a similar campaign may have been launched at the same time, the outreach was ineffective, or the campaign just didn’t have enough budget for the volume of outreach required. If you think an idea is strong enough to connect with people from a storytelling perspective, trust your gut.

London’s Spookiest Boroughs by Barratt London

📊 15 RDs, 10 DR 50+

Many Halloween themed PR campaigns will follow similar formats. We’ve got spookiest castles, most haunted Universities, haunted houses, and now the spookiest boroughs in London. My favourite tip for brainstorming campaign ideas is to just research as many relevant campaigns as you can that have been done before. Most ideas aren’t truly original, with many being either an updated version of an old idea, or taking a campaign idea and applying it to a different context, for example, the spookiest cities, countries, states, pubs, graveyards, and so on.

This campaign is a good example of how going hyper-focused with the scope of the idea can pay off. London’s spookiest boroughs won’t be the most relevant idea to national news publications, but what it lacks there it more than makes up for with increased relevance to London based titles, picking up coverage across pretty much every major London regional news site over the years. The boroughs were ranked based on a number of data points such as the number of cemeteries, reported ghost sightings, and spooky themed tours. Bonus points as well for a gorgeous campaign page with interactive elements too.

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Expert Commentary Halloween PR Campaign Examples

Your Halloween Decor Can Have a MAJOR Impact on Your Home's Value, Experts Warn by House Beautiful

This campaign is a great example of how expert comments can be used to pick up seasonal coverage around pretty much any topic. A quick way of finding examples of Halloween stories that reference expert comments is to Google terms relative to your seasonal event, along with keywords related to your topic/expert, and then set your date range to the time you’ll be pitching your story. For example, “halloween” AND “property expert” with the date range of October the previous year. This will quickly show you lots of relevant news stories that provide great content inspo for how to create stories based around the experts you have available.

This story is another good example as well of how the news cycle is cyclical and certain stories get covered every year. Publications will always cover expert comments around the financial impact of Halloween decorations, and they always love an expert comments piece that they can frame as a warning. When I published a study earlier this year analysing the most frequently used experts in PR stories, and more specifically the most common words used in headlines of those stories, the word “warns” was the 10th most common phrase used in headlines. This shows how much Journalists love an article that they can get eye-catching words like “warns” into the headline, and trigger those emotions that make readers click on an article, or in the case of us as PRs, click on our subject line and read our pitch.

Another interesting thing that I noticed with this article that I’ve seen happen for a few different stories that I’ve earned coverage for around seasonal topics such as Halloween and Christmas, is that this article was originally published in 2024 but has been republished again this month with an updated date on the article now showing 2025. You can see the original article that was published here.

When you compare it with the current live article, you’ll see that the date has been updated, the headline has changed from “What Does Halloween Decorating Do to Your Property Value?” to “Your Halloween Decor Can Have a MAJOR Impact on Your Home's Value, Experts Warn”, but the content is pretty much identical with all of the same experts still being quoted (I think the headline has significantly improved too).

From a reporting point of view, you can probably claim these as new pieces of coverage too, but obviously provide that context to your client/boss so it doesn’t look sneaky and deceitful. In SEO terms there’s not really any extra value to be gained from this. The republished article is on a new url but the old url redirects to the new one so you don’t have two unique urls that would be linking to your site. In PR terms however, the article is republished which means it’s on the homepage again and at the top of category pages, meaning it will be getting a fresh round of visibility.

Urgent vape warning issued to people celebrating Halloween and Bonfire Night by Vape Superstore

A key trend with the campaigns that I’ve shared in this post is how Halloween themed campaigns can work for practically any sector, and this is another great example of how that holds true, even when pitching expert commentary stories. Vaping and Halloween isn’t the most natural link but this campaign from Vape Superstore warning people about potential hazards of vaping around bonfires works really well, and is another example of how Journalists love expert comment stories that they can frame as warnings to readers, helping them to attract more clicks with their headlines.

Coming up with good PR ideas for brands in regulated industries like vaping is difficult, and the reality is not every publication is going to be interested in vaping stories of any kind. But many of the big national news publications do cover vaping stories, meaning that the right story can still lead to great visibility for a vaping brand. What I like about this story is that it connects really well from a brand perception angle too, putting Vape Superstore in a positive light by encouraging safe vaping habits to keep everyone safe around exposed flames, along with the eco-friendly angle around correctly disposing of disposable vapes.

How to recycle your pumpkins safely this Halloween by Vine House Farm

This is another really good example of an expert comment piece that will get covered in one form or another every year. While some stories are more matter of fact, others can allow for more creativity and variation, as is the case with this story here on different ways to recycle your pumpkins.

Stories like this can be particularly good for PR campaigns as the threat of other brands pitching the same story is less of a risk if you’re coming up with creative tips, especially if they’re better than what the competition are suggesting. There’s also the possibility with articles like this that the Journalist gets pitched creative tips by several brands and chooses to include all of them in a single story.

Nutritionist warns one pumpkin spice drink is worse than three jam doughnuts by Exante

I really like this next expert comment story as an example of how brands can find creative tie ins with Halloween topics. A nutrition expert at Exante analysed 11 seasonal drinks from the high street chains such as Starbucks, Costa, and Pret A Manger, and found they contain more sugar than three Greggs jam doughnuts in one serving.

This is a great way for a brand to position themselves as genuine thought leaders on a relevant topic, while also establishing really strong topical authority and E-E-A-T signals to not just search engines, but their target audience too.

I also love how they’ve used doughnuts as a comparison point rather than just ranking the top drinks by their sugar content. That comparison point makes the story a lot easier for readers to digest and understand the extent of the potential health impact. Also - another expert commentary story with the word warns in the headline 😉

The Worst Halloween Candy For Your Teeth, According To Dentists by delish

This final expert commentary campaign is another good example of using Halloween as a Reactive PR angle to showcase the expertise and authority of key spokespeople that your brand has available for PR stories. I like this one as a type of story that could easily be used all year round for different purposes. The core story of sweets that are worse for your teeth than others works on both an evergreen and a newsjacking level. Evergreen as general advice, but also quotes that can be slightly tweaked to be relevant to seasonal events such as Halloween, Christmas, and more.

With expert commentary articles, some are just based around multiple quotes and tips from one expert, while others use multiple experts to provide insights. Journo Request platforms are great for finding Journalists asking for the specific type of quotes that they’re looking for around Halloween topics, but don’t just rely exclusively on this tactic for landing coverage from your expert comments.

Also proactively pitch your quotes to Journalists that are likely to be publishing these stories. Look up which writers at a publication covered these topics the year before, and also research what dates they published their stories. Then aim to pitch your quotes 2-3 weeks beforehand so you get in nice and early, with a follow up also scheduled closer to the time you’re expecting them to publish the article you want to be included in.

Brand-Led Halloween PR Campaign Examples

Domino's give away free double garlic bread to ward off vampires

For this final group of campaigns I've looked at some creative campaigns that don’t necessarily fit into the three other groups, although you could easily put this under Product PR. In 2023, Domino’s gave away 2,000 limited-edition Double Garlic Garlic Breads to help ward off lurking vampires at dusk with the power of garlic.

I really like this as an example of how to create a very brand heavy campaign that still works from a PR and storytelling point of view. Domino’s launching any limited release product is going to be somewhat newsworthy just because of the size of the brand, but Domino’s launching a limited release product to ward off vampires during Halloween season is so much stronger from a storytelling point of view.

They’ve also included some survey data as part of the story too, revealing 28% of UK adults believe in supernatural spirits – with almost 2 in 5 admitting to fearing vampires. Big brands regularly use surveys like this to flesh out brand stories, with the extra bit of audience insights serving as a great way to allow a Journalist to create a full news article around the campaign, along with giving the brand a chance to make the story a bit more fun with some tongue in cheek survey questions.

The Scammer House of Horrors by NatWest

This next campaign is a fantastic example of creative storytelling that brings multiple different formats together. In 2022, NatWest created a free downloadable book called The Scammer House of Horrors, a collection of real-life horror stories from people that have been targeted by financial scams. It’s a great way of adding a creative element to using case studies as part of a PR campaign, as well as taking something that is pretty evergreen in scams, and turning it into a seasonal campaign off the back of some clever storytelling.

To help develop the campaign into something more headline grabbing and newsworthy, they also enlisted the help of legendary actor Simon Callow to read the horror stories. Obviously having the help of a famous figure requires extra budget that isn’t an option for everyone, but it does do a great job of adding another layer of news appeal to the story, along with the added value of creating video content that can be used for other channels such as socials. The campaign also does a good job of utilising survey data to add context to the story, and nicely set up the case studies and how they want the audience to feel about the campaign and the topic of scammers.

Cosmic Frights for Halloween Posters by NASA

Throughout these campaigns we’ve seen many examples of clever ways brands in different industries have had success utilising Halloween as an event to make their PR campaigns more topical and newsworthy. This is one of my favourite examples of brands jumping on the Halloween trend, coming from none other than NASA.

Sometimes I think it’s perfectly fine for brands to just have a bit of fun via their PR activity and this fits into that group. It’s not like NASA are doing this for backlinks or brand awareness I would imagine. But it does work nicely from a brand point of view, doing a good job of combining the topics of space and horror in a fun creative way via the medium of artwork.

Pepsi Spooks Coca-Cola with Halloween Ad

With these Halloween campaign examples I try and focus on ones that PRs reading this might be able to replicate in some form or another. Obviously with this one that’s going to be a lot harder but I was always going to include it in this round up because of how clever and creative it is.

With brands at the level of Pepsi and Coca-Cola, and in such a competitive space, brand perceptions are everything, and this cheeky ad ran in 2013 was a brilliant way for Pepsi to have a bit of fun at their rival’s expense, while also making Pepsi the cool side for fans to be on.

When it comes to brand loyalty, this can be a really powerful asset for brands from a PR point of view when their fans become brand advocates, and sometimes even do a great job of creating viral content on behalf of the brand.

This was the case in the below follow up created not by Coca-Cola themselves but by a fan online. The follow up ad went viral and gave Coca-Cola a load of free advertising in a very effective way. Obviously this isn’t always a positive depending on what the user generated content Is, but when done right it can present opportunities for brands to ride the wave of momentum that user generated content can create.

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