- Snapchat is bringing back its Halloween-themed content series, Phantom House, in response to details shared with Marketing Dive. Maybelline New York, State Farm and Hulu are amongst those promoting across the second installment.
- Phantom House includes 4 episodes that feature Snap Story compilations wherein a handful of creators navigate various eerie worlds. Creators involved in the newest iteration include Tue Nguyen, Jake Koehler, Rachel Levin and Caryn Marjorie.
- Advertising from the brands involved will include custom creator content, augmented reality (AR) Lenses, Snap Video Ads and more. Additionally, Snap will create AR Lenses themed around each of the Phantom House episodes, which could help attract key audiences.
Halloween seems to represent a key opportunity for Snapchat, as indicated by the social media platform’s alternative to bring back its Phantom House series. In creating last yr’s Phantom House, Snap cited research indicating that 80% of the platform’s users planned to make use of the app during Halloween. This yr, U.S. Snapchatters are a minimum of two times more prone to anticipate spending more this Halloween versus last yr, per data cited in release details.
The effort shows additional signs of potential, with Halloween campaigns on the platform reporting a big lift in brand awareness, ad awareness and motion intent, in response to research from Kantar MarketNorms that was commissioned by Snap and cited in details around last yr’s Phantom House activation. That explains why Maybelline is returning as a second-season sponsor of Phantom House and why State Farm and Hulu have signed on.
“Halloween is a key moment for discovery in the wonder industry, and Maybelline celebrates all opportunities for people to step out of their comfort zone and express themselves,” said Jessica Feinstein, Maybelline’s senior vice chairman of promoting, in an announcement.
Maybelline’s activation this yr will involve branded content that will likely be integrated right into a Phantom House episode. The brand may even utilize custom creator content, in addition to an immersive AR Lens, commercials and Snap Ads.
On State Farm’s end, the insurance company will launch its own AR Lens and leverage commercials and Snap Ads. Hulu will use an AR Lens, commercials and Snap Video Ads to enhance its annual Huluween campaign, which promotes the streamer’s library of Halloween-themed content, along with its recent Hulu Originals film, “Carved.”
To further boost fan engagement, Snap worked with Atomic Digital Design to create 4 AR Lenses that will likely be themed to every Phantom House episode. The Lenses will include features like real-time morphing of Snapchatters faces, pet tracking and contextualized dynamic 3D animation. The Lenses will take fans into the episodes’ worlds, with imagery including a zombie-infested freezer and demon dogs.
The first episode of Phantom House’s second season is currently available for Snapchat users via Phantom House’s public profile. Subsequent episodes will drop every Tuesday.
Snap within the second quarter saw a 16% year-over-year increase in revenue for a complete of $1.23 million, per its latest earnings release. The platform also reported a complete of 432 million every day energetic users in the course of the period, a rise of 36 million versus the year-ago period.
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