Retailers and marketers are putting more money behind experiential activations tied to Halloween. 

• Some 41% of US ad buyers expect to increase spending on in-person and experiential marketing this year, according to IAB data cited by EMARKETER. As those budgets grow, however, so does the pressure for experiences to accomplish more than drawing a crowd.

The question for marketers isn’t just whether consumers participated. It’s what that participation was supposed to change.

Keebler keeps it up

For the second year in a row, Keebler is taking Halloween marketing beyond the grocery aisle. 

Until October 31, the Ferrero-owned brand is bringing its Spookie Stripes Safari to six US zoos, where families can follow a safari-style trail to find and learn about striped animals, connecting the experience to Keebler’s signature Fudge Stripes. Branded signage, limited-edition Spookie Fudge Stripes samples, and appearances from Ernie the Elf round out the activation, which is included with regular zoo admission or membership.

Families don’t need to visit a zoo to participate. An on-pack QR code unlocks a digital safari where users explore illustrated habitats, hunt for striped cookies among striped animals, and log their finds for a chance to win prizes. Keebler expanded the game this year with new environments and content.

Together, the campaign turns a seasonal product launch into an experience consumers can encounter at the zoo, on the package, and on their phones. It’s experiential marketing in practice: giving consumers something to do with a brand rather than simply another ad to see.

A good experience

Halloween solves one of experiential marketing’s biggest challenges: convincing people to participate.

“Halloween lends itself particularly well to experiential marketing because it’s already a participatory holiday,” said our analyst Arielle Feger. “People are out at parties, trick-or-treating, visiting haunted houses or pumpkin patches, and looking for seasonal experiences.”

But a receptive audience doesn’t automatically make every Halloween activation relevant. Feger said brands create stronger connections when they fit naturally into what consumers are already doing rather than forcing themselves into the occasion.

For Keebler, the zoo already supplies the family outing. The “stripes” theme gives the brand a natural segue: The product's defining visual characteristic becomes the premise of the safari.

The appetite for IRL connection also extends beyond Halloween. Some 90% of consumers, particularly Gen Zers, appreciate brands that facilitate real-world connection, according to March data from Hello Sunshine and Westfield Rise cited by EMARKETER.

An activation can't optimize for everything

Marketers expect an experience to do many things including draw attendees, generate social content, collect first-party data, drive product trials, create awareness, and ultimately produce sales. But trying to check every box can work against the reason for creating the experience in the first place. 

The better starting point is deciding which consumer behavior matters the most, according to experts.“Brands should create an experience with the goal of commerce in mind,” said Charlie Wade, chief client officer at global creative and advertising agency VML Live. “If the goal is to drive purchase, then think about how the brand can establish an environment that delivers on that goal.”

If product trial is the priority, Wade said the experience needs to move enough people through and have enough staff to get samples into their hands. That focus could come at the expense of something else, like CRM data.

If store traffic is the objective, the experience might look entirely different. Wade suggested exchanging an email address for a coupon consumers can later redeem in-store.

For retail and CPG marketers, that means resisting the temptation to make every activation accomplish every KPI. A smaller number of consumers trying a new product may be more valuable for one campaign; massive awareness may be the right outcome for another.

Brands should build backward. Decide what consumers should do next, then design the experience to make that behavior easier.

Participation is not the end goal

The holiday gives brands something experiential marketers otherwise have to work hard to create: consumers who are already looking for reasons to dress up, go out, and try something new.

That makes Halloween fertile ground for experiences, but participation alone isn’t proof that an activation worked. A packed event, a product sample, or a QR scan means something different depending on whether the goal was awareness, trial, store traffic or sales.

As experiential budgets grow, marketers may need to get more comfortable choosing which of those outcomes matters most rather than chasing every possible one.

Halloween makes participation easy. Knowing what that participation is worth is the harder trick.