After two years of linking Halloween with already familiar horror characters, Fanta has decided not to borrow other people’s heroes this season. Instead of another collaboration with a film franchise, the brand is building its own world that could continue to develop far beyond a single campaign.
Fanta’s Haunted Universe is conceived as an original entertainment universe with its own characters, stories and rules. The first glimpse comes in a cinematic trailer in which an ordinary Halloween night quickly descends into chaos after the appearance of a haunted pumpkin. The streets are then taken over by other creatures from Fanta’s new world, while amid the growing disorder, one detail brings the brand’s humor back into the story: two men calmly continue drinking Fanta.
At the center of the universe are four new characters created by reinterpreting familiar horror archetypes. They draw inspiration from vampires, werewolves, supernatural beings and futuristic horror, but each has its own personality, backstory, powers and place within the broader narrative.
With this, Fanta is trying to make a significant shift in the way it approaches Halloween. Instead of building seasonal relevance by attaching itself to existing popular culture, the brand wants to create a part of that culture itself and develop intellectual property that can evolve across different formats and experiences.
The studio GRAiL worked on the development of the project. Technology was used as a tool within a creative process led by a human team, primarily to explore ideas and achieve the visual scale needed to build the new world. The trailer is only the first part of the project, with additional character content, stories, experiences and other activations announced throughout the Halloween season.
For Ibrahim Khan, Global Vice President of Marketing at Fanta, the shift from collaborator to creator is the logical next step after two years of working with major horror franchises. The new universe gives the brand room to treat Halloween not only as a period for limited-edition products or a short campaign, but as a platform it can continue to build on.
The change is particularly visible compared with last year’s approach. Fanta then collaborated with Universal Pictures and brought Freddy Fazbear from Five Nights at Freddy’s, M3GAN and Chucky together on limited-edition packaging, using the recognition of existing film worlds and audience interest in their new sequels.
This year, the direction is reversed. Fanta wants audiences to get to know characters that did not previously exist, follow their stories and gradually enter a world that the brand can expand from the trailer into new content, activations and experiences.
