How Campaigns Make Their Mark During the Halloween Season
By: Caroline Fredette
Image courtesy of Storyblocks
In the world of public relations and advertising, connecting your campaign with current events and popular trends is an effective way to engage target audiences. This could include celebrity cameos, holiday references, viral pop culture moments, and so much more. Utilizing these types of elements helps to build a marketing campaign that is both unique and innovative. Additionally, when you blend aspects of storytelling and entertainment with traditional advertising strategies, you create campaigns that are more memorable and stand out amongst competition.
The Halloween season, in particular, is a time of year that provides companies with a prime opportunity to enrich their creative marketing campaigns, which can be attributed to several key reasons. First, Halloween is commonly associated with a wide variety of imagery. From candy, costumes, and pumpkins to spiders, monsters, and other frights, advertisers have endless creative opportunities and elements to play around with. Additionally, the cultural relevance of Halloween and horror movies allows for a broader campaign that allows brands to reach and connect with a wider audience.
This year, we have seen many companies go all-out for Fall this season, ranging from horror-movie spoofs to exclusive product launches. While many have found ways to incorporate classic Halloween themes and elements into their campaigns, only a select few have been able to efficiently connect these elements to both the product or service being promoted, as well to the brand itself. One example of a company that has killed it with their Halloween-themed advertising campaign this year is Liquid Death.
Liquid Death - Easy-Drinking Energy for People-Drinking Vampires.
Liquid Death is a beverage company that was founded on values of sustainability and authenticity. The drinks they sell come in fully-recyclable cans, and a portion of the company's proceeds go towards their “Death to Plastic” initiative. Liquid Death also heavily incorporates dark humor into their brand identity. Their slogan “Murder Your Thirst,” paired with grim drink names like “Cherry Obituary” and “Grave Fruit,” allows them to stand out amongst other health drink brands.
When Liquid Death first hit the market in 2019, they only sold two products through their online storefront. Today, however, the company offers a variety of canned, non-alcoholic beverages, and can be found in most grocery and convenience stores. The last time Liquid Death expanded their product offerings was in early 2026, when they released their line of low-calorie, sparkling energy drinks.
Through Liquid Death’s in-house advertising agency, LD Death Machine, they were able to create a campaign to promote this new product during the 2026 Halloween season. First, Liquid Death released a brand-new, limited-edition flavor of their sparkling energy drink called “Blood Zero.” The can of the raspberry and cream flavored beverage looks similar to the other Liquid Death sparkling energy cans. Except, to maximize the “spooky” factor, the design features blood dripping down from the top.
In addition to the "Blood Zero" drink flavor, Liquid Death also created a commercial for television and their social media platforms. The advertisement is meant to be a comedic spoof on classic infomercials from the 90s, while also incorporating Liquid Death’s focus on authenticity and dark-humor. It opens with a vampire sucking the blood from a human, she is breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience. The ad cleverly incorporates the sustainability element of Liquid Death’s brand. Our vampire mentions how the beverage is cruelty-free, to both humans and animals, and discusses how she wants to be more eco-conscious by no longer drinking from “single-use humans.” This is a play on the company's “Death to Plastic” initiative, which aims to limit the use of single-use plastic water bottles. Additionally, she emphasizes how the beverage is low-calorie, yet gives her the energy she needs.
This campaign works extremely well for the Liquid Death brand. Since the branding for the company is already very dark, it was smart to capitalize on the time of year that emphasizes Halloween, horror movies, and other spooky themes. Overall, the campaign was able to successfully incorporate the necessary brand elements of the Liquid Death and promote their new line of energy drinks, while also creating both a product variation and advertisement that are unique and memorable. Other brands and advertising agencies should look towards this campaign as an example of a brand integrating current events and pop culture into their advertising successfully.
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