The 10 best Halloween PR and marketing campaigns of 2026, from Pringles' can-shaped urn to Hydralyte's fake horror film

Every year since we started the newsletter, brands get weirder and weirder with their Halloween campaigns, and this year was no exception. It's not only becoming more popular among creatives, but it's also gaining traction with consumers as well.

The National Retail Federation projected a record $13.5 billion in US spending, split almost evenly between costumes, decorations and candy. In the UK, shopper marketing agency Savvy forecast spending of £705m, up 6% on last year, and its survey of 1,002 shoppers found that 82% liked seeing their favourite brands create Halloween special editions.

Three ideas kept returning across very different categories and countries as the season went on. Death became an unlikely sales tool, with a can-shaped urn, a maroon coffin and a team of office skeletons all selling something other than funerals. The horror film was the second recurring device, as a hair care label, an animal rights organisation and a rehydration brand each made one, or at least pretended to, while real places with a Halloween story of their own provided the third, from a supermarket in York to a street in New Jersey and a castle in Transylvania.

Have a look at some of the best ones we found this year:

Pringles offers one US fan a can-shaped urn and the cash value of 200 years of crisps

Pringles built its Halloween campaign on the true story of Fredric Baur, the designer of the Pringles can, whose family buried part of his ashes in one after he died in 2008. Once You Drop, created by BBDO New York and Weber Shandwick, asked US fans to sign a "will and taste-ament" pledging to be buried in a Pringles can, with entries open from 13 to 22 October. One randomly drawn winner was due to receive a personally engraved metal urn shaped like the can, along with an "afterlifetime" supply paid as $28,080 in cash, the equivalent of one can a week for 200 years. The accompanying film stars a real funeral director who posts on social media under the name @DanTheFuneralMan.

You can read the full blog post here.

Hydralyte launches its electrolyte sachets through a fake Sydney horror film about The Dryness

Hydralyte spent late October persuading Sydney that a film called Don't Let the Dryness Get You was on its way, complete with a trailer carrying the line "All it has to do is wait." Working with Five by Five, the rehydration brand turned dehydration into a creature, then seeded the city with movie-style posters and a streaming soundtrack by the fictional Emmie Noll. Nine identical women appeared around Circular Quay, the CBD and Bondi, and the clues sat in plain sight, since Hydralyte has nine letters and Emmie Noll is an anagram of Lemon Lime. Bright orange posters finally confessed, "Sorry, it wasn't a real movie," and the reveal introduced the brand's new electrolyte sachets.

Aldi opens a broomstick parking bay at its Water Lane store in York

Aldi gave witches somewhere to leave their transport this Halloween by opening a broomstick parking bay at its Water Lane store in York, complete with a purpose-built broom rack and broomstick floor vinyl. The location came from polling, in which 28% of Brits surveyed named York as the most haunted place in the UK. Announced on 22 October with consumer PR agency Taylor Herring, the bay ran until 31 October and pointed shoppers towards a range including Creepy Breaded Chicken Bats at £2.99. The stunt is a seasonal sequel to the rooftop parking bay that Aldi built for Santa's sleigh at Knutsford in December 2023.

You can read the full blog post here.

PETA casts processed meat as Hamface, a horror villain from agency Pablo London

PETA gave processed meat a face this Halloween with Hamface, a horror villain introduced in a horror film and street posters from Pablo London, the agency's first work for the organisation. Directing duo RIOT and production company ArtClass played the film straight, choosing slow-building dread in a familiar home over any genre parody. The serious point underneath concerns the link between processed meats and cancer, with the campaign citing 34,000 cancer deaths globally each year. "Hamface shows the horror behind something we've made far too ordinary," said Dawn Carr, VP of Vegan Corporate Projects at PETA, who added, "It's time to take the horror off our plates."

You can read the full blog post here.

Cup Noodles launches blood red Vampire Noodles with a $3,999 Titan Casket coffin

Nissin Foods gave Cup Noodles a Halloween reveal that happens in the kitchen, since its limited-edition Vampire Noodles turn blood red the moment hot water goes in, thanks to natural beet colouring. The $1.18 Hot Garlic Chicken flavour went on sale exclusively at Walmart on 24 September, although the headline act was a matching $3,999 coffin from Titan Casket with a deep maroon gloss finish and a black crushed velvet head panel reading "It's to Die For." The partner already had form in this area, as the Massachusetts company made a $3,999 casket with Focus Features for Nosferatu in December 2024 and has also sold a $19.99 plush coffin called Mort.

You can read the full blog post here.

Pearler sends suited skeletons onto Sydney trains with Don't Work Forever signs

Australian investing platform Pearler sent life-sized skeletons in suits and ties into Sydney's morning rush on 27 October, stationing them at Town Hall, Wynyard and Central and on a train. Each held a sign reading "Don't Work Forever" and carried no logo, QR code or call to action, so commuters had nothing to go on until the company claimed the stunt afterwards. Pearler then introduced head skeleton Barry as a man who "worked forever" and tied the figures to research finding that 36% of young Australians doubt they will ever retire. The in-house Pearler Studio team used no paid media, and one bystander's Instagram video passed 3 million views.

Ouai casts Victoria Pedretti as the Final Girl in three-part slasher series Chopped

Ouai made its first move into scripted entertainment with Chopped, a three-part horror comedy in which Victoria Pedretti plays the Final Girl hunting a masked villain called The Chopper. The villain attacks Ouai's office staff with scissors and leaves them with bad haircuts, while the brand's $50 Bond Repair Balm and $32 Leave-In Conditioner serve as the bandages that heal their hair. Episodes ran on Instagram from 26 to 28 October under titles drawn from hair problems such as Heat Damage and Blonde Blindness. Director of social media Joellen Lu cited 1970s horror, giallo films and Dario Argento among the influences, and a special screening followed at Cinespia in Los Angeles on 30 October.

You can read the full blog post, here.

Flying Fish invites 24 beer drinkers from six markets to party at Dracula's Castle

AB InBev took its flavoured beer Flying Fish into a holiday that the company's Bruno Cosentino conceded "hasn't always been a traditional beer occasion." The response, developed with Wieden+Kennedy Mexico, was a competition offering four winners in each market an all-expenses-paid trip to Romania, covering South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Belgium, Peru and Canada. The prize ends on Saturday 7 November at an invite-only party inside Bran Castle in Transylvania, with DJs including Sickick, Dubdogz and Miro. South Africa added its own fictional mystery to the campaign, in which bitten cans in beer aisles were finally traced to Count Dracula, who had apparently been drawn by a limited-edition Passion Fruit and Lemon flavour.

M&M'S turns the sitcom laugh track into a downloadable Scream Track for Halloween film nights

M&M'S UK borrowed one of television's oldest devices for Halloween, asking on its campaign page, "Love the sitcom laugh track to get you laughing together?" The answer was a set of three downloadable recordings designed to make spooky films "even scarier" when enjoyed with family and friends. They sat within a wider Screaming Service idea, a playful take on streaming platforms complete with a box whose small print reads "Not an actual tech gadget." Weber Shandwick then took the campaign into Vue in Islington, where Rylan Clark, disguised as a sofa, surprised filmgoers in front of hidden cameras before bursting through the screen, and audiences who screamed together won free film passes on the spot.

Reese's crowns East Dudley Avenue in New Jersey America's Trick-or-Treatiest Street

Reese's turned Halloween's most local ritual into a national contest, analysing candy and costume purchasing, decorations, walkability and Census data and surveying 15,000 residents to name 150 contender streets. A first-ever Halloween Council of Christina Ricci, Kathy Najimy and three creators then chose the winner. East Dudley Avenue in Westfield, New Jersey beat the other 149 streets, and the prize was a block party with free candy from Reese's and Zillow, announced for 31 October. The result came with a neat footnote, since Westfield is the home town of cartoonist Charles Addams, whose work inspired The Addams Family, and Ricci is known for starring in the film.

There were so many campaigns to choose from this year, so as always, it was very hard to keep it to a few in a roundup! If you want to see campaigns like these on a weekly basis, make sure to sign up for The PR Insider.