Fall has traditionally been a “shoulder season” in the U.S. theme park industry; temperatures have begun to drop, and kids are back in school. Accordingly, it doesn’t receive the same emphasis in parks’ marketing budgets as summertime, when they see their largest attendance numbers. However, in recent years, Halloween has been making a name for itself as a rising fiscal force in the industry. A recent Forbes article about Halloween’s rising prominence in U.S. theme park economies states, “Once a dead season in the theme park industry, autumn has been resurrected by Halloween events, which boost the industry’s seasonal performance by as much as 30%.” And while fall will never supplant summer as King, the potential for a 30% boost demands attention. With this industry trend top-of-mind, Williams Randall set to work on client Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari’s Happy Halloween Weekends campaign this past July.
Together with the client’s marketing team, we identified some clear competitive advantages Holiday World held over other local autumn- and Halloween-based recreation sites. They were not hard to find. It’s great to offer a corn maze, hayride, trick-or-treating and a haunted house, but when you add to those a beloved area amusement park filled with 80 acres of attractions, rides, and coasters, the scales tip frightfully fast in Holiday World’s favor. Add free parking and soft drinks, and it becomes downright eerie-sistible.
A lean but ambitious media campaign was assembled consisting of :15- and :30-second online video spots, terrestrial and digital audio spots, digital and social ads, and outdoor billboards. Throughout, emphasis was placed on highlighting Holiday World’s clear family fun advantages over local Halloween attractions, none of which could boast an entire amusement park and drone show to go with their hayrides, haunted houses, and corn mazes.
The video spots, titled “From Corn Maze to Amazing,” were conceived to be evergreen (usable in multiple future seasons’ campaigns). Given the uncertainty of fall weather—and the fact that we couldn’t begin filming until the park was converted to Halloween theming and attractions—we knew the video would not kick off the 2024 Happy Halloween Weekends’ promotion. However, we challenged ourselves with a fairly aggressive production schedule to get the spots in-market in time to promote this year’s Halloween season …and we succeeded, delivering them to the client in mid-October.
