At Gushers, we wanted to put a fruit snack at the top everyone’s mind during Candy’s biggest season: Halloween.
Gushers needed to breakthrough Big Candy incumbents during their biggest moment of the year. Looking to the internet, we discovered that we had a natural connection to the spooky season with consumers saying our ads from the 1990’s gave them nightmares growing up. Dozens of articles, hundreds of mentions and millions of views over 30 years meant we had a right to win…and do something unexpected. We reimagined our famous Fruitheads ad with a modern, original, horror inspired take, adding lore beyond what the internet could ever imagine. We turned our classic ad into a real short horror film starring Bradley Whitford, an actor with a deep horror resume. We also modeled our distribution approach on the streamers, podcasters, and influencers who had popularized clipping, and we leveraged the effectiveness of our full film in bite sized bits that would drive audiences back to discover more.
But best of all? Gushers burst through the Halloween clutter to steal spooky season, delivering YOY Sales Growth of 8.4% and YOY Category Share Growth of 6.36%. Named #1 "Halloween Campaign of the Year" by Ad Age as well as the #1 Brand associated with a Halloween Horror film, Gushers saw +8 point lift in purchase intent.
With social mirroring these impressive results, delivering 31.7M social views, 3k+ social mentions in one month, and 1M+ engagements across owned channels. Audience response showed an 89% positive sentiment, with a 718% increase in social reach YOY. We successfully increased top of mind presence with 1.1B total impressions. The results are just scary good.
