Fanta Hands Halloween to a Horror Icon

Fanta has done the thing most seasonal marketers only talk about: it built a Halloween platform it can come back to every year, then cast a household-name villain in it.

Days after unveiling Fanta's Haunted Universe — the brand's first original Halloween entertainment world — Fanta pulled Ghost Face, the masked icon of The Scream franchise, into the story. The move takes the platform off screens and onto shelves, with a limited-edition flavour, collectible packaging and shopper experiences rolling out globally.

The work was developed through WPP Open X and led by Ogilvy, the agency model WPP built specifically to service The Coca-Cola Company across creative, media and commerce in one loop. That structure is the point here: a Halloween idea that has to land as film, as pack design and as an in-store display is exactly the kind of brief that dies in agency handoffs.

Licensing a horror property is a sharper play than another orange-tinted spooky ad. Ghost Face carries pre-loaded recognition with the teens and young adults Fanta sells to, and the mask travels across markets without translation. It also gives the flavour drop a reason to be collected rather than merely consumed — the packaging becomes the merch.

The bet is repeatability. Halloween has quietly become one of the biggest occasions in food and beverage marketing, and brands that own a recurring world — rather than renting a costume for six weeks — get compounding returns. Fanta is treating its Haunted Universe like intellectual property, not a seasonal media buy.