The line between selling soft drinks and producing entertainment has been blurring for some time now, but Fanta, the Coca-Cola-owned brand best known for its orange soda and its reliable presence in Halloween candy aisles, has decided to step through the looking glass entirely.
On Thursday, the company unveiled what it is calling Fanta's Haunted Universe, a collection of four original characters, a cinematic trailer, and a suite of live and digital experiences intended to extend well beyond the October 31 sell-by date that has traditionally governed the brand's spooky-season marketing efforts.
"We want this to be a platform that entertains fans for many years to come," said Ibrahim Khan, the global vice president of marketing at Fanta, in a statement that could have been issued by any number of streaming services currently searching for intellectual property to call their own.
The effort represents what the company is calling a shift from seasonal marketer to original content creator — a distinction that sounds more significant on paper than it may prove to be in practice. (Brands have been calling themselves content creators since approximately the second blog post ever written.) Still, the ambition is notable: Fanta is not simply sponsoring Halloween, it is attempting to build a proprietary mythology around it, complete with characters that presumably will return each autumn like so many plastic skeletons dragged out of suburban garages.
Whether consumers will form lasting attachments to a cinematic universe born of a fruit-flavored carbonated beverage remains to be seen. But in an era when every brand dreams of becoming a media property, Fanta has at least committed to the bit with full theatrical conviction.
The haunted house, it seems, is now open for business.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Fanta’s Big Bet to Own Halloween: An Original Cinematic Universe"