Fanta teases “Haunted Universe” as a long-term Halloween platform
Fanta’s Haunted Universe adds original characters, collectibles, and creator storytelling as the brand scales its Halloween push across 50 markets.
Halloween marketing only works when people feel like they are stepping into a world, not just buying a seasonal label. That is why the most talked-about campaigns tend to come with lore, characters, and details fans can collect, quote, and build on with friends.
In that spirit, Fanta is turning its Halloween push into something closer to an entertainment property: a new “Haunted Universe” built around original characters, storylines, and repeatable experiences. The company shared the update in an official announcement.
Table of contents
Jump to each section:
- Why brands keep trying to “own” Halloween
- What Fanta’s Haunted Universe includes
- How AI and creators fit into the world-building
- What this means for marketers building seasonal platforms
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Why brands keep trying to “own” Halloween
Halloween is one of the few mainstream moments where audiences expect brands to be playful, slightly unhinged, and visually bold. It is also a holiday where consumers are already primed to try limited-time flavors, buy themed packaging, and share content that looks cinematic or weird enough to post.
But the challenge is that Halloween attention is crowded, and a single seasonal spot is easy to forget a week later. The brands that win tend to create rituals people can repeat: collecting editions, rewatching a signature ad, revisiting a themed experience, or following a story across multiple drops.
Fanta’s framing makes that intent explicit: it wants Halloween to become a repeatable platform for the brand over multiple years, similar to how its sister brand Coca-Cola is strongly associated with Christmas.
What Fanta’s Haunted Universe includes
Fanta released a trailer teasing its Haunted Universe, positioned as a new entertainment property with original characters and storytelling designed to extend beyond one Halloween season.
The trailer introduces several creatures (including a jack-o’-lantern-headed scarecrow, a sports car-driving vampire, a cyborg Frankenstein, and a werewolf DJ) battling across a cityscape for a magic elixir, framed as something with “the power to rule the living and the dead.”
Beyond the trailer, the upcoming Halloween campaign is set to include collectible packaging, a limited-time flavor, a return of the Haunted Fanta Factory experience, and “a variety of content.” The rollout is planned for 50 global markets, and the company has signaled that pop culture IP will be invited into the universe, with an “iconic” character collaboration planned to be announced soon.
A key detail here is that Fanta is moving from borrowing Halloween icons (it previously used packaging featuring well-known horror characters like Chucky, Michael Myers, and Beetlejuice) to investing in original IP it can build on year after year.
How AI and creators fit into the world-building
Fanta’s Halloween campaign was developed by WPP Open X led by Ogilvy, with support from VML, WPP Media, and WPP Production, and included collaboration with ForPeople and Grail, an entertainment studio described as being powered by artificial intelligence while also employing writers, editors, artists, and technologists.
The way Fanta’s leadership describes AI is telling: not as a push-button shortcut, but as a tool that can expand what the creative team can produce, similar to how animation evolved from hand-drawn work to CGI. The company also emphasized that building the universe took about a year and a half, which reinforces the idea that the “world” is the product, not only the media buy.
Creators are also built into the system. Influencers were provided with literature and backstories to help bring the world to life. That approach treats creators less like distribution and more like “performers” inside the narrative, which can make creator content feel like canon instead of an ad read.
What this means for marketers building seasonal platforms
Seasonal marketing becomes more durable when it gives people something to return to, not just something to notice once.
- A seasonal “platform” needs collectibles, not just creative.
Collectible packaging and limited-time flavors are not just sales levers. They give fans a reason to hunt, share, and compare, which is how seasonal campaigns turn into rituals. - Original IP is a long-term bet on brand memory.
Using famous horror characters can generate instant recognition, but it also caps what a brand can “own.” Building original characters and lore is slower, but it can create distinct brand assets that compound over years. - Creators work better when they are given narrative material.
Providing backstories and world details helps creator content feel consistent, especially when many influencers are participating across markets. It also reduces the risk of creators producing disconnected interpretations of the same campaign. - AI can expand output, but the strategy still needs time.
The year-and-a-half build signals that AI-supported entertainment work still requires planning, editing, and craft. Teams should treat AI as production capability, not as a replacement for concept development. - Global scale depends on shared myth, not shared language.
Fanta’s note about “legends” appearing across cultures points to a practical global marketing insight: archetypes travel. Reinterpretation matters, but starting from commonly understood seasonal symbols can make international rollouts more coherent.
The bigger signal is that brands are trying to compete in the same attention economy as entertainment, not by acting like studios, but by borrowing studio logic: recurring characters, lore, drops, and experiences that fans can participate in.
If this approach works, the marketing value is not only impressions. It is repeatability: a reason for people to check in every Halloween to see what is new in the universe, and a reason for creators to keep making content that feels like part of an ongoing story rather than a one-off sponsorship.
