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Welcome to the house of Halloween: winning with Tesco during the spooky season

All Hallows’ Eve, Samhain, or just good old Halloween. Whatever you call it, October 31st typically translates into one thing above all else for consumer-package goods (CPG) brands: a horrifyingly good opportunity to scare up some additional sales.

Capitalising on that potential, though, means being able to harness the moods and mindsets of shoppers as they shift not just towards Halloween, but autumn as a whole. That’s why, in this post, we’re going to look at some of the key customer needs at this point of the year – and how the Tesco Media & Insight Platform can be used to deliver campaigns that really tap into the spirit of the spooky season.

The overarching mindset: cosy comforts and a focus on the home

It’s no coincidence that Halloween coincides with a change in the weather. With its roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain (“sah-win”), the festivities around October 31st were originally designed to recognise the year’s last harvest and the end of summer.

With the mercury beginning to drop – and shows like The Great British Bake Off returning to our screens – home comforts quickly become the priority for many. Interest in home cooking tends to surge in kind, making it a great time of year for any brand that can play in the area of autumnal food inspiration. Ingredients for pies, roasts, curries, soups, and home baking tend to dominate shopping lists at this time of year.

Midwinter moments: the themes to tap into

Halloween itself – and the days leading up to it – presents a variety of themes that savvy brands can tap into:

• Trick-or-treating

Halloween is a huge time for families; more than 5m Tesco shoppers with children living at home engaged with the event last year, representing 42% of the total audience. Shopping both in superstores and online, families are actively seeking inspiration, too: 83% said they’d tried a new product after seeing it advertised on Facebook.

Trick-or-treating is obviously a major part of Halloween for this customer segment, and an equivalently huge opportunity for sweet and confectionary brands. In this post-HFSS world, though, makers of healthier treats shouldn’t feel left out – in fact, responsible fun can be a powerful message to those brands that can impart it authentically.

• Halloween parties

October 31st isn’t just for the kids: almost half (43%) of young shoppers in the UK say that they’ll be hosting or attending a Halloween party this year. What’s more, 2.6m shoppers aged 45 and under with no children at home shopped Tesco’s Halloween range in 2022, driving a 4% uplift in visits and a 7% uplift in sales. Beers, wines, spirits and party snacks were the purchases of choice for this group.

Whichever age group they’re aimed at, though, Halloween parties can create some great themes for relevant brands to play with – customers across all segments engaged by everything from spooky drinks and party spreads through to themed baking.

Once again, the numbers speak for themselves here. In 2022, home baking sales at Tesco saw a 57% uplift during the Halloween event, with chocolate and confectionary multipacks enjoying a 39% spike too. Sponsored [1]. That makes pre-shop influences like Tesco Real Food recipes like pumpkin pie, black magic cocktails, and fiendish sausage fingers drew huge page view numbers, indicative of the power of the UK’s third-biggest recipe website.

One thing to bear in mind about this year’s event is that October 31st falls on a Tuesday. As a result, most celebrations will take place the weekend before – that of the 28th and 29th. That’s even more likely to be the case considering that the clocks go back early on the morning of Sunday 29th, giving the denizens of the night that extra hour in bed the next day. If you’re planning any last minute digital media activations, now is the time to set them live.

The customer priority: great scares, and even better value

Halloween is likely to be a different prospect for most shoppers this year. With discretionary spending under threat due to a prolonged cost of living crisis, around half (46%) of customers say that they’re intending to stick to a budget when it comes to this year’s fright night[1]. That makes pre-shop influences like offsite and direct marketing absolutely essential for any brand that wants to end up on that all-important list.

That’s not to say that in-store influences aren’t important, of course. For instance:

• A third (32%) of customers say they’re still planning to make a special trip to pick up Halloween-related goods this year.
• A quarter (25%) will try out items they’ve not bought before.
• And two-thirds (66%) like it when they can find everything they need for Halloween in one place[2].

With those figures in mind, event hubs and in-store displays like Tesco’s own House of Halloween become all the more important to brands that want to stand out.

Looking ahead: planning for Halloween 2024

Naturally, other than small modifications to existing campaigns or last-minute bookings aimed at nudging a few extra sales, it’s a little too late to do much for this year’s fright-fest. That said, if you’re looking to get ahead for next year, here are a few things that it might be helpful to know:

• The Tesco Magazine is a huge source of inspiration: 83% of families agree that the Tesco Magazine is “full” of food inspiration, and 90% of shoppers under 45 with no children in the household buy the products they see in print ads. The October edition of the Magazine tends to hit stores around the first week of the month.
• Trending searches make for great media opportunities: Between the pre-period and Tesco Halloween event in 2022, searches for baking products spiked significantly on tesco.com. Terms including “large eggs” (106%), “food colouring” (93%), and “marshmallows” (72%) all saw searches soar, making it a great time for relevant brands to advertise against the results.
• Bookings typically need to be placed around the beginning of August: The annual Tesco Halloween event typically begins around Trade Week 34 – the second or third week in October. Sponsorship packages, which usually feature media including the Tesco Magazine, in-store banner dividers, and a combination of offsite and tesco.com placements, need to be agreed towards the start of August, however.

[1] IGD Research; 1st and 2nd March’23. Base: 329 UK shoppers & IGD ShopperVista; Mar’22 Base: 212
[2] All data here: IGD Research; 1st and 2nd March’23. Base: 329 UK shoppers & IGD ShopperVista; Mar’22 Base: 212