To celebrate Halloween this year, HI-CHEW, the iconic candy brand, launched a new spooky season treat – the HI-CHEW Mystery Mix – the brand’s first Halloween-themed product since 2017. The new mix includes a vibrant blend of beloved flavors, including Watermelon from Sweet & Sour Mix, Blue Raspberry from Fantasy Mix, and Candy Apple from Dessert Mix – plus a brand-new mystery flavor revealed on Halloween day.
To create buzz around this launch and build excitement ahead of the spooky holiday, Sharp executed a robust media blitz to get the word out about the new mix for trick or treat stories. To build on this momentum, Sharp worked with HI-CHEW to create HI-CHEW’s House of Mystery, a one-of-a-kind spooktacular experience for consumers in Southern California. For one weekend only (October 24 - 26) at Irvine Spectrum, the immersive candy-filled pop-up brought attendees through five unique rooms full of playful scares, vibrant flavors, and sweet surprises, leading them on a quest to solve the ultimate flavor mystery.
Each room was inspired by the flavors of the HI-CHEW Mystery Mix and featured a new task for attendees to complete in order to move through the experience. From balancing the scales and hitting big on a hi-striker, to creating light bright art, each room was a unique experience. The Mystery Flavor room was the final stop, where attendees had the chance to make their best guess on the Mystery Flavor in order to win a prize from the HI-CHEW-themed claw machine. Everyone loved getting a chance to meet HI-CHEW’s mischievous mascot, who was on-site in their best Halloween costumes as a surprise and delight moment.
Throughout the weekend, over 2,500 people attended the free admission activation, with some waiting in line for 3+ hours for the chance to take part in this experience. HI-CHEW candy was distributed to people in line, as well as several touch points throughout the experience – with over 45,000 pieces of HI-CHEW!
Sharp supported this two phased Halloween campaign with both a strategic media outreach plan and an influencer marketing campaign:
- Sharp secured 86 placements totaling 1.8B impressions with both local and national media, including Parade, AllRecipes, The Takeout, Los Angeles Daily News and LA Parent
- Sharp secured 10 influencers who produced 35 pieces of social content, generating a total of 480K impressions and 262K interactions.
For those that have been anxiously awaiting the big reveal on Halloween day – the secrets out – its Cherry Lemonade!