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Screamfest IV: how Cow helped The Kraken deliver its best-ever Halloween spooktacular

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By Awards Analyst, writer

December 7, 2021 | 9 min read

Cow won ‘Best At-Home Experience’ at The Drum Awards for Experience with its spooktacular campaign for The Kraken. Screamfest IV took the annual Halloween experience to new heights, turning the constraints of the pandemic into a record-breaking event. Get behind the scenes of this winning entry.

Cow for the Kraken

Now in its fourth year, Kraken's Screamfest starred actor Iwan Rheon.

For three years, The Kraken has been delivering memorable experiences at Halloween under the ‘Screamfest’ banner. These events have all used elements of immersive theatre to put fans into the dark world of the brand. In 2020, with Covid-19 restrictions in mind, we needed to deliver an engrossing Screamfest event, but this time one that fans of The Kraken could enjoy online.

The idea we came up with was not only worthy of the Screamfest name, but in many ways it exceeded the earlier entries. It opened up an entirely new audience for the Kraken brand and demonstrated how to do leading brand experiences at a time of lockdown.

Screamfest IV was an ‘in real life’ survival horror video game.

It saw players remotely control the movements of a real human being live via their smartphones and computers (in this case Game of Thrones actor Iwan Rheon) - attempting to navigate them safely through a claustrophobic and malevolent ocean fortress.

Objectives

Cow and The Kraken have been delivering live events for a highly engaged fan base since 2017. The centerpiece and the biggest asset of those is Screamfest. At the start of the 2020 the KPIs for Screamfest were:

  • Deliver a new Screamfest live event concept

  • 30 pieces of media coverage, including 8 x Tier 1 and 10 x Tier 2 national news and consume lifestyle titles

  • Social reach of 1m with 5% engagement

  • Covid-19 brought a new objective: find a safe alternative way to deliver Screamfest during a pandemic and social distancing

Strategy

The Kraken had already been delivering year-on-year sales growth, building a cult following among its target audience through immersive live events. The Kraken consumer sits on the edgy side of normal, aged 21-34 years old. 70% of them are male, and all have eclectic taste.

The centerpiece event of the year is Kraken’s Screamfest, staged on Halloween. When 2020 started, the challenge was to come up with something bigger and better than the three previous Screamfest activations.

Then Covid-19 hit, and a brand whose entire marketing strategy is built on dark, immersive live events and theater suddenly found its calendar wiped out.

So, what happens when events in the real world got darker than anything we could dream up?

All around us live events were being canceled or postponed. We were determined that the show would go on for The Kraken, but the immersive darkness and drama of the brand had to go digital. This meant sailing into uncharted waters.

We realized through audience research that a large number of the engaged Kraken community are gamers. What if we could gamify the experience of Screamfest for fans to participate online and tap into an existing passion point - and do so in a way that would generate the press headlines and social media engagement we had enjoyed at previous iterations?

Introducing Screamfest IV: an unforgettable ‘In Real Life’ (IRL) survival horror video game.

From the comfort of their homes, players would us their smartphones and computers to remotely control an actual human and determine their every movement in real time through a terrifying location full of malevolent characters and a relentless, pursuing nemesis.

Activation

The technology didn’t exist ‘off the shelf’ for an IRL horror game, so we had to make it, working with a team of talented tech developers and AV live streaming experts.

Legendary Rockstar Games director John Zurhellen (Grand Theft Auto IV, Manhunt) was enlisted to script the experience, covering every detail from plot, character development through to wardrobe and props.

Film and TV actor (and Kraken fan) Iwan Rheon signed up to play The Hero whose every move would be remotely controlled.

The Clerkenwell House of Detention, a former prison with a sinister past, provided the location, which was dressed and lit by the Cow events team.

Conceived as a gauntlet of fun scares and tasks in a ten-minute experience, ‘Screamfest IV; The Kraken’s Revenge’ was less about skill and strategy and more about moments the player would remember and share with friends. Along the way the Hero would have to navigate a series of dank corridors, claustrophobic cells, solve puzzles and overcome a cast of ghoulish figures - played by supporting actors.

The game ran over four high-octane evening from October 29 – 31. Tickets for 10-minute slots available to purchase online at The League of Darkness. The £10 ticket price included a Screamfest IV Survival Kit – a DVD case containing a game guide from John Zurhellen, limited edition poster and ingredients for a new Kraken rum cocktail.

PR Overview

The Cow Studio team developed an atmospheric horror film style trailer and poster, delivering the backstory, cast and creators through four phases:

Phase 1 Listings launch; reveal of John Zurhellen as creative mastermind to gaming media, trailer and poster assets

Phase 2 Iwan Rheon announcement to national news, gaming and entertainment media, sold-in with poster featuring Iwan

Phase 3 Interview placement with Iwan

Phase 4 Activation, with images and video of the event distributed to media

Social overview

The Cow team used The Kraken’s social channel to tease the event and reveal elements of the game in the build-up, including phased ticket releases. Content from the event was seeded across the four days of activation to a highly engaged audience. Social ads were also used to drive non-participants to watch online and drive links to Amazon to purchase product so they could make the new cocktail at home.

Meanwhile, Iwan Rheon provided additional support with a series of social media posts to his followers on Instagram (1m) and Twitter (278k).

Results and Evaluation

From being faced with the prospect of canceling the event, and despite having to overcome many external factors and restraints, the pivot to digital saw us deliver the most successful Screamfest ever.

KPIs for earned media coverage and social media engagement were smashed, including:

Tickets sold-out in 24 hours, snapped up in record time for a Screamfest event – with 15,000 applications to play.

The game earned 68 pieces of media coverage, including ten in Tier 1 publications, 45 in Tier 2 news and lifestyle and eight in drinks and marketing trade publication, more than in 2019 and 2018. The campaign achieved a reach of 1.4m and 6.4% engagement against a KPI of 1m and 5%. Screamfest and The Kraken gained 4,371 new followers.

Business results

  • Uplift in sales of Kraken Rum on Amazon.
  • Almost 3000 click-throughs to the Amazon store page to purchase Screamfest recipe kit.
  • In December 2020, Kraken reported sustained sales growth in the period from April – December, despite recent challenges – with no ATL support.

In summary

For a brand whose connection to its audience is built on real-world events, the restrictions of lockdown were problematic to say the least. It would have been understandable if Kraken had elected to scrap Screamfest for the year. But they didn’t. And with Cow Screamfest 2020 became something even more successful than all of its predecessors.

Where past events had been limited by the number of people that can fit in a venue, we had no such constraints here and seamlessly blended the worlds of online and offline to create an experience worthy of the Screamfest title. We exceeded every one of our PR and social media targets and drove significant sales of the rum (crucial in a year where bars and pubs were shut).

Out of adversity we’d developed a new way for Kraken to connect with its fans - and a way to connect with a legion of new fans by tapping in to gaming culture. The challenge now is how we do even better with Screamfest V!

This campaign was a winner at The Drum Awards for Experience. To find out more, including which competitions are currently open for entry, visit The Drum Awards website.

Awards Case Studies Experiential Marketing Marketing

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