What if a soda can could play dress-up?
Fanta had done Halloween before, but only classic Orange got to play. The brief was to bring the rest of the family. I led design on a series that turned a single-region, single-flavor campaign into a multi-year, global one, the Fanta fun way.
More flavors meant more Halloween. The brief also came with a suggested gimmick: glow-in-the-dark ink. The problem: fridges are dark inside, where the ink can never charge. But the impulse behind it was right: disguised surprise. Quintessential Halloween. Each Fanta could be a flavor in costume, the lineup a monster mashup.
I commissioned Noma Bar to bring the disguise. A master of negative-space storytelling, his style cleverly tucked flavor and fright into each classic character can. Bold from across the aisle and rewarded at a closer look. The trick and the treat, experienced all at once.
A legal review in the first year turned into a creative gift: a partnership with Universal Studios and rights to their Classic Monsters, timed to the release of The Mummy reboot. This time we dressed the cans in Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet and Universal classics The Phantom, The Bride of Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man. And reuniting with Noma, these proprietary characters got a unique presence only possible with Fanta.
In Europe, the original 2016 designs anchored the region’s largest-ever Halloween investment, with Snapchat lenses, out-of-home, VR events, and a 90-day content runway.
The approach kept showing up through 2019. By 2018, Fanta posted record Halloween sales of £15.8m in Great Britain alone, up 17.2%.
Some of the best ideas hide in the brief itself.
