Last year quench and Sun-Maid took over a house in New Jersey with its raisins-on-Halloween scare. This year, we’re taking over an entire town. To do that, we’re fully embracing the running joke that raisins are the scariest of all trick-or-treat offerings.
To pull it off, we turned a team of “raisin zombies” loose on St. Helens, Oregon – the filming location of Disney’s classic “Halloweentown” – during the community’s month-long “Spirit of Halloweentown” festivities. The zombies’ mission: To replace all candy with Sun-Maid raisins and adorn Halloween decor spotted around town with the brand’s iconic red bonnet.
Check out a video of the Sun-Maid girl and her raisin zombies in action here.
“Three years ago, we were tackling Halloween with messages about raisins being a ‘better-for-you alternative to sugary snacks.’ And while that may be true, that approach failed to acknowledge the simple fact that nobody wants raisins at Halloween,” said Sun-Maid marketing director Fernando Herrera. “As soon as we embraced our status as a trick-or-treat villain and began having some fun with that image, the sooner we began to make people laugh with us instead of at us.”
“Raisin Swap” is a follow-up to last year’s “Raisin House.” In that experiential activation a house in Merchantville, New Jersey transformed into the scariest house on any block – the dreaded Raisin House. The immersive award-winning experience scared up 1.4 billion media impressions and contributed to an increase in sales for Sun-Maid during a period when raisin sales had, in recent years, been flat or declining.
To date in October, the “raisin swap” effort has generated plenty of buzz and more than 1.2 billion media impressions. quench worked with Unfold, Havas and Formula to create the fully integrated activation, which included social media, paid media and public relations support.
