Bloody Brilliant Brands

One in five Australians is getting ghoulish this year — and brands are cashing in.

What was once a fringe holiday is now a full-blown retail ritual, with Aussies dropping an estimated $450 million on lollies, costumes, decorations, and parties.

But it’s not just households getting in the spirit. Marketers are starting to treat Halloween like the new April Fools; a rare chance to throw out the usual playbook, get weird, and surprise people in ways that feel unexpected but still on-brand.

And why not? In the world of AI, authenticity might be the buzzword of the year, but Halloween is one of the few moments we want to be tricked (as long as the creative pays off).

These brands below treated us to terrifyingly good creative:

Severed Sales

First off the post with a slightly older but delightfully deranged campaign, in 2022, Liquid Death (already known for their off-beat branding, and the tagline “Murder Your Thirst) partnered with Martha Stewart to promote a life-sized severed hand candle you could actually purchase (and of course, it sold out).

‘Til Death Do Us Parka This year, American outdoor apparel brand Columbia 1938 released a jacket so rugged, they say it’ll outlive you. Literally. They’ve sewn a legally binding Will & Testament into the inside of the jacket so that you can pass it on when you go. To promote it, they even created an intrepid “influencer” in the form of a grim reaper (AKA the Notorious RIP), posting a heap of videos on Instagram. Smart, a little unhinged, and perfectly on-brand for a company all about survival gear.

Scare in a Can

Back in Australia, Coca-Cola gave Fanta a refresh this season with limited-edition packaging featuring horror film icons like Chucky and flavours (Chucky’s Punch is strawberry flavoured). There’s a fun Haunted Fanta Factory Experience you can play also (I can’t seem to get past the first pile of blood!) and some cool prizes to be won.

Poo Dunnit

And finally, Aussie pet food challenger brand Lyka went full horror movie trailer with The Brutal Pick Up, a short film featuring every pet owner’s worst nightmare: a sloppy, un-pick-up-able poo. It’s shot like a legit thriller and cleverly taps into both humour and relatability, all while reminding owners that good gut health matters for dogs, too.

And now for some Marketing Treats & Tricks…

Witch-Crafted Webs

While everyone else was busy summoning ghosts, OpenAI conjured something actually useful: ChatGPT Atlas, a new built-in web browser built to replace tabs with something smarter. Atlas puts ChatGPT in a persistent sidebar, letting it read and interact with any webpage — and in Agent Mode, it can even control your browser to book travel, fill shopping carts, or generate to-do lists. It’s part browsing assistant, part well-trained poltergeist.

One of the cool aspects of it is that it remembers what you do. Not in a creepy “I know what you did last summer” kind of way (hopefully), but enough to generate personalised suggestions and help you get things done faster. Atlas is only on Mac for now, and Agent Mode is Plus/Pro only, but it’ll be interesting to see who adopts this cool AI-powered sidekick.

And in other big news, they’ve also teamed up with Shopify to create Instant Checkout, where users can buy products straight from a chat window. No clicks to other sites, no browsing, and no retargeting. In our opinion, this is about to change the online shopping experience forever.

Shapeshifting SEO

Everyone’s talking about AI search like it’s some kind of marketing apocalypse. Depending on who you ask, SEO is either a rotting corpse or exactly the same as it’s always been.

The reality? Most of it is ghost stories.

Search isn’t dead; it’s just mutating. Instead of chasing blue links and top rankings, brands now need to be summoned by AI when it answers a question.

That’s where all these buzzy new acronyms come in (which mean more or less the same thing):

• GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)
• AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)
• AI SEO (self-explanatory but equally vague)

They all boil down to this: making sure your content is so accurate, clear, and trustworthy that an AI assistant (like ChatGPT or Google SGE) chooses you when it responds to a user.

The fundamentals remain: don’t keyword stuff or optimise for rankings. Instead, make sure it’s accurate, relevant, reads well, and builds trust.

Because in the age of AI search, it’s not just about being seen…It’s about being believed.

This article from Search Engine Land busts the biggest myths haunting AI search.

RIP MTV

Yep. TikTok killed the MTV star.

After four decades of shaping youth culture, MTV’s music channels were officially laid to rest this month. It was a sad but not really unexpected death for a once-unstoppable cultural force.

At its peak, MTV was the tastemaker. The reason we knew what was cool before it was cool. But then it stopped doing the one thing that probably mattered above all else.

As Vice put it, “MTV didn’t die because people stopped loving music. It died because it stopped listening.”

A fitting (and slightly chilling) reminder for brands this Halloween: If you stop listening and stop evolving… and you might just end up a ghost of your former self.

Final Destination: Your CMS

And last but not least, we love a good horror marketing campaign as much as the next ghoul, so naturally, we couldn’t resist joining the fray ourselves.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out SharkNet Website Security, our own site protection platform for small businesses.

This Halloween, we went all-in on the horror tropes: think classic horror movie trailer, The Shining (featuring our anti-mascot, Shane the Shark in the role of Jack), and the haunting idea of a compromised site being… possessed.

And if you need your business website protected, we’re currently offering 50% off scans when you lock it in by October 31.

Because the scariest thing this Halloween isn’t ghosts — it’s weak passwords and outdated plugins.