Every October, candy brands go to war, not in store aisles, but on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. It’s a battle for attention, for “save-worthy” Halloween recipes, and for the kind of nostalgia that makes adults grab a pack of mini Snickers “for the trick-or-treaters” (and we all know what happens next 😏).
As a self-confessed Halloween and horror lover, this is my favorite season to scroll through social media. There’s something magical about seeing how creators transform spooky storytelling into marketing gold, from DIY haunted-house sets to eerie unboxings that make you wish you had a brand collab, too. One of my all-time favorites? Walkers’ “Monster Munch” campaign, equal parts creepy and clever, proving that even a bag of crisps can own the Halloween spotlight when creativity leads the way.
Halloween is the Super Bowl of seasonal marketing for U.S. sweet brands, a perfect storm of nostalgia, community, and creativity. It’s when Gen Z and Millennial audiences are actively hunting for costume ideas, treat inspo, and spooky aesthetics, which means the candy category sells sugar while also selling stories, memories, and moments of joy.
According to the National Retail Federation (2025), Americans spent over $3.9 billion on candy during the Halloween season, a record-breaking number that’s been rising consistently since 2020. Nearly 73% of U.S. households buy candy specifically for Halloween, and more than half say they’re influenced by what they see on social media (NRF, 2025).
On TikTok alone, hashtags like #HalloweenTreats, #TrickOrTreatChallenge, and #SpookySnacks surpassed 2 billion views in 2024.
Sweet brands that harness creator partnerships see engagement lift by up to 35% during seasonal windows compared to always-on campaigns (DigiDay, 2025). So yes, Halloween is big business, but it’s also big storytelling.
Candy is emotion in a wrapper and Halloween gives it a narrative. You’re not just unwrapping chocolate; you’re reliving the thrill of being 10 years old again with a pillowcase full of loot.
That’s why creators excel here. They don’t sell the product, they sell the feeling of sneaking candy before dinner, baking themed cupcakes with your kids, or sharing a “trick-or-treat haul” with your best friend.
In a scene where authenticity beats advertising, influencer storytelling turns seasonal promotions into cultural participation.
As marketers, we’re not in the candy business, we’re in the meaning business. The smartest sweet brands measure intent, who’s actually inspired to buy, bake, post, or participate.
Think of it this way:
When agencies adopt that mindset, campaigns start being about rituals. And Halloween? That’s the perfect stage to turn your brand into a seasonal tradition. Here’s how some brands got it scarily right:
If you’re planning your Halloween influencer strategy, steal a page from the candy playbook:
As we’ve established, Halloween it’s kind of a marketing ecosystem. It blends nostalgia, creativity, and social media virality in a way no other season can. For sweet brands, it’s the one time of year when everyone is primed to play, whether they’re kids trick-or-treating or adults diving into the nostalgia of their favorite childhood snacks.
And for agencies managing multiple clients, it’s the perfect playground to experiment with storytelling, short-form video, and community-driven content.
If you’re in influencer marketing, you already know: seasonal content performs up to 3x better than evergreen content (HubSpot, 2025). Halloween is no exception, it’s tailor-made for creators.
It’s not just that people are online more in October, it’s that they’re in discovery mode. They’re searching for:
This creates an organic funnel for influencer content that doesn’t feel like advertising — it feels like participation.
Remember when Oreo launched its “Boo Edition” cookies? Creators on TikTok didn’t just unbox them, they baked with them, decorated with them, and hid them in Halloween candy bowls. That single limited-edition release generated over 120 million TikTok impressions in two weeks.
Agency Insight: Use seasonality to your advantage, brief creators around what’s trending that month, not just your product. Seasonal context amplifies relevance and discoverability.
Halloween taps into something deeper than sugar cravings: collective nostalgia. As marketers, we often underestimate how powerful that is. Adults relive their childhood excitement through their kids, or simply by grabbing their favorite candy “for old times’ sake.”
According to Yahoo Life UK (2025), 68% of millennials say Halloween is “their favorite holiday because it makes them feel like a kid again.” That emotional trigger is gold for storytelling.
And then there’s the “kidult” movement, adults embracing youthful fun and fandoms, from Marvel to Barbie to, yes, Halloween candy. TikTok and Instagram are the perfect stages for this kind of expressive, playful content.
Sour Patch Kids nailed this with its “Sour Then Sweet” Halloween campaign, where influencers recreated horror-movie tropes that ended in candy jokes. It struck the perfect tone, edgy enough for adults, funny enough for Gen Z and saw a 47% lift in ad recall (Adweek, 2025).
Halloween is algorithm heaven. On TikTok and Instagram, trend-based content gets a massive organic lift and Halloween is one big trend generator.
Twix leaned into this perfectly with its “Left vs. Right” Halloween challenge. Influencers were asked to pick a side (Team Left or Team Right) in their costume or candy haul videos. The result? A friendly debate that doubled engagement and got creators’ audiences tagging friends to join in.
Pro Tip for Agencies: Encourage creators to post between Sept 15–Oct 15,the algorithm sweet spot where discovery peaks but ad fatigue hasn’t kicked in. Early posting = early momentum.
When you combine emotional storytelling with algorithmic momentum, you get a campaign window that drives:
And it’s not just candy brands cashing in.Fashion, home décor, makeup, pet care, even gaming brands are piggybacking on Halloween candy culture to join the seasonal conversation.
For instance, Target partnered with lifestyle and parenting influencers to share Halloween hauls that blended decor + candy.
The twist? Influencers were encouraged to mix store brands (like Market Pantry) with major candy labels. The result was cross-category synergy that felt real..
If there’s one brand that has turned Halloween into an art form, it’s Reese’s. Every year, they don’t just participate in Halloween, they own it.
While other brands chase costumes and hashtags, Reese’s focuses on emotion and ritual. Their entire strategy centers on one universal truth:
“Everyone fights for the last Reese’s.”
That’s not just a tagline, it’s behavioral insight. Reese’s built their Halloween empire by tapping into scarcity, nostalgia, and playful rivalry. And influencer marketing has become the beating heart of that strategy.
Reese’s understood early on that Halloween is about who makes the most memorable moment.
Instead of shouting “Buy our candy!”, their campaigns whisper, “You know this is the one everyone wants.”
The message? Reese’s isn’t a candy, it’s a trophy.
Their “Trick or Treat” positioning flipped the script from product promotion to participation challenge, transforming the brand into a character in every Halloween story.
Reese’s leverages social proof and friendly competition, two of the most effective emotional drivers in marketing psychology. When creators show people “fighting over the last cup,” it validates the product’s irresistible appeal, without ever feeling like an ad.
One of Reese’s most iconic stunts and a masterclass in earned media was the Reese’s Candy Converter, a vending machine that let people trade unwanted Halloween candy for Reese’s cups.
Simple idea. Massive payoff. The brand combined physical activations with influencer UGC to extend the experience far beyond event attendees:
The result? Over 500M social impressions across platforms, thousands of UGC recreations, and media coverage that made it one of the most memorable Halloween activations in years.
@theholdernessfamily (TikTok, 3.5M followers) recreated the “Candy Converter” challenge in their kitchen, turning it into a skit about “trading Dad’s almond bars for Reese’s.” It felt authentic, funny, and on-brand, exactly the type of relatability modern audiences crave.
Reese’s didn’t limit themselves to beauty-perfect creators. They embraced:
This multi-tiered influencer mix made the campaign feel organic from every angle: from nostalgic parents to Gen Z meme lovers.
Agency Insight: If your campaign revolves around social behaviors (like trading, choosing, or pranking), don’t limit your talent pool to traditional niches. Find creators who embody emotion over category. Reese’s didn’t hire “food influencers”, they hired fun people.
Reese’s reported:
But what really stood out was how Reese’s integrated influencer content across all channels: retail displays, social ads, and even in-store screens.
If Reese’s owns the rivalry of Halloween, M&M’s owns the relatability. For years, M&M’s has proven that candy can have a personality — and that those personalities can reflect something bigger than flavor: diversity, humor, and shared identity.
And when they brought that to TikTok with the “Flavors of You” campaign, they sparked a cultural conversation about what it means to be seen in a brand’s story.
M&M’s has always been more than a product, it’s a cast. Each color has a personality: the sarcastic Yellow, the confident Green, the anxious Orange. Instead of retiring that idea, the brand evolved it for the TikTok generation, where identity and expression drive engagement.
The Halloween campaign — “Flavors of You” — was pure genius. It invited creators to reimagine M&M’s characters as modern archetypes:
Creators didn’t just make ads, they made content that felt like them.
M&M’s Global Marketing VP, Sarah Long, put it best:
“Our goal wasn’t to sell candy. It was to celebrate the colorful mix that makes every community unique.”
The #FlavorsOfYou TikTok challenge was M&M’s big Halloween moment in 2024. Here’s how it worked: creators were encouraged to show their “M&M personality” through Halloween makeup, costumes, or skits. The trend spread like wildfire.
Example creators:
Campaign Numbers (Statista, 2024):
Halloween is already about identity, people express who they are (or who they want to be). M&M’s simply joined the conversation. By letting creators embody the product, the brand handed over creative control — and that’s exactly what made it powerful.
Unlike traditional ads, where brands dictate tone and visuals, M&M’s let creators inject their own humor, quirks, and perspectives. The result? Authentic content that resonated across demographics.
Agency Insight: This is what we call participatory branding, when the audience helps build the campaign narrative through their own expression. It’s brand storytelling that scales without forcing consistency, and that’s what today’s creator economy thrives on.
M&M’s reported record-high engagement for their seasonal content:
Halloween gave M&M’s the perfect excuse to lean into what makes them unique — character, humor, and color. But their genius move was letting creators interpret those values their own way. That’s the real future of influencer marketing: co-created storytelling.
This section connects Halloween’s seasonal trends directly to influencer marketing strategy, giving agencies and brands a data-driven view of consumer behavior and actionable creative takeaways. It’s written in your trademark mix of wit, warmth, and authority, data meets storytelling.
NRF’s October 2025 report added a spooky twist to the data: 79% of consumers expect prices to rise due to tariffs. But here’s the plot twist, it’s not killing enthusiasm.
Instead, it’s fueling creative resilience. 70% of shoppers are taking at least one cost-saving measure:
And here’s where influencer marketing shines. Influencers are showing consumers how to stretch every dollar, turning thrift and upcycling into a form of creative expression.
Pro Tip: Lean into the “creative constraint.” Partner with influencers who can showcase affordable creativity rather than luxury extravagance. In tight markets, relatability converts faster than aspiration.
If there’s one generation rewriting Halloween, it’s Gen Z, 82% of 18–24-year-olds are taking active steps to save money, including working extra hours or freelance gigs to afford the season. But that doesn’t mean they’re cutting back; it means they’re planning better.
And they’re documenting everything.
From DIY costumes to “trick-or-treat hauls,” Gen Z turns shopping into shareable storytelling. For brands, that means every purchase can be a piece of content — if you position it right.
Dylan’s Candy Bar partnered with nano-influencers on TikTok for “Sweet Haul Under $20” videos, encouraging fans to share their mini hauls. The result? 7M organic views, and a 19% lift in in-store visits that weekend.
Agency Tip: Build “UGC-first” campaigns with simple challenges — e.g., “Show us your $25 Halloween basket” or “The 3 treats you can’t live without.” These micro-interactions outperform traditional ads on both engagement and share rate (Hootsuite Seasonal Insights, 2025).
Halloween gives brands permission to play, to mix humor, community, nostalgia, and creativity. The smartest brands use it to humanize their image and build long-term cultural relevance, not just seasonal sales. So, if you are a brand or agency you should:
In the end, Halloween works because it taps into something primal the joy of transformation. And for marketers, that’s the real magic: the chance to turn every follower into a fan, and every fan into a co-creator.