Fruit-tella’s “Halloween Hotel” opens for business with a spooktastic Amazon Alexa campaign

Perfetti Van Melle’s Fruit-tella has teamed up with Wavemaker for a new interactive audio campaign, “Halloween Hotel”, that aims to prepare Fruit-tella families for the spookiest event of the season.

“Halloween Hotel” is an Amazon Alexa skill and game that will provide a daily countdown of content, running up to the 31st of October. Each day, Fruit-tella fans will be invited back to the Hotel to open a new door; revealing tricks, spooky stories, interactive games, jokes and special prizes – all accessible via voice. And to help them remember to check-in, families can turn on notifications to get a reminder from Alexa to “check behind the next hotel door”.

Working closely with Fruit-tella, Wavemaker was responsible for original concept development, as well as all creative content for the voice skill, including innovation strategy and product development, creative production, copywriting, audio recording and mixing. All additional media activity stemmed from this initial idea. The Amazon Alexa skill itself was built by leading conversational AI agency, Voxly Digital.

Halloween is the most important event of the year for Fruit-tella, with the majority of its brand activity centring around the big day. But, as fellow Halloween enthusiasts know, it’s never too early to get into the spooky ‘spirit’. According to Perfetti Van Melle’s own research, consumers are hungry to make the event bigger than ever this year – with a third (30%) of shoppers planning to shop for themed lines up to eight weeks prior. As such, similar to the traditional advent calendar at Christmas, the “Halloween Hotel” will be open for business from 6th September, providing children and their parents with 56 days of fun and a unique way to build excitement for the final event.

The campaign will be promoted across Fruit-tella’s owned social channels – Facebook and Instagram. Run by McCann, the activations will reach a large audience of readily receptive Fruit-tella families. In addition, supported by communications agency, Mercieca, “Halloween Hotel” will be broadcast to parents across the UK, through a special collaboration with Made by Mammas: The Podcast.

Throughout the week commencing 19th September, hosts Zoe Hardman and Georgia Dayton, will explore – and have fun with! – the calendar, further sharing a follow-up Instagram reel of the two playing “Halloween Hotel” at home. To keep the celebrations going, on 24th September, Hardman and Dayton will additionally host “Fruit-tella’s Halloween Hotel Party” where a selection of parenting influencers and media will all also get the chance to interact with the game.

For those unable to attend, Wavemaker will amplify the game to trick-or-treater’s TV sets via video and display ads developed by creative agency Oakwood. These will run across Amazon’s DSP, Amazon Music and Fire TV throughout September and October.

In addition, together with INCA, Group M’s influencer and content marketing solution, Fruit-tella will become the first UK brand to trial a new influencer-focused partnership with Amazon. It will include a stream of influencer content across Amazon platforms to drive Amazon store visits and sales.

Engaging creative from INCA influencers will be repurposed to target consumers with the most relevant content based on their keyword searches. Ultimately, providing a more engaging experience and further fuelling Amazon’s commercial capabilities.

Rozzi Merrington, Head of Innovation, Wavemaker UK, said:

We’re delighted to see this campaign come to life, especially with the jokes, interactive ideas, and even uncovering “Fruittell-ha-ha-ha”s spooky voice all delivered in-house. Our team is certainly in the mood for the festive season now, and we have no doubt Fruittella families will feel the same rush!

Lauren Potter, Brand Manager for Fruit-tella, Perfetti Van Melle, added:

“Halloween is one of the most iconic holidays to celebrate – if you aren’t excited in advance, you simply aren’t taking full advantage of the season. Our Fruit-tella “Halloween Hotel” campaign will help families across the country to celebrate the spooky season the way it was supposed to be enjoyed – plenty of scares, laughs, and of course, treats!”