Fanta’s Halloween Playbook: From Borrowed Icons to Its Own

In August 2026, Fanta released a two-minute trailer for something it calls Fanta’s Haunted Universe: an entertainment property with its own characters, lore and stories, planned as a multiyear effort and launching across 50 markets. A jack-o’-lantern-headed scarecrow, a vampire in a sports car, a cyborg Frankenstein and a werewolf DJ appear on Fanta’s Halloween cans. The Scream franchise’s Ghost Face arrived days later as the first guest character, with a limited-edition Ghost Face Punch flavor.

That is a change in strategy, and it is the most useful part of the story. For the previous two years, Fanta’s Halloween ran on borrowed icons: Beetlejuice in 2024, then Chucky and Michael Myers through a partnership with Universal Pictures and Blumhouse. According to Ibrahim Khan, Fanta’s global vice president of marketing, the 2025 campaign delivered 10 billion impressions and an impact on sales. Then the brand decided to stop renting. Khan calls it the move “from collaborator to creator.”

Why a season, and why this one

Khan states the ambition plainly: Fanta wants Halloween to be what Christmas is to Coca-Cola. The logic behind that is worth understanding, because it applies well beyond soft drinks.

A brand tied to a recurring moment gets rehearsed in people’s memories every year without having to earn attention from scratch. The moment arrives on its own schedule, and the brand arrives with it. Coca-Cola didn’t have to persuade anyone that Christmas was coming. It only had to be there, consistently, until the two became linked.

Halloween also had no soft drink brand that obviously owned it. That gap matters more than the size of the holiday. A brand trying to own a moment someone else already holds is fighting memory, and memory is stubborn. Fanta picked an unclaimed season that fits its own orange color and its playful tone.

It also broke a rule of its category. Soft drinks traditionally sell refreshment, sunshine and good times. Horror is none of those. Stepping outside the conventions everyone in a category copies is how a brand gets noticed, the argument in category codes, the silent brand killer. The trick is breaking a code your brand’s personality can carry. Fanta’s playfulness makes horror feel like fun rather than fear.

Borrowed icons get you in. They don’t stay yours.

Licensing Chucky or Michael Myers bought Fanta instant fame and credibility with horror fans. It is the same move a brand makes when it places a story in a prestige magazine: renting belief it hasn’t yet built, as we described in the sponsored article is the top of the funnel, not the funnel.

But borrowed assets have a cost that doesn’t show up in the first year. The memories people form attach partly to the icon, and the icon belongs to someone else. Next year’s partner is different, so the association has to be rebuilt. A competitor can license the same character. And every year, the brand pays again for attention it can’t keep.

Rivalry campaigns run into the same limit from another direction. When a brand builds its message on a competitor’s asset, the idea only works as long as the original stays famous, the dynamic behind Pepsi’s parody of Share a Coke.

The Haunted Universe is Fanta’s answer. Its own characters carry the memory from year to year, and famous icons like Ghost Face are invited in as guests. The borrowed fame still drives attention, but it points at something Fanta owns. Khan told Marketing Dive the work took a year and a half, which is a reminder that owned assets are slow to build and cheap to keep.

The can is the medium

Most of what makes the platform spread doesn’t look like advertising. Collectible cans for each character, a limited-time flavor, the return of the Haunted Fanta Factory experience, and influencers given the universe’s lore and backstories so they have something to make content about.

Each piece does a specific job. The can puts the idea on every shelf and in every hand, and collectibility turns buying into collecting. The limited flavor gives people a reason to hunt for it before it is gone. The lore gives creators material beyond “look at this can,” so the brand gets a steady supply of content it didn’t have to make itself. Planning that content supply around a season is the core of social media marketing built around moments your audience already celebrates.

A soft drink building a world around itself isn’t new territory for advertising. Perfume has done it for decades, selling an atmosphere rather than a liquid, the technique unpacked in decoding the tactics of perfume ads. Fanta’s version is louder and aimed at fans rather than aspiration, but the mechanism is the same: give people a world to step into, and the product becomes the ticket.

What to take for your own brand

You don’t need Coca-Cola’s budget to use the mechanism. You need five decisions.

Pick a recurring moment near your product that no competitor owns: a season, an annual event in your industry, a date your customers already mark. Smaller brands can own smaller moments.

Break one category convention on purpose, and choose one your brand’s personality can carry.

Borrow to get in, build to stay. If you partner with a famous name, make sure every borrowed asset points at something you own, whether a character, a format, a ritual or a recurring piece of content.

Put the idea on the product. Packaging, limited editions and the product itself are media you already pay for.

Commit for years, not a quarter. Owning a moment is built by showing up the same way, every year, until people expect you. Defining which assets are yours and holding them steady is the work of brand identity strategy built on assets you own.

Rented fame gets you noticed. Owned characters get you remembered. Fanta spent two years learning the first and is spending the next several on the second.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Fanta’s brand positioning strategy?

Fanta positions itself as a playful, entertainment-led soft drink, and its clearest current strategy is to own Halloween the way Coca-Cola owns Christmas. It has done that by breaking soft drink conventions with horror themes, first through licensed icons and, from 2026, through its own Haunted Universe of original characters, supported by collectible packaging, limited flavors, experiences and creator content.

What is Fanta’s Haunted Universe?

Fanta’s Haunted Universe is an entertainment property launched in August 2026, built around four original characters inspired by classic horror archetypes, including a jack-o’-lantern-headed scarecrow, a vampire, a cyborg Frankenstein and a werewolf. It was created with the studio GRAiL, is planned as a multiyear platform across 50 markets, and invites famous horror icons in as guests, starting with Ghost Face.

Which horror icons has Fanta partnered with?

Fanta partnered with Warner Bros. on Beetlejuice for Halloween 2024, then with Universal Pictures and Blumhouse to feature horror icons including Chucky and Michael Myers in 2025. For Halloween 2026, Ghost Face from the Scream franchise became the first guest character in Fanta’s own Haunted Universe, alongside a limited-edition Ghost Face Punch flavor. Licensed icons appear as guests in a world Fanta owns.

How successful was Fanta’s Halloween campaign?

According to Fanta’s global vice president of marketing, Ibrahim Khan, the 2025 Halloween campaign delivered 10 billion impressions, with significant engagement and an impact on sales. Fanta has not published detailed sales figures. The brand treated that result as the basis for turning Halloween into a repeatable, multiyear platform rather than a single seasonal campaign, starting with the Haunted Universe in 2026.