The Brief

Every year we’re briefed by The Kraken to develop a unique Halloween experience under the Screamfest banner. The idea must deliver a deeply immersive national and regional experience that plunges hundreds of attendees into the world and myth of the brand, while also delivering buckets of national news coverage and high social media reach and engagement.

The Big Idea

We opened a unique horror bar where the price a visitor paid for drinks was determined by their own heart rate.

On arrival to Screamfest VII: Shock Exchange guests were hooked up to heart rate monitors and thrown into an immersive horror gauntlet scientifically designed to test their resilience to fear. The more a guest’s heart pounded during the experience, the more pounds they paid at the bar for their Kraken cocktails.

To amplify the event on a regional scale we created a VR equivalent of the experience. Visitors to partner bars in would don VR headsets and heart rate monitors, and be transported into the same gauntlet of terror.

The Results

In its seventh year Screamfest once again proved a huge hit on all fronts. We achieved over 80 pieces of coverage, 8 of which were nationals. Highlights included LadBible, Mail Online, Daily Express, Evening Standard and Daily Mirror.

On social we generated 12.9% engagement and reached over 3.7 million people. The event saw over 320 consumers through the door and hundreds more experienced the VR version of the event that toured Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow.