31 Nights of Halloween and 25 Days of Christmas Social, Content Creators & Partnerships Campaigns
31 Nights of Halloween and 25 Days of Christmas Social, Content Creators & Partnerships Campaigns
There is a huge initiative to drive linear ratings and social awareness during our two Freeform holiday stunts: 31 Nights of Halloween and 25 Days of Christmas. Historically, year-after-year, 31 Nights of Halloween, which runs from October 1-31, and 25 Days of Christmas, which runs from December 1-25, places Freeform in the Number 1 ranking among primetime cable networks in entertainment across Adults 18-34, Women 18-34 and Women 18-49, excluding news and sports.
Social Campaign:
Each holiday season, for the last 6 years, I champion my social team to think outside the box in terms of our social campaigns for 31 Nights of Halloween and 25 Days of Christmas. I lead the team in brainstorming a unique social strategy relevant for that year which dictates how we lean into custom engaging social content and thoughtful social memes.
31 Nights of Halloween (lead from 2019- 2024):
Campaign Period: 8/15 - 11/1
Total Organic Video Views*: 13 million
Total Organic Engagements*: 2 million
Year Over Year Growth in Followers*: 105%
*FY23 (10/2022 - 9/2023)
25 Days of Christmas (lead from 2018 - 2024):
Campaign Period: 10/31 - 12/26
Total Organic Video Views**: 6.7 million
Total Organic Impressions**: 34.1 million
Year Over Year Growth in Followers**: 538%
**FY23 (10/2022 - 9/2023)
The over 75 million organic social impression campaigns consist of various social content buckets including the high-performing schedule releases, countdown graphics, GIPHY stickers, memes, holiday e-cards, social only promos, innovative ambience videos, and creator content. Additionally, I work with our Freeform public relations team to draft and time press releases for key beats for our social campaigns.
Below are examples of viral social assets across both stunts, which reached multiple million views each.
Content Creators:
For the past 5 years, I have led the social content creator and influencer campaigns to drive awareness and tune in to the annual 31 Nights of Halloween stunt and annual 25 Days of Christmas stunt. We work with 15-20 influencers for each stunt (a total of 30-40 influencers annually) to post video content promoting Freeform’s 31 Nights of Halloween airing all October long and Freeform's 25 Days of Christmas airing December 1-25. Each influencer is contracted to post one TikTok video or Instagram Reel for their assigned movie title, promoting its respective tune-in time in their own personal branded and unique ways.
As part of Freeform's 31 Nights of Halloween campaign, we highlighted creators in different spaces from art and baking to memes and DIY. To tap into our "Everyday Scaries" social strategy, which played off the theme that Everyday Scaries exist even during Halloween season. We leaned into meme accounts to enhance our content relatability with brands like Sarcasm Only (17 million followers), Today Years Old (9.5 million followers) and Sunday Scaries (625K followers). To leverage their following and reach a larger audience, we collaborated with each content creator and meme page across Instagram with custom content that leaned into their talent or audience and promoted our brand of films. Specifically, for 2023's 31 Nights of Halloween, we worked with 18 influencers, with a combined social reach of 18.3M+ followers, posted 54 pieces of combined contracted and added value content resulting in over 2.2 million impressions, 196K engagements, and an impressive 8.8% engagement rate.
Below are select examples of the types of content we created with our creators and influencers for 31 Nights of Halloween:
In addition to the creators we source to create social content for us, my team works to invite creators to our experiential event held annually in Los Angeles, California. In 2023, the event was called the “Black Cat Bash” and our social coverage consisted of custom feed posts along with a series of Instagram Story Q&A with invited creators and an event walkthrough to excite fans. To engage invited creators and include fans, we asked a series of questions on the step & repeat that allowed us to leverage our "Everyday Scaries" social strategy and give fans a chance to participate in the event via an interactive poll. To help bring fans into the world of 31 Nights of Halloween and Black Cat Bash, we captured a custom shoutout video from the infamous Sanderson Sisters creators and leveraged their fandom to launch our official Snap lens.
As part of Freeform's 25 Days of Christmas campaign, we highlighted creators in different spaces from art to baking to makeup to comedy and DIY. We used our "Big Christmas Energy" social strategy, which leaned into celebrating our audience's love for over-the-top Christmas, as a through-line when working with our creators to inspire content that celebrates going all out for the holiday season. We partnered with meme accounts to harness the spirit of holiday joy with brands like Today Years Old (9.5 million followers) and Kale Salad (3.3 million followers). To expand our reach and leverage our creators’ influence in the social space, we collaborated with each creator on Instagram with custom content that promotes our films while highlighting their expertise and talents. Specifically, for 2023's 25 Days of Christmas, we worked with 15 influencers, with a combined social following of 17.5 million followers, posted 57 pieces of combined contracted and added value content resulting in over 6.2 million impressions, 225K engagements, and a 3.6% engagement rate.
Below are select examples of the types of content we created with our creators and influencers for 25 Days of Christmas:
Brand Integrations / External Partnerships:
I was able to plan, lead, and execute not only our social strategies but also our partnership strategies. I handled everything from the brainstorming, initial thoughts, contract negotiation, and implementation. Going into every new stunt season, we wanted to create awareness and viewerships, so we partnered with external brands like Spirit Halloween, Funko, Cinnabon, Auntie Anne’s, Tipsy Elves, Colourpop, Paper Source, Coldstone Creamery, Candier Candles, and Unwrap. I championed idea generation and led brainstorms & pitch presentations with key stakeholders across creative, press relations, legal, synergy partners, external partners, and creative agencies.
Synergy Partnerships:
Every year, I spearhead the synergy partnerships for our holiday stunts. We receive support from 30+ different synergy partners across The Walt Disney Company that drive tune-in across social and digital for all our priority Disney movie airings and the overall stunt. Across our partners' social pages, alone, we have had impressions across more than a total of 119 million followers. Some notable partners we have worked with include DIsney Parks, Disney+, ESPN, Disney Publishing, D23, Disney Channel, and Disney Music Group.
Additionally, my team executes various social and out-of-home executions with our friends at Disney Parks — enabling us to promote the Freeform brand and our stunts further at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Our social partnership work consists of working with Disney creators to do takeovers on our holiday stunt Instagram accounts while they celebrate the holidays at the Disney Parks. This helps drive awareness for our linear and social campaigns while also promoting attendance to Disneyland and Walt Disney World. We’ve worked with some notable content creators in the Disney space including Eat it Katie (2.1 million total followers across Instagram and TikTok), Krystal Everdeen (210K total followers across Instagram and TikTok), and Magic by Muses (60K total followers on Instagram).
Our out-of-home work connects with Parks guests and we generate more than 4.6 million impressions from the Disney Parks, alone. In the past, our 25 Days of Christmas creative has taken over the EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays at Walt Disney World. My team and I worked to secure a 3D photo opportunity and custom-designed menu boxes in the EPCOT World Showcase area that reach more than 2.5 million consumers during November and December. In addition, Walt Disney World provided placement of our 25 Days of Christmas creative in more than 200K of their EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays Passports. My team also took on Walt Disney World’s first-of-its-kind Instagram wall mural at Disney Springs for both 31 Nights of Halloween and 25 Days of Christmas. The October and December wall murals generate more than 15K impressions per day and 1.7 million total impressions each per year. We also secured incredible social support from Disney Springs accounts, the Disney Parks accounts, and Parks fans who were taking photos and tagging either 31 Nights of Halloween and 25 Days of Christmas in their social content.
Below are some select out-of-home execution examples for our holiday stunts:
