Ep 540: Using Halloween as Q4 Prep: Pilothouse’s Aves on Creative Seasonal Ads

0:00Halloween has gotten really interesting. More than ever, people are shopping Halloween products earlier. They're decorating like they would for the holiday season. People care way more and they want to buy stuff. If you're selling yoga pants and you sell a black pair of yoga pants and an orange pair of yoga pants, starting to feature those in ads really heavily can kind of do wonders for your click-through rate around this time of year. You don't have to be putting skeletons and pumpkins and decorative gourds on all of your products, but even just featuring those two things together tend to help elevate click-through rate around this time of year.

0:45Aves:let's just we're doing our hardest we're trying our best here people it's all killer no filler and i'm trying my best here with abes uh from pilot house's creative team also host of ad venturous the number one creative ad podcast that's just blowing up the charts uh and today we're going to talk a little bit we talk every year about spooky season we talk a little bit about Halloween, how to actually build effective Halloween campaigns that both drive incremental revenue, but also probably train up your promotional skills for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Is that, is that how we kind of view Halloween a little bit as training grounds for the, for the main event?

1:25Yeah. Halloween has gotten really interesting. I was actually just talking to a client this morning about this, about like limited edition Halloween product and the concept of boo baskets, which are like Easter baskets but for Halloween and like the extra commodification around this holiday and so we're talking about yeah more than ever people are like shopping Halloween products earlier they're decorating like they would for the holiday season I don't know it's just got a different flavor to it I find in the past like two to three years people care way more and they want to buy stuff they want to buy you know their favorite products with like ghosts on them like thinking about a Stanley Cup with ghosts on it.

2:05Like they want that kind of stuff now.

2:06Aves:I was just seeing my buddy Brock Mammoster starting to advertise his spooky season chill cups or whatever. And already this was like two weeks ago, he was starting to implant this idea because I think people just look for that sort of like warmth of the season. Fall is such an evocative season as it is just because the leaves are starting to fall. And then you've got this celebration of death and the macabre right in the middle of October. So there's lots of opportunity. But how do you like, I have some neighbors who go too far with Halloween where they're like, it's like some church of Satan altar and there's like babies hanging upside down with stitches over their mouths, stuff like that.

2:40Aves:That's a bit too much for Halloween. How do you, how do you suggest brands approach Halloween in a playful way, I guess? Yeah, I think you have to think about who your target personas are and how they think about Halloween. So if you are like a family friendly brand sticking to family friendly imagery and references, I find Halloween is almost more nostalgic for people than like the holiday season. Like Halloween movies mean a lot to people. I saw this is just a tangent. I saw Beetlejuice the first time last year. And I was like, this is incredible. This is a theme. how did this get made when you watch that movie you're like how the hell did this movie get made i know the plot was not what i was expecting but i feel like halloween has always been like that it's like kooky it's weird it's off the cuff so really understanding who your ads should be going to and what their experience of halloween is so like if you're looking at um i always use millennials because i feel like they respond the best to like nostalgia i was like what are the Halloween memories that impact them the most what were they like what are they most excited about and then trying to invoke that in your content and it doesn't have to be like we're talking about it's just fall season stuff it gets people really excited so even if you're not slapping pumpkins and skeletons on your product and making a limited edition drop you can still take advantage of the season by just starting to sort of add in those leaves and those messaging about being cozy getting inside.

4:08People love it, especially those millennials. They're obsessed.

4:11Aves:And there's always a way to, pumpkin spice is such a ubiquitous cultural force that there's got to be a way. I remember one of my favorite articles was McSweeney's article from a long time ago, and it was called, It's Decorative Gourd Season Motherf*****. And it was just basically this huge scribe about decorative gourd season and what it means to everyone. So can you give me an example of a brand who's maybe not willing to change their product line but would want to evoke these Halloween feelings in their ads? Any examples that come to mind? I'm trying to think because I feel like most brands now, honestly, like any typical ones that I follow do some kind of Halloween line.

4:50It's crazy work. Like everyone's there. It's just as big as like holiday stuff now.

4:56Aves:But like a boo bundle, I guess you were sort of saying, right? Like just a specialized collection of products under the name of a Halloween thing. Totally. Yeah. I was thinking like homeware specifically or even apparel, like something that I've done in the past when we're maybe not doing that actual launch is just like if you have you're selling yoga pants and you sell a black pair of yoga pants and an orange pair of yoga pants, starting to like feature those in ads really heavily can kind of do wonders for your click through rate around this time of year. Like you don't have to, like I said, be putting skeletons and pumpkins and decorative gourds on all of your products.

5:34But even just featuring those two things together tend to like help elevate cliff-through rate around this time of year.

5:42Aves:Super cool. And just using colors. Like if you've got that orange color, if you've got something ochre or like falling leaves, put that front and center. Yeah. Yeah, I think a couple of years ago, a client that we were working with, I wasn't on the account personally, but they were just adding the leaf emoji, like the falling leaves emoji to content. And it started performing better in like September, October. No change to the messaging, no change to the product itself. They just threw in those little leaf emojis and it worked. So it's a good like exercise. That might have been me. I was back in the day, I was doing these jewelry ads and we sort of had rings with the price and a timer on them for some reason.

6:27Aves:And then I just threw falling leaves on those ads and they performed 20 to 30 percent better. We did the same with winter when it started to snow and it was less effective than the evocative falling leaves, which must make us think of our own mortality as the leaves fall and return to the cycle of life. It is an interesting time of year, like psychologically, because a lot of people like you're locking in again, right? It was the summertime, you're just kind of kissing around, hanging out, hitting the beach. Lots of people have like summer Fridays going on. And then everyone kind of locks in. And so we're all inside more, obviously, because the weather, but also there's just like, more opportunity to buy things, I guess, because you're not going on trips, you're not going like, up to the lake, you're just staying at home, life is boring, you're back to the nine to five.

7:15So I feel like that also, like we have seen across accounts, at least on the meta side, like a bit of an uptick already after Labor Day weekend where performance just increases because people are at home more, less to do. Kids are back in school. You're back in that routine of like your nighttime scroll where in the summertime you're maybe not thinking about it as much.

7:36Aves:Yeah, it definitely feels, my daughter just back to school yesterday, it definitely feels back more in the routine. Even though it's crazy hot here in Victoria, it's like 27 degrees today. which is just wild. Can you speak at all to how you are thinking about these Halloween promotions in the broader context of Q4 preparedness? One big, big, big, big, big thing I'm focusing on with Halloween with the brands I work directly with this year is using it as prep for holiday drops specifically. I also think like I've been talking about this on Adventurous, but like realistically if you weren't prepping for q4 through memorial day sales or labor day sales like if halloween is your first time offer testing that is actually really scary and i don't want to talk to you so you should kind of have an idea of what your halloween promo will look like in amongst your entire promo calendar um i will say it's one of those things that i think sometimes on the client side i see people hype up more than necessary because it's not really like a shopping holiday it is more about the limited edition launches beforehand and people shopping for things to have in their home in the fall and like Halloween season it's not as spicy as Black Friday because people are doing things Halloween weekend like if you're running a flash sale Halloween weekend you're probably not going to have like the best results because people are probably out and about either trick-or-treating or at parties so it is an interesting one where it's almost like the opposite of Black Friday because the lead up is so important.

9:12It's like buying things for the holiday is what matters. And then the actual, you know, if you want to run a flash promo, that's fine. It's probably not going to be that incredibly successful because like I said, it's just not one of those shopping holidays and everyone knows Black Friday is right around the corner. It also sits in a really interesting spot in the calendar where it's like, why would I buy this now instead of waiting a month and saving on it?

9:34Aves:I saw this podcast I just did that'll come out soon with my friend Chris Urthel talked about, we may talk about this in Q4 preparedness podcast in the future, but how important it was if you're going to do a Black Friday sale and start it early, like November 1st or something like that, that you in the either the ad text or in the ad or on the landing page, you make it very clear that this is the best deal that there will be to have so that people can feel like they can buy early and not risk getting sniped by a better deal in a couple weeks. Yeah, that's something I've always done. And the team does as well.

10:09Because it's like, every single year, I think 9000 people say on this, on a podcast that Black Friday is getting earlier and earlier. But it's true. And consumers know that so you need to like really lock in around pricing. I think that like, making that guarantee that this is going to be the lowest price for 30 days, it does start to matter. Because like we were saying, people know now that sales are going to start earlier, but there was kind of maybe two, three years ago, I did notice more of a holdout, even with brands that ran the same deal from November 1st to December 1st, there was still that holdout, even with returning customers, because they were waiting for the actual weekend to make that purchase.

10:50So I love that. Yeah. Being really upfront about it and just saying this is the lowest price we'll go in the next 30, 60 days. it'll definitely secure conversions and help you plan things a little bit better as well

11:01Aves:what are some recent highlights on the adventures podcast or episodes that you're looking forward to release what how's your experience been with the podcast it's been really fun it's been really exciting we've been doing a lot of really like tactical episodes because we are in a really important time for brands so i do love digging in and talking about like dolly designing a lollipop logo that is really fun and I feel like it does get a lot of exciting engagement it's fun to talk about but I've really been kind of locking in about like how to actually navigate creative fatigue this next week's episode like little tips and tricks that I've learned from like working with massive accounts where it's like how do you deal with not running the same version of ads when you have a bunch of products going on so getting into like the actual nitty-gritty of what it takes to win in this season I think is fun to kind of go back to is weird to say like go back to my roots but it feels like that's what we kind of talk about here so it's been fun to talk about those really tactical pieces we were talking last week about again we've kind of been like labor day checklist memorial day sale ideas different ways to use audio was a recent one I see that mistake a lot because I do a lot of audits where people will just like not pay attention to the audios they're using in short form video because people used to scroll on desktop and no one had their sound on but now everyone's watching on reels and we're like trained to watch short form videos sound way up so that was a fun one but getting back to kind of like do these things tomorrow and we'll see better performance is kind of going to be mostly the content from here until Q4 is over.

12:41Aves:As a lead creative strategist at the company, how are you using AI right now? Are you like, I'm just curious, how are you using it a lot to, to construct ads to conceive of different concepts and then get a creative team to do it? How are you using AI in your day to day right now? Yeah, that's a good question. I use it mostly for like clerical work. So I do a lot of different things in my day. Like I do a lot of creative operations, training of staff. But for my actual like conceptualizing ideas i still just do that by myself but i'm also what i have like i have like insane phobias around my brain like not working when i'm older so i really do a lot of like i remember even as a kid i used to play games on my nintendo ds about like keeping your brain up like there's puzzle games so i like to use my brain i like to use it to think critically and i also think like I think it's a muscle and I'm really nervous because I am someone who does a lot of like conceptualizing and creative direction if I don't use that muscle it's gonna stop working it's like an e-brake if you use it you lose it yeah yeah yeah I was gonna compare it to my knees like heading into my late 20s my knees just don't work like they used to and I'm nervous that's gonna happen to the creative parts of my brain if I slow down and stop working with it so much so I learned so meticulously to write, to develop my vocabulary and then to learn how to write a sentence and what exactly each word in the sentence and what it's doing and then how to turn that into a paragraph and then how it turns into an essay.

14:22Aves:And I feel like it really informed how I think of ideas, how I express ideas. And it's like all of like I was kind of a shit student, but I got good grades because I could write really well. And I feel like that skill to learn how to actually construct my thoughts via writing is something that ChatGPT just goes right at because it's like writing is the number one thing that it removes the need for. So that's my little worry about the future. Yeah, it is really interesting to think about like the skills. And that's actually the episode of Adventurous that's coming out this week. I don't know when this episode will come out, but talking a lot about like what skills are necessary when people start using more AI.

15:03So you kind of got a preview to this at our leadership chat, but I was talking about the difference between taste and discernment. Because taste is not, taste is so subjective. And I think there's this really muddy conversation right now where people are talking about taste being like the marketable skill of the future. or in my opinion, it's probably discernment because we're thinking about like, should I be doing this with AI or should I be doing this with a person? And that's more important in my opinion than just like having a high taste level. It's more marketable as an actual skill.

15:35Aves:And the more discernment you have, the better you'll be at using the AI tools as well and understanding like what's acceptable and what's not. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's like, it's really unavoidable. Like I was just saying, I don't use it for a lot of concepting. concepting I only use it for like taking notes on meetings um but it's completely unavoidable like you can't just bury your head in the sand if you're going to work in this industry and like not use it at all um so I think it's yeah really interesting to think about that discernment piece and how it looks different for everyone in different roles and yeah just deciding what's appropriate and what's not at the brand level I think is really important and we're already starting to see people make the wrong call and then get called out and get all this backlash for using AI for like an AI creator or I think it's a right now J crew they've recently used a bunch of AI to like recreate their old catalogs and people hate it yeah it's like very Will Smith in his viral concert that was terrible new music that he's making and he got busted using AI to to show happy fans because no one could be happy with I like pretty girls or whatever that song is yeah that was um that's tough that's a tough watch and it's yeah really interesting to see people like think that they won't be caught using it where I feel like going back to Halloween it's like if I see a brand and they make a ad that's like Frankenstein drinking out of their water bottle and it's obviously using AI I don't really care because Frankenstein's obviously not using that water bottle in the first place.

17:11He's not real even. Exactly. It's like there's no way for that to be real. But then things where it's like you are, it feels tricky. I think that's when people don't like it. Like it feels like you're kind of pulling the wool over someone's eyes. That's when you should maybe stop and think twice.

17:28Aves:More treaty than tricky this holiday season. I think Frankenstein is a great show too because Guillermo del Toro just received a 14 minute standing ovation with Jacob Alordi playing the titular monster of Frankenstein's monster anyway. So I feel like there could be some good Frankenstein content created this year. Yeah, Frankenstein in the zeitgeist. I also have to say, this isn't relevant to marketing, but what is with those really long standing ovations? And like the headline where I was like, it was a foreign standing ovation. I think it's because the movie industry is having so much trouble.

18:04Aves:So they're just looking for feel good and, and everyone's self-congratulating themselves on a job well done. It's so funny to me. I'm actually, I just created a brand where we're working on a new project here. Cause I, um, I don't know if listeners are aware, but we've, we've started a community for agencies called, uh, agency, oddly enough, that's the brand that we chose called agency, uh, maybe a little on the nose, but we're, we're, we're working on another brand for something a little bit similar. And I came up with a brand identity for it yesterday that I'm really happy with. And I used ChatGPT on a single prompt and I think it like absolutely nailed the brand.

18:35Aves:So I'm going to send it to you and I get your feedback on what it thinks because it's getting better at those kinds of things. Yeah, I think it's like if you give it the right inputs, but that's kind of like everything. I think like the interesting thing to me is always like, and we talked about this, I will talk about this in the podcast, but it's like when it comes to actual taste, which is not something that you can bring from brand to brand, like my taste is specific to me it like won't ever be able to hold that so when you're talking about like creating product it's really necessary to like use your human brain but then if you're talking about like positioning or a persona strategy then taste is not really required in that conversation so that's when it's like knock yourself out i don't know i was gonna say knock your boots off i don't fill your boots i think it's fill your boots yeah yeah fill your boots or knock yourself out.

19:27Aves:Knock your socks off or knock yourself out. Yeah. Well, that's a third idiom, actually, that has to do with being really impressed. So I don't know. It's trick or treat. You win either way here on the All Killer No Filler podcast. Thank you for coming on today, Abe's on short notice. Look forward to your next episode of Adventurous. And until then, keep making ads. Thanks.

19:57Aves:Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not getting the DTC newsletter, you can subscribe for free at directtoconsumer.co. And if you want to learn more about Pilothouse's all killer, no filler services, take off to pilothouse.co. I'm Eric Dick, and this has been the DTC Podcast. We'll see you next time.