Coca-Cola brand Fanta released a trailer teasing the Haunted Universe, a new entertainment property combining original characters, storytelling and experiences — and intended as a multiyear effort rather than a single season.
The two-minute cinematic trailer introduces a jack-o'-lantern-headed scarecrow, a sports car-driving vampire, a cyborg Frankenstein and a werewolf DJ, battling across a cityscape over a magic elixir with "the power to rule the living and the dead."
The ambition is stated plainly by Ibrahim Khan, global vice president of marketing at Fanta: "What Christmas is to Coke is what we want Halloween to be for Fanta," a reference to the sister brand's near-century-long hold on the winter holiday.
Fanta's previous Halloween work leaned on borrowed horror IP — packaging featuring Chucky, Michael Myers and Beetlejuice. Every year meant renegotiating for characters the brand would never own. The new platform inverts that. "We have original characters, lore and stories, and we will also be inviting pop culture IP to join us in this universe," Khan said, teasing an "iconic" character collaboration to be announced soon.
Moving from borrower to host is the same calculation behind Crocs Hatches Niles — a Mascot Built as IP, Not an Ad Asset.
Last year's Fanta Halloween campaign delivered 10 billion impressions with meaningful engagement and sales impact, Khan explained. That result is what promoted a seasonal campaign into a repeatable global platform.
This year's campaign launches August 26 across 50 markets, with collectible packaging, a limited-time flavor, the return of the Haunted Fanta Factory experience and a content slate. Influencers received lore and backstories so their posts stay inside the world rather than beside it.
The campaign was developed by WPP Open X, led by Ogilvy with support from VML, WPP Media and WPP Production, alongside creative agency ForPeople and Grail, an AI-powered entertainment studio that also employs writers, editors, artists and technologists.
Khan compared AI's role to hand-drawn animation evolving into CGI — a tool for unlocking richer content. He also drew a firm line: "Some people think you press a few buttons and Fanta Universe pops up — it's taken us a year and a half."
Most Halloween campaigns restart from zero every year. Budget is spent annually; nothing accumulates. That is exactly what Fanta is trying to change.
Reusing the same assets lowers the recognition cost every cycle. It is the principle behind Six Years of the Same Jingle — What Brand Equity Compounding Actually Looks Like. In year one, a large share of budget goes to explaining the world. By year three, the explanation is unnecessary and the same spend buys story instead of setup.
There is a condition attached. A universe has to be rules, not assets. Designing a few characters is different work from deciding what they want and how they relate to each other. Khan's note that the team had to be "very careful" with legends that are already widely recognized points at that difference. Eighteen months is not how long it takes to draw a werewolf DJ — it is how long it takes to decide what he is allowed to do.
An owned entertainment property built from original characters, lore, stories and experiences, designed as a multiyear platform rather than a one-off Halloween campaign.
Licensed IP like Chucky or Beetlejuice requires renegotiation every year and leaves nothing behind. Owned characters compound in recognition and let Fanta invite other IP into its world instead of renting theirs.
Ibrahim Khan says it delivered 10 billion impressions with significant engagement and sales impact, which is what justified promoting it into a repeatable global platform.
AI-powered studio Grail contributed to the creative, but Khan emphasized the project took a year and a half. AI raised content density; it did not replace the planning.
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