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It’s October: the leaves are falling and Starbucks has started selling Pumpkin Spice lattes. Spooky Season has officially arrived!
This Halloween is due to arrive on a Saturday, which would normally be cause for celebration. This year, though – it’s a little different and we’ll mostly spend Halloween indoors.
However, while Gen Z–ers can’t go trick or treating like they normally would, they can stay home and celebrate on TikTok. In the spirit of the season, Gen Z can get goofy, experimental and kooky, and TikTok lends itself naturally to being the perfect place for this kind of content. Halloween gives brands an opportunity to show off their fun side and win the hearts of Gen Z audiences on TikTok.
So, let’s see what top TikTok Halloween trends brands can leverage this year.
Beauty influencers aren’t just for Instagram – they’re all over TikTok too! One of the biggest Halloween trends everywhere is spooky makeup looks.
One of the TikTok app Halloween costume trends is making your makeup your costume. Since it’s an edited video, users can dress just their face as the entire Halloween look. Gen Z also love to be creative and expressive – in fact 56% of Gen Z use social apps to express themselves creatively, and makeup is a huge part of self-expression. For an indoor Halloween, spooky makeup is a fun and lower effort way for TikTokkers to show off their festive spirit.
@misspoppylocks 🎃Thank you @lookfantasticuk for my amazing products! Inspo: @mcdrew ##fyp ##foryou ##spooky ##halloween ##pumpkin ##ad ##halloweenmakeup
Last year, beauty and makeup was a key Halloween trend. Gen Z worked on recreating looks from older ‘spooky’ films like Hocus Pocus, creating popular makeup videos like this one, with 750k+ likes. Halloween makeup is an incredibly popular trend year after year, generating hundreds of videos from influencers as well as smaller TikTok accounts.
Beauty brands can enjoy viral levels of engagement by partnering with top makeup influencers on TikTok. Brands can naturally feature products in Halloween makeup tutorials, giving influencers creative control to show off unique looks. This gives beauty brands a great way to showcase specific products in a way that isn’t disruptive and doesn’t look like ‘traditional’ advertising.
In a somewhat meta trend, an upcoming Halloween trend we’re spotting is Halloween costumes based on TikTok trends! With Gen Z stuck at home over lockdown, the majority turned to TikTok for entertainment, spawning several subcultures, memes and trends unique to TikTok.
What better way to celebrate Halloween than to dress up as your favorite TikTok trend? For athleisure, loungewear and lifestyle brands, this trend is a real treat. Dressing up as a ‘VSCO girl’ or TikTok darling Charli D’Amelio involves wearing lots of comfy sweats, Nike Air Force 1s and scrunchies. It’s not just clothing brands who can leverage this trend: think of other popular TikTok memes and references like ‘Kombucha Girl’ or ‘Dalgona Coffee’.
Partnering with an influencer dressed as a TikTok trend is a pretty on-the-nose way of letting Gen Z know you really get it. However, this trend is not for the out-of-touch – do it wrong and you’ll come off dated and embarrassing.
@theunicorn.family ⚠️I DRESSED UP @dominykas AS ME AKA A ##vscogirl 😈WHAT DO U GUYS THINK ABOUT IT?😏😂👌CUTE OR NAH?🤷🏻♀️ ##vsco ##vscoboy ##andioop ##scrunchies ##sksksk
The tried and tested TikTok fame method: your very own hashtag challenge. Halloween is a great time for brands to think about themed hashtag challenges.
Chipotle (an American Mexican food chain) has long been showing brands how to curate amazing TikTok campaigns. They’ve got record-breaking successes under their belt with prior campaigns. Last year, Chipotle took to TikTok for their annual #Boorito Halloween challenge, in which users were asked to share before and after photos of them getting into their Halloween costume. Chipotle offered TikTokkers ‘free burritos for a year’ for videos with the most likes. The campaign led to a whopping 3.9bn views, and was incredibly successful.
The above challenge is a great example of how brands can think outside the box, and engage young people with funny videos and a great incentive. Challenges work especially well because Gen Z is fond of interaction and participation. This is especially true on TikTok where users are keen to create videos themed around key hashtags, since they want to feel included in key trends on the app.
Brands can take it one step further and leverage TikTok’s AR lenses and filters, by creating a spooky filter of their own. With practically endless possibilities, you could create branded lenses that take users through a haunted house, perhaps include masks and other Halloween-esque items.
TikTok makes it easy to include trending or custom audio along with every video, making music incredibly popular on the app. TikTok’s unique ability to make music go viral propelled several stars like Doja Cat, Lil Nas X and Megan Thee Stallion to superstar fame, after their songs were used frequently.
One of the key TikTok Halloween trends is festive music! Festive tracks like ‘Spooky Scary Skeletons’ is popular on Halloween playlists, but last year this song achieved 4.7 million likes with one TikTok video alone! Combining the catchy tune with a dance, TikTokkers reposted this audio 3.9 million times last year.
This is a huge opportunity for music marketers, who can either combine original tunes with a dance challenge, or create ‘spooky remixes’ of songs to use as custom audio. After all, if a trap remix of classic Christmas tracks can go viral on TikTok, why not a spooky equivalent?
@minecrafter2011 I guess this an annual thing now, happy spooky szn everyone ##fyp ##spooky ##halloween ##spookyscaryskeletons ##dance ##foryou
The core of Halloween is trick-or-treating for candy, and showing off your decorations. While Gen Z can’t trick or treat as normal this year, thanks to the pandemic, they can still show off their spooky spirit on TikTok.
For lifestyle and food brands, especially candy – this is the perfect time to get Gen Z involved in showing off your products. Candy brand ‘Fruit by the Foot’ has a particularly good example in which TikTokkers are asked to create costumes out of the long, string candy. Brands can also get imaginative around supporting DIY spooky home decor, such as in this viral ‘Monster Garage’ video.
With a little imagination (and some influencer involvement!) brands can leverage video opportunities such as Halloween recipe tutorials, spooky snacks or creative ways to decorate and celebrate at home.
@cosette Don’t stress about a Halloween costume, Fruit by the Foot has got your back 😉👻 Would u do this? 🤣 ##CostumeByTheFoot ##FruitByTheFoot ##Ad
@believenutritiongb halloween is coming!!! 🧡🖤🧡🖤##halloween ##halloweengarage ##wisconsin ##halloweenobsessed
Conclusion
So, there you have it! TikTok has been an entertainment avenue for so many people while they’ve stayed home during the pandemic, and hopefully it’ll continue to bring joy this Halloween.
Brands can leverage this natural opportunity to launch challenges, get creative and goofy, and really resonate with a Gen Z audience via TikTok. Pick a trend that suits your brand voice and tone best, and get in touch with us if you want to take it to the next level ahead of Halloween 2020.
Even better, sign up to our TikTok trends newsletter, sent out every Tuesday and Thursday where we share the top 3 biggest trends on the platform at the time. We speak about what the trend is, why it’s a trend and how brands can leverage it. To avoid missing out on any holiday season inspiration, click here.
