Halloween 2019 — The Good, the Bad and the Spooky

It’s that time of the year again, boys and ghouls!

We love Halloween here at Mention. I mean, who doesn’t?

• You get to eat an inappropriate amount of candy (without being judged) 🍬
• You get to dress up as fun characters 🧟‍♂️
• You can prank your friends and colleagues all day long 😈
• You can eat more candy 🍭
• And let’s not forget about the costume parties! 🥳

On a more serious note – there is as always, a ton of interesting conversations taking place online about this occasion. So, we decided (once again) to listen to what people are saying about this Halloween on social media.

Last year, we gave you a detailed Vampire vs. Werewolves competitive analysis. This time, we decided to focus a bit more on the event itself to gauge how the internet community felt about the event as well as the trends they were most excited about.

We created a “Halloween” alert using Mention and created tags to measure what we wanted to focus on (trends, costumes, and brands).

Our analysis is based on 1,022,243 mentions — from social media, blogs and forums — in which the term “Halloween” appears. As per usual, most of the conversations we caught took place … on Twitter.

In this blog post, we uncover our spooky and mysterious findings such as:

What are the main topics this year?

What are the main costume trends?

Which brand is winning the popularity contest this year?

Let’s dive in…if you dare!

Top Halloween 2019 Trends on Social Media

This year, one of the most viral Halloween-related conversations happens to be surprisingly funny. It’s about a baseball game, and it involves a Forrest Gump costume.

Highlight of the baseball Halloween game! Run Forrest Run!!!!! pic.twitter.com/dTTHCr0MVK

— TJC Apache Athletics (@ApacheAthletics) October 23, 2019

At the time I’m writing this blog post, the video was played 9.1 million times. It went viral because media platforms like NBC Sports also shared the footage.

Having said that, here are the other top trends that I’ve spotted.

It’s interesting to see that the terms “Follow” and “Win” appear so regularly. This means that many businesses are trying to leverage the popularity of the event by hosting social media contests.

Two keywords that are usually anticipated to rank high in terms of volume for Halloween are “Candy” and “Costumes”. But which costumes and candy brands are winning in these categories?

Top Halloween 2019 costumes according to social media

Last year, witches won the costume popularity contest, potentially due to the Netflix re-make of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

But, this year — according to our analysis — it appears that Witches is a all-time classic costume as it came out on top again – following closely by 2. Ghosts, and 3. Monsters.

We were surprised to see Clowns being included at the bottom of the list but not ‘Joker’ due to the rave reviews of the recent ‘Joker’ movie with Joaquin Phoenix.

I’ve also looked into the most mentioned candy brands within conversations including the term “Halloween”, … and the least I can say is that results are inconclusive.

Clearly, people do buy candy for Halloween, but they don’t talk about it that much on social media…probably because they’re too busy eating them.

So before you go and take part in your Halloween festivities, take a look at 5 Halloween campaigns we particularly liked this year.

5 Halloween campaigns that stood out in 2019

Starting with our friends from Product Hunt.

1.   Product Hunt Haunt’s Twitter Account

Sometimes, less is more.

Product Hunt shows that very well this year by simply updating their Twitter name to Product Haunt.

Will they win a prize for it? Probably not.

Will they gain thousands of followers because of it? Probably not.

The heck with it, it’s fun!

2.   New York Public Library’s curated posts

I’ve been following the New York Public Library for quite some time on social media, and I have to say that they always come up with the best timely campaigns.

On a more regular and accessible basis, they often curate content and share content that is both engaging and relevant to their audience.

Here’s one example of a curated post right before Halloween.

How many of these scary books have you read? https://t.co/twwplInu2K

— NY Public Library (@nypl) October 28, 2019

It’s simple, classic, but relevant and sure to resonate with their audience.

3.   NASA’s surprising Jack-o’-Lantern Face

Nature is terrifying.

In 2014, Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite captured this ultraviolet image of the sun.

Should we be spooked or amazed by this picture?

And they thought relevant to share it now, a couple of days before Halloween.

Nice one, NASA.

4.   Nintendo’s Luigi’s Mansion 3 released on Oct. 31st

The best product launch this year is coming all the way from Tokyo.

This year, Nintendo is releasing Luigi’s Mansion’s third episode on the Nintendo Switch. A spooky, yet very cute game in which you’ll fight ghosts in a haunted mansion.

They’re releasing it (today!) on October 31st and, obviously are quite vocal about it on social media.

Oh, and to quote IGN’s reviewer Ryan McCaffrey, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is “absolutely the best Ghostbusters game ever made”.

You now have a good reason to cancel your Halloween plans (you’re welcome).

5.   Bloomberg TicToc’s friendly reminder

While Halloween is a fun holiday, it also contributes to the unfortunate warming up our beautiful planet.

Bloomberg reminds us that Halloween is responsible for 1.68 billion pounds (or 762 million kilograms) of pumpkin waste, each year.

🎃 Your #Halloween Jack-o’-lantern could be contributing to climate change pic.twitter.com/BY6GJkRZQt

— Bloomberg TicToc (@tictoc) October 29, 2019

Throwing away food is not the only issue here.

As it decomposes, pumpkins release methane into the atmosphere and, therefore, directly contribute to changing our climate.

So, if you are to use pumpkins for Halloween, make some pies with them! Or, better yet, don’t buy any!

Farewell, mortals

That’s it for this year!

If you want to live track the latest Halloween trends for 2019, check our live dashboard!

Having said that, I’m off to play Luigi’s Mansion!

Wishing you all a night of frights and a bag full of delights — Happy Halloween everyone!

Clément is Content Marketer for Mention. He creates content to help brands manage their online reputation strategy. If not behind a screen, you can find him reading books in Parisian cafés or exploring the city with his dog.