featured in
& winner of:
5x gold at the Muse Awards
Integrated Marketing | Brand Transformation | Social Media
Repositioning | Digital Marketing Campaign
Dark Mode.
campaign ideation • copywriting • social • production
BRIEF
Party City’s been typecast as ‘balloons & backyard bdays.’ But they have an alter ego. This Halloween, how can we use social to rewire brand perception and revive a household name?
IDEA
Party City is going into Dark Mode.
It’s getting dark in here.
Leading up to Halloween, we transformed the identity across social and digital, leaving a much darker Party City in its wake.
Party City sells body parts on the dark web.
We pitched all kinds of activations, some of which got shut down hard. Like using appendage products to seed a rumor that we’re selling body parts on the dark web. Now legal and I have bad blood. (for legal reasons, this is a joke)
Party City scares the sh*t out of strangers.
One activation saw the light (and dark) of day: a series of hidden cam pranks, turned social content.
Read the Ad Age writeup here.
The work.
Under the impression they were arriving for ‘market research,’ we scared the living daylight out of strangers.
ScaryAI
To keep the party going, we created a GPT-powered AI assistant that could help you “plan a Halloween to die for,” pairing creativity with the real Party City products to make it happen.
The response.
The hidden camera.
We worked with makeup artist Shaun Hunter from The Last of Us to show just how terrifying Party City’s zombie prosthetics can be.
As a writer, I love hidden camera work because it strips you of the devices you’re used to. There’s no script, no controlling the narrative. All you can do is set the scene, then adapt to real-time reactions.
Overheard on set.
Nothing makes you think “what is my job” like catching yourself saying “more mouth blood, please.” So with that, a few quotes from set:
Let’s keep them outside so no one can hear them scream.
He’ll have a collection of eyeballs on the floor, so that should help.
And just a note, all of our zombies will be sweaty.
CCO
Toygar Bazarkaya
ECD
Della Matthew
CD
Rocio Alvarado
Director
Sam Cadman
Agency
22squared
Senior AD
Ryan Bailey
Junior AD
Jeremiah Adeola
Producer
Zamile Vilakazi