Trick and Treats
Halloween Trail for City Centre - App and event delivery
The inaugural Trick and Treats project, launched for October 2022, featured a free Halloween-themed app and a spooky trail of 30 locations across Colchester’s city centre. Intrepid adventurers grabbed their friends and the app to follow the trail to find and scan QR codes at each venue to unlock rewards in the form of a trick, or a treat, randomly assigned by the app.
Trail followers enjoyed freebies, discounts, entries into competitions and more from participating venues… and participated in light-hearted forfeits and interactive challenges, all in the name of spine-tingling, family-friendly Halloween fun.
Financed by Section 106 monies and support from Our Colchester BID, the Trick and Treats app and trail looked to deliver on key objectives to encourage more visitors to the historic city centre of Colchester. Trick and Treats built upon the KAT team’s previous successes in similar projects such as the Octopus Ahoy! and Stand Tall for Giraffe sculpture trails. Trick and Treats IP is created and owned by Katie Skingle, Director of KAT Marketing.
The KAT comms team wasted no time in reaching out to contacts in businesses in Colchester city centre to secure 30 locations for the trail map and pledges of rewards from independent shops, larger chains, charities, museums and entertainment venues.
Alongside this, the digital team got to work building the app itself: creating a vibrant, spooky Halloween design identity, writing spirited copy, and developing the code that would bring the app to life in users' hands as they scanned QR codes and unlocked and redeemed randomly assigned tricks and treats.
The design team translated the spooky aesthetic out across a website landing page, digital graphics and GIFs, printed QR code posters, promo flyers and striking banners to promote the trail within the city centre - while the social media gurus weaved their magic online to create a sparkling interactive visual identity across multiple platforms.
'Spooktacularly’…! In the four-week campaign, the Trick and Treats app was downloaded over 2,000 times, with thousands of individuals unlocking and redeeming trick and treat rewards. People who completed the trail in full, revealed a spooky image hidden behind puzzle pieces in the app.
Participating venues reported great feedback, an increase in footfall and additional sales.
The trail was ‘fangtastically’ received by the public who loved ‘jumping on their broomsticks’ and exploring Colchester to celebrate Halloween 2022.
Colchester City
Centre campaign
downloads
rewards
It has been a great experience for us and the children. We have been very busy with it and it will definitely help our business too as we were also giving 10% off treatments £20 and over to the adults, which will have a great impact on our business. The Trick and Treats trail was a fantastic idea and its definitely something you should every year. It made Colchester busy again and families were doing it together which was lovely to see.
Moors Health & Beauty, Colchester