Selling 1 billion units a year, what attracts people with it?

With the rise of social media platforms, the way Generation Z celebrates holidays has changed dramatically. Rather than participating in traditional offline holiday parties and events, they prefer to showcase their unique creativity and personality online.

Tuke has found that on the TikTok platform, the Halloween hashtag #halloween is incredibly popular, having accumulated as many as 96.9 billion views, with more than 28.2 million related posts, creating a phenomenal level of buzz and attention, and highlighting Halloween's huge influence on TikTok.

So rather than saying Generation Z is celebrating a holiday, it's more accurate to say they are creating a cultural phenomenon, turning Halloween into a global social event.

Image source: TikTok

Everything is ready, only the wind of marketing is missing

The dual popularity of social platforms and holidays is already in place, all that's left is for brands to seize the opportunity and market themselves.

A world-renowned candy brand famous for making lollipops was very clever, directly leveraging the Halloween buzz to play on TikTok and truly ignite the brand. This brand is—Chupa Chups.

During the pandemic, Chupa Chups, a lollipop brand loved by people of all ages, took on the mission of "creating eternal happiness" and cleverly launched a brand challenge on TikTok themed with the hashtag #Chupalloween, bringing fun to young Italians stuck at home.

Users only needed to dress up as ghost characters inspired by Chupa Chups stickers to easily participate.

Shortly after its launch, this challenge quickly became a hot topic on TikTok, with users responding in droves and filming their participation, generating 373,800 creative videos, with a total of 295 million views, attracting 98,000 enthusiastic creators, and achieving an interaction rate of 12.6%, creating a wave of brand-fan engagement.

#Chupalloween challenge launched by Chupa Chups

By curating user-generated content and gathering it on a dedicated "challenge page," every outstanding video could be centrally displayed and shared. This not only brought Chupa Chups huge marketing impact, but also brought joy to people during the pandemic, enhancing the brand's market awareness and popularity.

So far, the official TikTok account @chupachupsde has gained 224,600 followers and 2.1 million likes.

The video views are also impressive, with 12 videos exceeding ten million views, and more than thirty videos exceeding one million views.

@chupachupsde TikTok account followers and video performance

Leveraging influencer popularity + independent site effect

To maintain brand buzz and influence on TikTok, Chupa Chups actively collaborates with influencers and creators on the platform. By working with these internet celebrities who have a broad fan base, Chupa Chups can reach a wider audience and inject new energy and creativity into the brand through the influencers' personal charm and creativity.

For example, collaborating with influencer @ninachuba, who has 917,400 followers, to shoot promotional videos, with the highest-viewed video reaching 52.4 million views, bringing the brand tremendous buzz and attention.

Video shot in collaboration between @ninachuba and @chupachupsde

In addition, Chupa Chups has established an overseas independent site, allowing direct communication with consumers without restrictions from third-party platforms. This model not only enhances the brand's independence, but also provides consumers with a more personalized and immersive shopping experience.

Through the independent site, Chupa Chups can conduct market tests more flexibly, respond quickly to consumer needs, precisely optimize products and improve user experience, thereby building deeper customer relationships and increasing user loyalty to the brand.

Image source: Chupa Chups overseas independent site

Conclusion

Through collaborations with influencers, designing Halloween challenges, hashtags (#Hashtags), filters, and stickers, Chupa Chups not only inspired user participation and increased brand exposure, but also created a unique brand experience on social media. It has also successfully captured more than 1/4 of the global lollipop market share, with annual sales in the billions, attracting consumers of all ages in over 150 countries worldwide, achieving a win-win situation between the brand and its users.

In the future, it is hoped that more brands can seize the opportunity, leverage marketing, enhance brand awareness, and bring users fun and creative space, thus standing out among many brands.