It’s spooky season! Whether you prefer 12-foot skeletons and inflatable ghosts or hyper-realistic horror, there’s no escaping the creepy aesthetics once October hits. Alongside the cauldrons, candy and costumes, every autumn offers up a new selection of horror movies and TV series to frighten and thrill those of us with a penchant for recreational fear.  

And even if you’re not into scary movies, you’re probably familiar with the biggest names: The Shining, The Ring, Friday the 13^th, Scream, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saw, The Blair Witch Project. 

Traditional marketers can learn valuable lessons from observing this phenomenon and the films behind it.  

The horror genre is known for reflecting the cultural moment. But the marketing around horror has developed into a genre of its own in the past quarter century. The best horror marketing harnesses nuanced cultural insights to blur the lines between fiction and reality, adding an experiential and grassroots element that can have a massive cultural impact. 

The Blair Witch Project (1999) 

The Blair Witch Project fundamentally rewrote the rulebook for horror marketing, demonstrating the immense power of creative, low-budget tactics—viral before the term viral was widely used. This campaign was the undisputed blueprint and is still studied today. It worked because it blurred the line between fiction and reality for a mass audience in a way that was entirely new: 

• The missing persons framing. The entire marketing premise for Blair Witch was that the film was compiled from the “recovered footage” of three missing film students (Heather, Mike and Josh). The actors’ headshots were listed on missing persons posters at film festivals like Sundance. 

• The curated website. The film’s official website, BlairWitch.com, was presented not as a movie promo site, but as an archive of the “evidence.” It featured the students’ “video diaries,” “police reports,” “photographs” found in the woods, and interviews with a fictional detective on the case. In 1999, the internet was still a wild frontier, and the authenticity of this content was rarely questioned. 

• The pseudo-documentary: Airing on the Sci-Fi Channel, The Curse of the Blair Witch was a fake documentary that provided deep lore, “historical context,” and interviews with actors playing the students’ “families and friends,” further selling the myth. 

These elements together created a sense of collective discovery. People went online to debate: “Is it real?” This word-of-mouth buzz turned a $60,000 film into a $248 million global phenomenon. 
 
Cloverfield (2008) 

Cloverfield took the found footage concept and fused it with a mysterious, multi-platform alternate reality game (ARG) that had the online community working together to solve a puzzle. 

• The mysterious teaser. The first trailer, attached to Transformers, had no title, just a release date (1-18-08) and shocking footage of a decapitated Statue of Liberty. 

• The Elaborate ARG. The campaign began with cryptic websites for fictional companies and characters mentioned in the film: A fictional deep-sea drilling company whose “distress call” was the inciting incident, the blog of a character, Jamie, which updated with photos and videos from a party. As the ARG progressed, the blog was “hacked” by a conspiracy group.   

Cloverfield proved that a viral campaign could be a collaborative, interactive experience. It didn’t just present a story; it made the audience uncover it, building immense hype through participation. 

The Dark Knight (2008) 

While not a pure horror film, Dark Knight’s marketing campaign for the Joker was a masterclass in psychological viral terror that deeply influenced the horror genre. 

• Why So Serious? multi-stage ARG. It began with fans helping to “unmask” the Joker by going to real-world locations to get a cake with a phone that delivered a message from him. The campaign’s website was  “hacked” by the Joker, who taunted participants and launched new challenges. He encouraged fans to become his “army” by dressing as clowns and showing up at specific times and places. 

• The Gotham Times. This fictional newspaper was distributed at Comic-Con and other real-world events, reporting on the Joker’s crimes as if they were real. 

This campaign made the Joker an active, chaotic force in the real world. It went beyond advertising a movie by inviting the audience to be recruited by the villain, creating a deep, personal, and slightly unsettling connection to the character. 

The Purge (2013) 

The Purge used social media to make its dystopian concept feel immediate and personal, bringing the horror directly to users’ feeds. 

• The “Purge Purification” Twitter feed. In the weeks leading up to the film’s release, the official Twitter account (@ThePurgeMovie) transformed into a live, in-universe news feed. It posted emergency alerts, safety reminders, and, most chillingly, retweeted “real” citizens announcing their intentions to purge or hide. This created a terrifying, real-time narrative. 

• The emergency broadcast system trailer. The first trailer was designed to look exactly like an EBS interruption, complete with the iconic screeching tone. This grabbed immediate attention and framed the film’s premise with ominous plausibility. 

The Purge mastered the art of using existing platforms to create a low-cost, high-impact immersive experience that felt disturbingly close to reality. 

Smile (2022) and M3GAN (2022) 

Recent hits have shown that you don’t need a year-long ARG; you can create a massive impact with a single, perfectly executed viral stunt. 

• Smile placed actors with unnerving, fixed smiles in the front rows of major league baseball games, staring directly into the camera. The creepy videos and photos went massively viral on TikTok, Twitter and Instagram. It was a simple, inexpensive stunt that communicated the film’s terrifying core image. 

• M3GAN marketing showed a true understanding of internet culture. The now-iconic shot of M3GAN’s creepy dance was released as a clip and immediately became a meme. It was turned into thousands of TikTok duets, GIFs and reaction images. The dance was scary, but it was also fun, making it endlessly shareable. 

Common threads for PR pros 
The success of these campaigns isn’t a fluke; it’s the result of applying a specific, powerful playbook. These campaigns reveal how creativity, immersion and emotional engagement can stand in for large advertising budgets while achieving massive reach and enthusiasm. Traditional marketers can learn powerful lessons from viral horror marketing. 

1. Build a narrative world 

The Blair Witch Project demonstrated the power of worldbuilding long before social media existed. Modern brands can benefit by building immersive narrative ecosystems around their products, where audience participation sustains engagement beyond traditional ad exposure. 

2. Use immersive experiences 

Recent horror campaigns thrive on immersive marketing, blurring the line between fiction and reality. Place audiences inside your brand’s story. Whether through augmented reality, interactive pop-ups, or alternate reality games, participation creates emotional investment and viral potential. 

3. Harness authentic emotion 

Horror movies succeed because they evoke raw universal emotions like fear, pity and curiosity. Viral horror campaigns use this emotional trigger to convert audiences into active promoters.​ 
Emotion is contagious. Traditional brands can tap into curiosity, joy, even discomfort to drive engagement—so long as it aligns authentically with their story. 

4. Prioritize clever copy and simplicity 

The tagline for Alien (1979) remains iconic: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” It conveys tension and brand identity in one line.​ Great copywriting can rival expensive visuals. Clear, resonant language that captures the spirit of your message or product can hook audiences instantly. 

The secret sauce: Story, creativity, participation 

Horror marketing teaches us that success comes not from scale but from strategy, story, creativity and participation. By turning audiences into detectives, henchmen or witnesses, viral horror campaigns convert curiosity into community—a model that PR pros can harness for campaigns seeking relevance in the attention economy.