Coca-Cola is partnering with Dollar General for actionable in-store content through the soda brand’s beacon technology, while a Halloween-themed social campaign encourages consumer engagement.

The partnership also involves digital marketing agency HelloWorld. The promotion, billed as Fanta-DG Wickedly Good encourages the use of social media and user-generated content to promote the Halloween shopping season, while Coca-Cola’s beacons provide the in-store incentive.

“Coca-Cola and Dollar General are continuing their partnership for the #FantaDGwickedlygood Halloween promotion,” said Colleen Clark, vice president and group account director at HelloWorld. “Powered by digital marketing agency HelloWorld as part of an initiative to engage consumers with Coca-Cola products at Dollar General, the in-store beacon technology across all 13,000 Dollar General locations will allow consumers to engage with seasonal content from Halloween to the holidays and beyond.”

Wickedly Good
As the season changes, retailers and brands are preparing for the Halloween shopping rush, when consumers come out in droves to stock up on candy, decorations, costumes and other Halloween party favors and supplies.

Dollar General is capitalizing on the surge of Halloween-themed spending with a partnership with Coca-Cola to promote the Dollar General brand and Coca-Cola’s holiday-themed Fanta cans.

Users are encouraged to shop at Dollar General for Halloween goods, including party favors, decorations and Halloween-themed Fanta cans.

Once purchased, users can snap photos of the ways they are putting those supplies to use, whether that means decorating their homes for a party or using them to create an interesting costume. The photos can be shared on Instagram and Twitter with the hashtag #FantaDGwickedlygood.

The posts will be shared from a mobile-optimized microsite at destinationcoke.com on a page with other user-generated images relating to the Halloween season.

The three-way partnership between Coca-Cola, Dollar General and HelloWorld has also resulted in the introduction of beacons to Dollar General stores. Coca-Cola’s beacon product, which it has used sparingly since it first began probing the technology last year, is being put into effect in Dollar General stores.

The beacons will send Coca-Cola related notifications, encouraging users to make purchases and alerting them to Coca-Cola related deals.

Beacons’ next step
Social campaigns featuring user generated content are an old favorite of Coca-Cola, who have used similar campaigns, highlighting posts with a sponsored hashtag from users, to promote the brand during seasonal events. This past year, Coca-Cola encouraged influential social media users to tweet and post about their Olympic memories with the #ThatsGold hashtag to put extra visibility on the brand (see story).

Promoted social posts are an excellent way to take advantage of a limited-time event such as the Olympics or Halloween, leveraging the relatively short attention span of social media and users’ creativity to create a large amount of user-generated content.

Beacons, meanwhile, are still attempting to prove their worth. After appearing to be the hottest new trend in location marketing, excitement for the technology has leveled out since then as standards are sought and the competing beacon providers and brands try to figure out the best way to use them.

The tech still has its defenders however as a Home Depot exec said at last month’s SM2 Innovation Summit that beacons are the next step in mobile commerce (see story).

If that holds true, Coca-Cola’s continued investment in the location tech could pay off as it expands beacons from seasonal events such as this Halloween promotion to a more permanent aspect of the in-store and mobile shopping experience.

“HelloWorld finds that the perception of beacon messaging among consumers is positive, especially when utilized for coupons and loyalty alerts,” said Michael Puffer, senior director of Mobile at HelloWorld. “About 1/3 of consumers are receptive to receiving in-store notifications, with the highest concentration among 25-30 year olds.

“Those brands who have educated this audience, and created engaging value with the technology are the brands who have outperformed others.”