Hal­loween 2014 is not only the Hal­loween of the sexy Ebo­la cos­tume, it is also the Hal­loween of brand­ed video with par­o­dies (par­tic­u­lar­ly of “The Shin­ing”) and pranks aplen­ty as mar­keters attempt to cap­ture con­sumers’ atten­tion on this scari­est of hol­i­days. In fact, brands went for scares in a big way this year. They were also big on Vines and Insta­gram – includ­ing tap inte­gra­tion – as well as choose-your-own adven­ture-type expe­ri­ences and vir­tu­al trick-or-treat­ing. Mul­ti­ple brands offered coupons as incen­tives and a few offered tips, although some made more sense than oth­ers.

Here’s our roundup of the most mem­o­rable Hal­loween dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing cam­paigns of 2014.

The Halloween Parodies

Ikea Singapore

First up is Ikea Singapore’s take on “The Shin­ing”, which, as of Octo­ber 30, has near­ly 4 mil­lion views. It pays “homage to Stan­ley Kubrick’s hor­ror clas­sic” while it also com­mu­ni­cates that its stores are open until 11 p.m. (In addi­tion, Ikea Sin­ga­pore asks fans to take screen shots of hid­den prod­ucts for a chance to win gift cards.)

Snickers

Next is Snick­ers, which par­o­dies The Exor­cist in a Span­ish-lan­guage video, Twist­ed, which is also part of its “You’re not you when you’re hungry”-series. The video has so far net­ted about 45,000 views.

Slim Jim

For its part, meat snack brand Slim Jim calls itself “the Killer Snack of Hal­loween,” releas­ing a series of images and videos that also par­o­dy scary movies, includ­ing “Para­nor­mal Activ­i­ty”, “Scary Movie”, “The Silence of the Lambs”, “Night­mare on Elm Street”, “The Shin­ing”, and “Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre”.

Internet Explorer

Even Inter­net Explor­er has got­ten in on the par­o­dy action with a “Psycho”-themed Vine pro­mot­ing IE11.

The Pranksters

Oth­er brands have gone to great lengths to scare con­sumers this Hal­loween with elab­o­rate pranks.

Trulia

In its Haunt­ed Open House, res­i­den­tial real estate web­site Tru­lia boo­by-trapped a home and then scared the beje­sus out of unsus­pect­ing house hunters who stopped by dur­ing an open house. This is in the name of dri­ving home Trulia’s mes­sage that it pro­vides “Home search­ing so easy, it’s kin­da scary.” The video has gen­er­at­ed about 29,000 views.

Ford

Not to be out­done, Ford put togeth­er a Spooky Car Wash Prank in which it asked 30 con­sumers to stop by a car wash en route to a test dri­ve and ter­ror ensued. There was no real brand tie-in – the video ends with Ford’s “Go Fur­ther” tagline – but it has racked up an impres­sive 1.3 mil­lion views.

Ouija

Anoth­er pop­u­lar prank video this Hal­loween, Oui­ja Psy­chic Ter­ror, comes from the mak­ers of the movie Oui­ja, who hired a psy­chic with the abil­i­ty to pop her eyes out in order to scare the liv­ing day­lights out of the poor souls who dared come in for a free read­ing. As of Octo­ber 30, the video has been viewed 1.9 mil­lion times.

The Originals

But it’s not all mim­ic­ry and ter­ror this Hal­loween. Mul­ti­ple brands have come out with pop­u­lar orig­i­nal videos for Hal­loween.

Crest

Take Crest, for exam­ple. The brand’s The Effects of Hal­loween Can­dy video demon­strates exact­ly that with a room full of chil­dren high on sweets and the sim­ple mes­sage, “Hal­loween can­dy may have an effect on your kids, but not on their teeth” because “thanks to Crest, their teeth are cov­ered.” It also ends with some click­able coupons. The video has more than 1.5 mil­lion views.

Vytautas

On the oth­er end of the spec­trum is the some­what NSFW video from Lithuan­ian min­er­al water Vytau­tas, Bounce Back, which fea­tures a busty nurse and a dra­mat­ic head injury. It has 104,000 views.

Dos Equis

And then there’s Dos Equis’ Most Inter­est­ing Man in the World, who is back with an inter­ac­tive mas­quer­ade, which has 1.7 mil­lion views as of Hal­loween Eve.

In addi­tion to the inter­ac­tive video, the brand has also part­nered with Ocu­lus Rift to cre­ate an addi­tion­al vir­tu­al real­i­ty expe­ri­ence. As the sto­ry­line goes, the Most Inter­est­ing Man lost his lit­tle black book and asks the view­er, his guest of hon­or, to help him find it. At mul­ti­ple points through­out the video, view­ers are asked to click on one of two options. Those who “[choose] the right path through his manor” could win a tick­et to an actu­al mas­quer­ade par­ty in New Orleans, the brand says.

Chipotle

Quick ser­vice chain Chipo­tle Mex­i­can Grill has cre­at­ed a video to push its Hal­loween fundrais­er, Boori­to, in which it offers $3 bur­ri­tos, bowls, sal­ads, tacos and kids meals to cus­tomers in cos­tume with pro­ceeds ben­e­fit­ting the Chipo­tle Cul­ti­vate Foun­da­tion, which it says is a “non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing a more sus­tain­able and health­ful food sys­tem and to rais­ing aware­ness about impor­tant issues in food.” The brand is also ask­ing fans to par­tic­i­pate in an online cos­tume con­test by upload­ing pho­tos to Twit­ter or Insta­gram with the hash­tag #Chipotle­Boori­to­Con­test.

The Vines

And then there are the brands that opt­ed for short­er mes­sages.

Arby’s

Anoth­er play­er in the quick ser­vice space, Arby’s, has released a series of #Trick­o­rMeat videos on Twit­ter to tout its #Trick­o­rMeat pro­mo in which it will add free bacon to any order on Octo­ber 31 when a cus­tomer says, “Trick or meat.”

Say #Trick­O­rMeat on Hal­loween & we will add bacon to any­thing you order. https://t.co/c4jedbDwpQ — Arby’s (@Arbys) Octo­ber 31, 2014

Honda

In addi­tion, Hon­da says it is host­ing the first-ever trick-or-treat­ing event on Twit­ter by ask­ing fans to tweet pho­tos of them­selves in cos­tume with the hash­tag #Treat­Pro­mo for a coupon for a free box of Mike and Ike can­dy and “a link to a spooky Vine video.” In fact, accord­ing to a press release from Hon­da, “Five eerie Vine videos fea­ture the redesigned CR‑V open­ing up when trick-or-treaters come to Honda’s door, so to speak,” on Octo­ber 31.

Capital One

Bank­ing com­pa­ny Cap­i­tal One is using the hash­tag #KaCH­ING to tie itself to a Vine with a tip to soak jack-o-lanterns in dilut­ed bleach to pro­long their lives and ask con­sumers for sug­ges­tions for oth­er “sim­ple Hal­loween hacks.” (Although it should be not­ed the effort was not par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar, gen­er­at­ing just 10 likes.)

Lowe’s

Home improve­ment chain Lowe’s, on the oth­er hand, struck a bet­ter chord with some Hal­loween-themed #Fix­in­Six Vines, such as using a cook­ie cut­ter and a ham­mer to carve a pump­kin, which received almost 800 likes.

The Instagrams

Oreo

Oreo, too, has released some stop-motion videos as part of its Oreo Lab­o­ra­to­ri­um effort in which it per­forms “exper­i­ments” on Oreo cook­ies with oth­er treats like jel­ly beans and gum­my worms to cre­ate “nom­sters” and then asks fans for sug­ges­tions about what to call the result­ing crea­tures.

Accord­ing to dig­i­tal agency 360i the #Ore­o­Lab was inspired by “an 1800’s mad sci­en­tist lab­o­ra­to­ry” and fea­tures a set design housed on Insta­gram with its own account, @OreoLab.

Sour Patch Kids

Can­dy brand Sour Patch Kids launched a series of haunt­ed house videos on Insta­gram and is ask­ing its fans to watch the videos and respond in the com­ments with either #SPKsour or #SPKsweet. The brand says it “might ins­ta direct ya” about how the video ends for those that do. The series of about ten videos ranges from around 100 to 300 likes apiece.

Chupa Chups

Sim­i­lar­ly, lol­lipop brand Chu­pa Chups has cre­at­ed “Get Lol­li,” or what it calls the “first choose-your-own-adven­ture game on Insta­gram.” It has also post­ed a pre­quel video to YouTube.

Target

And then there’s retail­er Tar­get, which, like Hon­da, says it is offer­ing vir­tu­al trick-or-treat­ing, but on Insta­gram in what it calls Hal­loween Hills.

Accord­ing to the Tar­get blog, Hal­loween Hills is “a new des­ti­na­tion for dig­i­tal DIY con­tent” in a “haunt­ed fan­ta­sy neigh­bor­hood.” In order to par­tic­i­pate, fans tap any of the hous­es and select “trick” or “treat” when the tags appear to see “inspi­ra­tional, scary-clever DIY step-by-step pho­to tuto­ri­als of fun, fam­i­ly-friend­ly crafts [‘tricks’]) and yum­my snacks [‘treats’] housed on dif­fer­ent accounts.”

Jose Cuervo

Also on Insta­gram, tequi­la brand Jose Cuer­vo is push­ing a cin­na­mon-infused tequi­la, Cinge, with a one-of-a-kind graph­ic nov­el called, “The Drifter: Red Moon Over Baja.”

As of Octo­ber 30, the nov­el includ­ed eight parts, each of which had been revealed on Insta­garm and many of which asked fans to like or to tag self­ies with #Cinge­My­Face for a chance to be fea­tured in the sto­ry.

Which mar­ket­ing cam­paign do you think was the most cre­ative for Hal­loween 2014? Share your opin­ion in the com­ments.