 My favourite Halloween ad is a spot from Ikea which ran in 2014 and it spoofs the creepiest movie of all time, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. The commercial spoofs that famous scene were a little Danny is kind of weaving his way through the corridors of the haunted Overlook Hotel. We realise he's not in that creepy setting but he's in fact in an Ikea showroom. Danny bumps into the nightmarish gradey twins. Come play with us Danny. Danny, come let's go pick up. The gradey twins or mum and dad in this case kind of make a reference to that famous company with us Danny lying from the movie. And I love the way that it kind of seamlessly brings Ikea products into the ad. It uses that famous track short method that Kubrick himself used. My favourite Halloween ad is what I call the Snickers ad. Two kids dress up as a woman. They find another woman in the grocery store and tell her that she doesn't have any Snickers in her cart. And then start sweeping the whole shelf into her cart saying Snickers. Which is like ingrained in my memory. Snickers! And then after she leaves you see like that it is two kids in a trench coat. And they're like we're definitely going to her house. I feel like this ad is like peak explanation of random humour that was so popular when I was younger. Let me help you. My favourite Halloween ad is Brock Candy's Fall Isn't Fall Without It ad because it features candy corn and a playful fun light. And I usually hate candy corn but it just made me appreciate it and like it because of just how they used it in different aspects. So the ad starts with the like candy corn on the trees as like leaves and you see these little like block people like playing football in the yard and just shows like different spooky aspects of fall. My favourite Halloween ad is an ad that's almost 50 years old. It's called Lonely Water and it's a British PSA which features the narration of the very famous horror actor, Donald Pleasance. So back in the 70s and the 80s the British government would release all these ads to try and help children avoid danger. And this is the first one and it begins with the voice of death. I am the spirit of dark and lonely water. And death explains just how dangerous water can be as he stalks children one by one and we watch them as they drown. He kind of cleans his victims. Until the very end we see one boy who's got swimming. He's calling for help and two kids come along and actually save him because death has no power over the kids who are sensible. He disappears with death saying, I'll be back. It just scares the living daylights out you and I love the idea that the government really wanted to tenify children so much. In 2017, Mars and Fox teamed up together to do this series called Bite-sized Horror and they were a series of four different very short two-minute horror films and my favourite one of those is called Live Bait. A man in a boat in the middle of a river and he's about to go fishing and so you see this man put live bait on his hook and throw it into the river but then all of a sudden from the depths a can of beer flows to the top and this man grabs the can and opens it up and starts drinking and all of a sudden his mouth is hooked and he is dragged into the depths below. Certainly there are books and films about the depths of the ocean and the depths of the lake but I think that there should be a lot more of them because it's scary down there guys. My favourite Halloween ad of all time has got to be the Skittles Bite-sized Horror Short. The ad opens with a woman in an elevator where it gets stuck and the door is open to the nine and a half mysterious floor and there's a man standing out in front of her and she goes to help this man because he's clearly in distress. As she moves, he moves and it's the same exact motions. He choreographed brilliantly and then he tells her to turn around and so she turns around and now he's between her and the elevator. He eventually runs into the elevator to escape leaving her to a fate that you eventually learn as the elevator opens again with a new man coming out of the elevator that she is now needing the same help as the previous man. I need your help. It's just a perfect little vignette told in just two minutes. My favourite one from this year is the Tomato Blood campaign from Heinz. Their latest version of that stars Toby the Vegetarian Vampire and instead of blood he drinks Tomato Blood. Heinz Tomato Blood instead of Human Blood, which is something I encourage all vampires to consider. It kind of reflects the style of what we do in the shadows and other mockumentary style videos. The wholesomeness of the ad, the tone, the nice connection to TikTok makes it a really effective ad. It's long form, it's got good storytelling, it's funny, big fan. I also want to give a shout to Geico for having a Halloween ad that continues to run eight, ten years later and that's the one where the group of kids are trying to run from a serial killer and they decide that the right thing to do is hide behind a wall of chainsaws. Are you crazy? Hide behind the chainsaws. Smart. Are you okay? It's just a really smart clever ad that still has legs. I won't say that again later.