Tired of rewatching The Rocky Picture Horror Show for Halloween? The horror streaming service Shudder is here to help.
On October 25, AMC Networks’s horror streaming service will reopen its Halloween Hotline, a phone number that users can dial to reach Sam Zimmerman, Shudder’s VP of programming. Between 1pm and 3pm ET, Zimmerman will provide callers with “personalized film recommendations for the Halloween season.”
The Halloween Hotline is part of Shudder’s broader programming event called Season of Screams. While Shudder may primarily offer horror content, AMC Networks is promoting Shudder across its broader ecosystem and putting marketing firepower behind it throughout the year, not just around Halloween, in an effort to reach new audiences.
Scary good timing
Season of Screams features new content premiering on Shudder, like the latest movie in the V/H/S franchise, V/H/S/Beyond, and older horror offerings now streaming on Shudder. The streamer is hosting live watch parties every Friday night during Season of Screams that feature different movies or shows each week. The event runs from September 13 to December 13 this year. Season of Screams happens at a time when both casual horror audiences and horror fans are activated, according to Zimmerman.
“This year, you had perfect bookends of a Friday the 13th in September and a Friday the 13th in December,” he said. “So we were able to say, ‘This is the season. This is really what we want to market toward, and show you that it's not just about October. We have all of this incredible programming in September and October and after that, too.’”
AMC’s FearFest, a series of horror-movie marathons that air on the cable channel and streamer AMC+, overlaps with Season of Screams. FearFest began in late September and will run through early November. During FearFest and after, AMC also promotes Shudder and Season of Screams “across the entire AMC Networks ecosystem,” Sylvia George, EVP, media and performance marketing at AMC Networks, said. AMC targets viewers with Shudder messaging across social, linear, streaming, and potentially through pre-roll ads on AMC+, among other channels.
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“Starting with FearFest, which is at the beginning of Season of Screams, we have these fan-favorite classic horror movies—think Carrie, Friday the 13th, and Halloween—that we put on AMC and AMC+, and IFC TV,” she said. “During that period, we are messaging those viewers—who are probably horror-curious—on Shudder content.”
Targeting viewers with Shudder advertising makes sense because of the overlap of audiences between the horror streamer’s content and that of broader AMC, George said.
“We have The Walking Dead universe in our family of content, and there’s great overlap with an audience like that,” she said. “The Shudder audience has affinities to so many other audiences within the AMC Networks umbrella of content. That’s another point around why it’s not just about Halloween. We have so many other great opportunities to let other audiences know that Shudder’s around.”
Monster appetite
Halloween isn’t the only time AMC puts marketing muscle behind Shudder. According to George, “we’re feeding Shudder throughout the whole year.” In addition to Season of Screams, Shudder hosted Halfway to Halloween in April, a horror programming event that was timed to mark the debut of Shudder TV on AMC+.
The Halfway to Halloween lineup this year included Shudder original Late Night With the Devil, a film distributed by AMC offshoot IFC Films. The film, which is about occult activities that take place during a 1970s late-night talk-show broadcast on Halloween, became Shudder’s most-watched movie after hitting the streamer in April.
“That title was one of the biggest movies we’ve had in the history of Shudder, in terms of the engagement it drove, and it premiered in April. Halloween is not the only period where we see really great results and engagement with Shudder,” George said.