Brand Feel: What Makes Places and Products Fearfully Fun?

Fear has a way of captivating the imagination and ensnaring consumer interest. Often the memories that stand out most from our childhoods are the spooky ones. That ‘haunted’ castle you visited on a school trip. That part-creepy, part-fascinating taxidermy museum. That one scary story someone told around the campfire. The innate fascination we all have with the spooky begins at childhood, and never seems to leave us.

Today’s brands are capitalising on this obsession, increasingly using the fear factor in their emotional branding toolkit to resonate with their audiences long-term. And it seems that customers are here for it.

In the spirit of Halloween, we’re taking a nerve-wracking walk through a haunted house of spooky brand, place, and media experiences, and examining the double standards of true crime obsession. We’re curious: how are places and products making fear work (or not) for them?

Why do we enjoy being scared?

Palms sweating, heart racing, stomach churning. On paper, there’s nothing appealing about fear. And yet, here we are, gleefully terrorising ourselves with horror films and blood-curdling true crime podcasts. Why do we love getting spooked from time to time?

The short answer is: adrenaline. When you’re scared, your body goes into a fight or flight mode – which can be enjoyable or not, depending on the situation. What makes the ‘good scary’ so good is experiencing the adrenaline high, while knowing full well you’re safe. That feeling of control is the difference between spooky euphoria and traumatising horror.

Enter at your own risk: the placemaking of fear

When you’re watching a slasher film, you’re on the right side of the screen – the feeling of security is a given. But what happens when you fully immerse yourself in a scary environment? The placemaking of haunted houses and fairground ‘live experiences’ is a fascinating study in navigating the mechanics of fear.

Places like London’s Secret Cinema go a step further. This is an immersive franchise that brings on-screen fan favourites to life off-screen: from Stranger Things to James Bond immersions; from Blade Runner to 28 Days Later. The joy in these experiences is in uncertainty, lack of control, and measured hints of danger.

Here, you’re not just moving through the space – you’re actively participating in the story alongside actors and other audience members. In a way, Secret Cinema indulges the dark fantasy of rehearsing scary scenarios. Horror-lovers get to swap places with fictional characters and find out once and for all if they’d make it out of a zombie apocalypse alive.

With a growing trend of brand immersive experiences – think the ‘Stranger Things Experience’ by Netflix and Fever, or the IKEA in-store sleepovers – it’s clear that brands are looking for ways to resonate more deeply with their audiences. To do so, they may want to take a leaf out of placemakers’ book and harness the power of fun fear. Whether it’s a traditionally spooky haunted Halloween house, or an immersive brand activation, employing fear in placemaking gives consumers a way to explore new feelings in a controlled environment.

Did I see something move in the darkness? Why did everything suddenly go so quiet? Making an experience terrifying is just as much about the anticipation of a jump scare as it is about revealing what’s lurking in the dark… and these experiences stick with you.

It’s scary because it’s true

Places and products that package fear as entertainment tread a fine line, especially when they fictionalise real horror. The recent Netflix hit series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has been widely accused of glamorising a serial killer and re-traumatising Dahmer’s victims. The family of Kathleen Peterson, a woman whose death inspired HBO’s fictional miniseries The Staircase, echoed a similar sentiment. The show’s aggressive marketing had a devastating effect on them, they said.

Meanwhile, comedy true crime podcasts like My Favorite Murder have both shocked and captivated listeners with their light-hearted spin on real-life tragedies. The podcast’s infamous tagline, “Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered”, divided the room. Is it a clever way to process women’s collective fear of assault? Or does it simply miss the mark?

Brands looking to dial up their fear-factor to provide audiences with realer, rawer, and more resonant experiences, are posed with many such questions. Most importantly: where does innocent entertainment end and voyeurism begin? And whose responsibility is it to decide?

Proceed with caution

As the future of places and brands becomes ever more immersive and experiential, fear, danger, and thrill may well become the tools to adopt. They have the power to horrify. They also have the power to amplify. But playing with horrors is certainly not for the faint-hearted.

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Welcome to Brand Feel, Hunter's series where we'll be unlocking the emotions that power brands and places. Check out our website to find out more about our work and expertise in consumer-led branding.