Fangoria // Passport to Horror

Since 1979, FANGORIA had been the premiere news source for horror fans. People grew up with us, hid us from their parents, stole us from video stores. So, in the summer of 2019, the 40th anniversary of Fango #1’s publication, we wanted to celebrate all these generations of horror: the John Carpenter fans who jammed to the Halloween III soundtrack to the Scream groupies who saw every straight-to-DVD slasher movie.
 
The plan was to celebrate the real heroes of horror: our fans who had been there along the way for the past four decades. So, over the course of a month, we launched a multi-phased, social-focused campaign, done for very little money, with a tight team, which led to a 30% increase in subscriptions for that quarter and nearly 400,000 engagements.
 

Phase 1: Passport to Horror

Over the 300 issues of FANGORIA, we had gone straight to the sets of iconic horror movies, from the POLTERGEIST house to THE LOST BOYS’ boardwalk. We had all seen these locations again and again, on celluloid, on photo spreads in earmarked pages of Fango … and, of course, in nightmares. But which had fans seen in person?

We sent our fans on a mission: to use “#FANGO40” on social media and show off the photo “stamps” on their “Passport to Horror”. The more of the spots they visited, the more chances they had to win some killer prizes that we collected from around Fango HQ (and from our partners at Arrow Films, Fright-Rags, Lionsgate, and more).
Over 1,000 people showed up and showed off, and we were blown away by (and then thusly rewarded) the fans who used this contest as an excuse to finally make that road trip to a few locations. 

 

Phase 2: Cover Stars

After successfully priming fans to use the hashtag “#Fango40”, we then launched Phase 2 of the campaign on the actual day of FANGORIA’s 40th Anniversary. For that afternoon, we celebrated our birthday by giving everyone who had ever dreamed about being a gory Fango cover star, a (digital) chance.

 

Across the internet, thousands of requests immediately poured in, with bloody photos of cosplay or Halloween costumes, who were then promptly inserted into a classic cover of FANGORIA. To jumpstart interest, we had also contacted influencers and celebrities across the horror community, to have their image ready immediately upon launch. After four hours, and a bunch of tired fingers, we had created nearly 500 custom, branded covers (as well as hundreds of usages of our promo code which, you guessed it, was 40% off with “FANGO40”).