• by Karl Greenberg , October 31, 2014

There are serious shows coming up for automakers. SEMA happens this week, and the Los Angeles Auto Show is coming up as well in November. But forget all that. It's the Halloween season, and automakers are taking it very, very seriously.

Thanks to short-form social video, carmakers can counterweight their billion-dollar launch campaigns with zero-dollar wackiness. Take the standard car wash: going through a car wash is fairly creepy. Ford, understanding the deep-seated fear involved with being essentially swallowed alive by a gurgling, soapy, swishing, mechanical alimentary canal, has taken the idea to the level of candid-camera Halloween terrorizing.

The video, on Ford's social channels, involves people who think they are stopping in to wash their cars on the way to a Ford vehicle test drive. The first thing they notice, in addition to a suddenly surly attendant who complains about the lack of an up-front tip, is that the entire wash is blacked out, or running strobe lights. Then they are attacked by raincoat-wearing zombies, including one monster at the very end who leaps into the back of the strategically unlocked liftgate.  

Honda is doing a social program whereby the automaker is giving candy to people who send a photo to @Honda of their costume with #TreatPromo. Twitter and Facebook posts are being used to promote it. People who participate get a link to a coupon for a free box of Mike And Ike, and a link to a series of five Vine videos touting the 2015 CR-V, and the candy, which in one come spilling out of the back of a CR-V as from a cornucopia. Mike And Ike is also promoting it on Facebook and Twitter.

Hyundai, meanwhile, added a Halloween-themed short to its new series of six Vine videos, #HyundaiHank, featuring a stop-motion action-figure who bears an uncanny resemblance to North American Marketing Director David Matathia.  

The Vines tout the 2015 Sonata, with the Matathia-as-Ken-doll getting a suntan with the car’s HID Xenon Lights, avoiding getting run over thanks to the car’s rear backup assist (although he then walks into a wall), and climbing through the car’s panoramic Sunroof. 

The video, created in-house by AOR Innocean U.S.A. uses Vine-friendly old-school stop motion-style animation, with low-tech materials like putty and wooden dowels.  

Talk about a missed opportunity. Chrysler Group is usually quick on the uptake. But the company somehow missed using the holiday to tout the Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat. Wait till SEMA.