The Halloween Hall of Promotional Horrors
- itdev9
- Oct 30
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 31
🎃 At Accuris, Halloween is business as usual — we deal with horrors all year round!
Who better to celebrate the frightening side of FMCG promotions than the people who measure them?We track the vampires of cannibalisation (brands feeding on themselves), the zombies of subsidisation (loyal sales rising from the dead), the ghosts of stockpiling (future sales consumed today), and the dark spells of retailer switching (customers possessed by discounts).
Once a year, we open the crypt of real, documented promotional disasters — and share them with you in our Halloween Hall of Horrors.
🕸️ Enter if you dare…
Listen to our Halloween podcast edition or read the blog below
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Here is your spooky list of 5 terrifyingly bad supermarket promotions that could have come straight out of a marketer’s nightmare!
🎃 1. The BOGOF Burger Bloodbath (UK, 2021)
Promotion: Buy-one-get-one-free deals on burgers and sausages across Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, and Morrisons.
What happened: Shoppers stocked up on cheap, processed patties, ignoring pricier premium cuts or plant-based alternatives. Sales volumes spiked, but profits tanked as discounters like Aldi poached the healthy crowd.
Why it is scary: It cannibalized higher-margin meats and fuelled obesity backlash, with 78% of such food promos losing money for suppliers.
Tagline: "Two patties for the price of one heart attack."
Source: The Guardian
💀 2. Heinz - The Domain of the Damned (Germany, 2015)
Promotion: “Design your own ketchup label!” — a QR code on every bottle took families to a fun website to create custom labels.
What happened: When the campaign ended, Heinz forgot to renew the domain. A rather different kind of business snapped it up. Weeks later, innocent ketchup fans scanning their bottles found themselves on an adult site that was... not quite Heinz’s flavour of “hot sauce.”
Why it is scary: A $10 renewal could have saved Heinz from one of the most brand-unsafe digital nightmares ever.
Tagline: “That’s not tomato. That’s not tomato at all.”
🎃 3. The Dishwasher Detergent Dud (UK, 2014)
Promotion: Category-wide 20% off on ALL dishwasher tabs in Tesco and Asda.
What happened: Sales spiked 78% profitably at first, but over time, it cannibalized liquid cleaners and pods from the same brands, flattening category growth.
Why it is scary: What started as a winner turned cannibal, rinsing away margins from unpromoted variants.
Tagline: "Clean plates, dirty ledgers—sparkling sales, sudsy sorrow."
💀 4. The Yogurt Pack Hoard Horror (UK, 2016)
Promotion: Buy-one-get-one on smaller yogurt pots from Danone in Sainsbury's.
What happened: Fridges froze with stockpiles, but larger family tubs sat lonely. Future sales hibernated for months, with 20% uplift pure cannibalization.
Why it is scary: Short-shelf-life deals devoured long-term volume, turning creamy dreams to clotted cream nightmares.
Tagline: "Spoonful of joy? More like spoonful of doom."
🎃 5. The Pound Cake Promo Plague (UK, 2019)
Promotion: 15% markdowns on pound cakes at Waitrose.
What happened: Volume soared in big stores, but 30% of the uplift was cannibalized from non-promoted bakery items. Small outlets saw zero lift, just losses.
Why it is scary: It stole sales from full-price siblings, leaving crumbs for overall category profitability.
Tagline: "Slice of heaven? Nah, slice of hell for your spreadsheets."
Even the best brands can summon promotional demons — from cannibalisation to vanishing margins. At Accuris, we do more than measure the mayhem. We help you banish it: identifying which promotions create real growth and which simply raise the dead.
🕯️ This Halloween, exorcise your promotion problems — and enjoy one quarter of Accuris analytics free when you start your optimisation journey with us.
Because behind every spooky spike in sales, there should be a solid story of profit.