Get Lolli - The Instagram Horror Game - Chupa Chups | Clapboard Ad Archive

Get Lolli – The Instagram Horror Game marked Chupa Chups’ bold move into interactive brand storytelling in 2014, as the confectionery giant collaborated with BBH Singapore to create a Halloween activation that sidestepped the traditionally passive film format in favor of a gamified and participatory digital experience. Rolled out in the intensely competitive snacks sector, Get Lolli distinguished itself by embracing what Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#12 — Parody or Borrowed Format, borrowing the choose-your-own-adventure mechanics and horror tropes rooted in cult game and film genres, but reimagining them for Instagram’s then-novel navigational structure. Audiences were cast as the protagonist — known simply as Finger — and tasked with navigating a haunted house to rescue Lolli, blending the brand’s signature rebelliousness with a narrative device that demanded agency, split-second decisions, and repeat engagement in the lead-up to Halloween. Unlike traditional campaigns that foreground product attributes or indulge in nostalgia-mongering, Chupa Chups and BBH built Get Lolli around consumer agency and platform-native storytelling, turning Instagram’s photo grid into a branching journey that encouraged social sharing, advocacy, and playful competition among a digitally fluent youth audience. Appropriately supported via the brand’s owned social channels, the campaign capitalized on the period’s rising Instagram penetration to achieve over 890,000 views, reinforcing Chupa Chups’ reputation for irreverence and its Life Less Serious brand platform. The creative decision to place the candy not as the object of desire, but as the prize in a horror-tinged rescue mission, reframed candy consumption as a victory — a playful inversion that suited both Halloween’s mischievousness and the brand’s refusal to take life (or itself) too seriously. In the context of confectionery advertising, rarely does a campaign lean so heavily into pop culture remix without slipping into pastiche or product irrelevance; here, the borrowed horror-game framework amplified Chupa Chups’ appeal to younger audiences while creating a moment of interactive entertainment that stood apart from seasonal clutter. The campaign earns 73/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. Get Lolli matters as an early signal that platform-specific, format-borrowing interactive storytelling can propel legacy snack brands to new relevance, provided the creative conceit stays true to both brand voice and contemporary user behavior.