There’s a new Hay Day character, one who doesn’t quite fit into its cosy farmland scene. Hay Day travelled to rural England to invite a “real” ghost into the game in a spooky Halloween campaign by Forsman & Bodenfors. The creative clash between classic ghost lore and cozy mobile gaming ups the ante on Halloween brand antics.

Leading the campaign is paranormal investigator and TV host, Yvette Fielding, who has dedicated her career to making contact with ghosts in the long-running show, Most Haunted. The campaign film features all the Most Haunted attention grab devices, from the specialised camera and film techniques to the sudden shocks, recreating the show’s signature high-tension mood, as the team enter historic Cogges Manor Farm in Oxfordshire, widely considered one of the most haunted places in the UK, to make contact with the ghost living there. After, a knife is thrown in their path and a goblet rolls across a floor, the team holds a Ouija board séance to invite a ghost to play the game. The paranormal experiment builds on the farm’s ghost lore to shape Hay Day’s new Halloween ghost character – The Red Revenant. 

“Hay Day has always been this cozy place where players come to unwind and escape the chaos of everyday life, whether that’s after a long workday, or apparently, after a few hundred years of haunting an English manor farm. It turns out, even the ghosts could use a little cozy in their life,” stated Maya Hofree, Hay Day general manager.

The campaign taps into a trend that sees more people turning to horror, hauntings, and mediumship as entertainment when the real world feels unstable. This shift also shaped the creative execution, which resembles a ghost investigation documentary rather than a traditional commercial.

“We saw a natural overlap between Hay Day’s audience and the growing fascination with paranormal entertainment. By bringing these two worlds together, we wanted to go beyond a traditional character launch and create an unexpected entertainment experience that players could step into and become part of,” noted Julia Holtback Yeter and Karl Risenfors, creatives at Forsman & Bodenfors.  

The campaign is rolling out globally across digital, social, and in-game moments ahead of Halloween. 

Credits:
Client: SuperCell [Hay Day]
Product Marketing Manager: Stefani Aarnas
Marketing Lead: Philip Hickey
Marketing Artist: Lee Sullivan
Product Marketing Manager: Tim Dequidt
Product Marketing Manager: Erol Tekkant
Marketing Producer: Carolina Barthalot
UA Creative Producer: Dmitry Gubanenkov
Marketing Analyst: Strack Divljan
Performance Marketing Manager: Sini-Pilvi Simola
Community Managers: Luran Zhang & Lavinia Macovei

Creative Agency: Forsman & Bodenfors
Client Director: Roshanak Fatahian
Account Executives: Nilo Pakina &  Linus Larsson
Head of Creative: Tove Langseth
Creatives: Karl Risenfors, Julia Holtback Yeter, Nicholas Düfke & Martin Hovnor
Designers: Chanelle Kazemi & Bruno Rodrigues
Strategists: Elina Reinerstam & Johan Rynell
Agency Producer: Åsa Hammar
PR Strategist: Julia Sjödin
Digital strategist: Peter Gaudiano

Production Company: B-reel Films
Director: Torbjörn Martin
Director’s Assistant: Linus Nordström
Executive Producers: Rikard Åström & Martin Ronström
Producer: Kalle Wettre
DOP: Daniel Takács