WD-40 is top of mind when it comes to household lubricants. Found in millions of Canadian homes, WD-40 is the iconic go-to for all things creaky. But the real problem was that it often goes unused for months. This was a brand new initiative with a gross marketing budget of $10,000.

Research, in fact, shows that eight out of ten homes actually have creaky doors, but homeowners just got used to them. So, BIMM wanted to find a way to get people thinking about their creaky doors and WD-40 again. Its foot in the door? Halloween. The objectives were to exceed the Direct Mail response rate of 3%; increase organic search ranking; and increase top-of mind-awareness of WD-40.

Halloween is the third favourite holiday for Canadians. Front doors on average are opened more on Halloween night than any other day or night of the year. So what better way to bring WD-40 top of mind for Canadian homeowners than to hijack the one night people actually want creaky doors?


The idea? WD-40’s “Haunted Door” -- the only motion-activated sound-effects app with scary creaks on the busiest night of the year for front doors. There’s a plethora of Halloween sound effects apps out there but the best you can do is put them on repeat, and have them play continuously through the night. WD-40’s app was the only one that worked when you wanted it most: opening your front door to trick-or-treaters.

By offering an extra creaky door SFX app, the brand found a way to re-heighten awareness of your own existing, albeit less dramatic, creaky doors throughout your home that could actually use some WD-40.

To use the app, people simply selected their favourite of three creaky-door sounds and hung their phone on the inside door handle using a mailer. Every time the door opened for trick-or-treaters, the phone's accelerometer triggered the haunting creaky-door sound. And if people didn’t get the mailer, they could use any grocery bag with handles to hang it on their door handle instead. The app itself is simple in design, but meticulously executed. Even the details of the skull are made up of items that require WD-40. And the door sound names themselves are a nod to familiar horror flicks: The Exdoorcist, Paradoormal Activity, Door of the Dead.

The campaign was covered by more than 100 media outlets, with over $1.4 million in earned media coverage. The “Haunted Door” campaign also resulted in 57 million earned impressions and increased organic search ranking for “creaky doors.” For the week of Halloween, WD-40 appeared on the first page of results. All of this in just five days and one special night.