Blumhouse
Black Phone 2
AGENCY // Trailer Park Group
ROLE // Associate Creative Director
YEAR // Fall 2025
Didn’t Need to Sleep Anyway
Black Phone 2 was one of the most anticipated horror films of Halloween season 2025. Blumhouse had a hit in the original Black Phone film, but would the chilly Ethan Hawke-led sequel become the theatrical terror that the studio needed it to be?
Competition to earn a part of the marketing campaign was fierce, and it would take a combination of the earnest desire for the success of the genre and a belief in the film’s merit itself to capitalize on the ample opportunity.
We did.
ACCOUNT LEAD // Jessica Babila
PRODUCER // Eric Kleifield
CREATIVE PARTNERS // Kyle Gálvez & Peter Fahnestock
The Client
Blumhouse set the standard for horror in the first half of the 2020’s, and Black Phone 2 was posed to be their biggest sequel ever. Blumhouse didn’t necessarily have the inside lane for the season – there were a host of quality horror competitors premiering alongside it – but they were motivated to earn the
The Audience
Indie cinema-heads allied with a broader Gen-Z audience to create a strong base for this film to begin with – we just had to reach them. Ticket sales among the Gen-Z audience in particular were growing over summer 2025, setting up a winner-take-all horror season. The stakes were quite high, and everyone was aware of it.
The Initial Challenge
I was brought into the Trailer Park Group fold as a long-shot, quick-turn, what-do-we-have-to-lose solution to a tricky problem: Blumhouse was entertaining an unusually large number of suitors for the digital marketing campaign for Black Phone 2: what was usually a 1-in-3 chance to win the work had become a 1-in-8 competition. Ho-boy.
Hungry Hollywood agencies wanted this one.
Our Approach
We didn’t want to add a cent to the budget, so our approach was purely digital in execution. We remixed trailers in unique, soon-to-be copied ways, utilizing slight 3D movements to obscure and reveal key promotional beats and jumpscares in order to genuinely get people to share Black Phone 2 videos with friends. We didn’t really put explicit messaging pressure on our fans in this case – we let the wintery camp setting and unsettling supernatural threat create the vibe of an 80’s horror release that new and old fans longed to experience again (or for the first time.)
Our Real Challenge
Horror fans know their stuff. They guide, defend, and rally their almost-horror-friends into a community of definitely-horror-fans, guaranteeing their genre’s survival long after the likes of weakling genres like Westerns take a backseat. This transition demands a certain level of media to make it so. While traditional, this was personal. Medium budget films like this deserve, nay need, to succeed to dent the studio form of this decade into something different than it… is. This was a big deal and wasn’t a sure thing in the slightest.
Our Output
The digital campaign composed of a series of agencies contributing work. The leading performance of our pieces led to an extended scope, resulting in 10+ pieces of organic and paid social content, growing to including Travis Barker at the final bell.
Campaign Results
Wins
Campaign-leading metrics drove increased business. Fans were jonesing for every last drip of context, and our mini extended social universe ended up fueling that leading performance. The work was compelling.
The movie CRUSHED. Word of mouth drove huge ticket sales, resulting in Black Phone 2 becoming a tent pole success for Blumhouse.
4.2m
Organic Impressions
Meta Platforms
Learnings
Reactive content won the day. Our most successful pieces were not ones we had planned before the season, they were in response to cultural moments that made sense for our brand to engage with (the inappropriate popcorn bucket trend, weird politician grifts, and bold-faced corporate lies among them.)
40%
Follower Growth
255k to 425k followers on Instagram
Final Takeaway
The Blumhouse formula still works. Find a way in, compel audiences to care, and then deliver with a unique setting, strong cast, and clever perspective on a supernatural haunting. Fans loved it, the campaign was an internal success, and I assume The Grabber ™ will be ringing my phone soon (to kill me.)