Halloween is one of those weird moments when putting barbecue sauce all over your face can qualify as brand engagement.

I love me a good Halloween face painting.

McDonald’s UK has taken that idea somewhere wonderfully ridiculous with Spooky Sauces, a limited-edition face-paint collection inspired by six of its dipping sauces.

There’s Tomb-Mato Ketchup, Curry Cauldron, Boo-Boo-Q and Garlic MayOoOo, among others.

The kits even come with fries-shaped brushes, a Chicken McNugget-inspired sponge and a mirror.

Photo: McDonald’s

Obviously, you’re not painting yourself with actual McDonald’s sauce. (Right?)

Those little sauce tubs are among the most recognizable, mundane pieces of the McDonald’s experience.

Turning ‘em into cosmetics takes something folks barely think about and makes it the whole show.

The campaign also gives people something useful to do with the brand.

McD’s launched the collection on TikTok and Instagram, is giving away 100 kits, and has creators producing Halloween looks and tutorials through October 31.

That creates a nice loop: familiar product cues become costumes, customers are the media, and the resulting content sends everyone straight back to the original menu references.

Halloween is especially fertile ground for this kind of thing because consumers actively want permission to act dramatically… different.

We decorate our houses with corpses, carve faces into veggies and spend good money making our sweet, beloved children look undead.

Nuthin’ weird about a little McSauce on the face, then.

The clever part is choosing a piece of brand language people already know well enough to recognize at a glance.

If your customers can wear the product without wearing the product, you own a damn distinctive visual asset.

If you’d like help creating and marketing products people feel compelled to buy, the product marketing consultants at Graphos Product can help.