The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2023
Meta Quest 3 turns London Halloween posters into walk-in mixed-reality worlds
Quest 3's Halloween 'Thrillboards' looked like posters until passers-by stepped into Ghostbusters and Walking Dead worlds — the ad itself proved mixed reality.
Meta Quest 3
What it had to solve
Meta Quest 3 was launching with Halloween-ready mixed-reality games, but a flat poster cannot demonstrate a product that blends real and virtual worlds. To make Londoners re-evaluate what reality could contain, the campaign itself had to behave like the headset.
How it works
Meta Quest 3's claim is that reality and virtual worlds can blend seamlessly — a claim an ordinary poster cannot make. For Halloween, the company applied that same thinking to its own advertising: Thrillboards, billed as the first billboards you can walk into.
What first appeared to be traditional posters for Quest 3's mixed-reality Halloween games were in fact reality-bending, walk-in worlds: spine-tingling portals into a fully immersive Ghostbusters headquarters and a Walking Dead apocalypse, plus the ultimate reality-bender — the world of Quest 3 itself.
The medium replicated the message. Londoners who stepped inside a poster did not need a headset to experience the blur between real space and virtual worlds, and the work is archived in D&AD's awards archive as a demonstration of experiential advertising.
Why it lands
- The medium mirrored the message: walking into a poster was a live demonstration of what Quest 3 does.
- Familiar franchises — Ghostbusters and The Walking Dead — made the walk-in worlds instantly legible to Halloween audiences.
- The twist of 'a poster you can enter' created surprise that made people reconsider what the product category could do.
- It turned an abstract technical claim about mixed reality into something pedestrians could feel in seconds, with no manual or sales pitch.
What it did
The activation gave pedestrians a first-hand taste of mixed reality on the street and proved the product's core promise in the campaign's own medium; the work is archived in D&AD's awards archive.
What you can take
When the product's whole promise is an experience, make the ad the experience: build the campaign from the same reality-blending you sell, and the audience verifies the claim by walking into it.
Since then
Thrillboards is archived in D&AD's awards archive as an example of advertising proving a product through its own medium. For Meta, the London Halloween activation gave pedestrians a physical memory of Quest 3's world-blending at the moment the headset was still establishing what mixed reality meant.
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