IMC Hawks Blog

Tag: Halloween

  • Taking the Fun Out of Trick or Treat

    BEWARE to all trick-or-treaters occupying the streets of Fargo, North Dakota tonight. Children are in for a rude awakening when visiting the residence of a woman who has clearly forgot the true meaning/purpose of Halloween. A letter written to a local radio station, by a woman identified only as “Cheryl,” is sparking a great deal of interest on outlets of social media.

     

    Cheryl ignited controversy when revealing her plan to trick obese children this Halloween by filling their goodie bags with warning letters instead of quintessential treats and candy. These letters voice her opinion of how “the moderately obese kids should not be consuming sweets and treats to the extent of other children this Halloween season.” Although, it is evident that Cheryl’s intention is to send a message to parents of kids that are noticeably overweight it seems that this is the wrong way of going about addressing the issue. Unfortunately, Cheryl is not taking into account the great deal of harm that this little prank could create. Rather than solving the problem of childhood obesity, this could create a feeling of demoralization and ultimately cause children to form negative self-images.

     

    By choosing this “solution” in an attempt to solve the problem of childhood obesity one must be left wondering if Cheryl considered the expectations of the children and the people that she might violate during the process. This brings us to the concept of the expectancy violations theory, an idea by Judee Burgoon. This theory is commonly studied in psychology or communication studies classrooms. It claims that communication is the exchange of information which can be used to violate the expectations of others; this violation can then be perceived as negative or positive depending on the relational status between the two engaged.

     

    In this specific situation, we assume that Cheryl does not know each and every one of the trick-or-treaters and parents that plan to come to her house and therefore it would be difficult for her to assume their perception of her “treat”, It is assumed that children dressed up in costumes, knocking door-to-door, with buckets in hand, are in search of mass amounts of candy. It is almost guaranteed that those children who receive a mean note rather than a yummy piece of candy are bound to be upset and react in a negative way. Unfortunately, it does not seem like Cheryl took into consideration the fact that she will not know each of the trick-or-treaters on a personal basis and therefore could really offend them with her unpleasant note. Although it seems as though she wants to solve a problem, this does not seem like the best way to go about it.

    -Parker Farfour, Caitlin Ford, Kaitlin Batson, Alex Corrigan

     

    http://blogs.ajc.com/news-to-me/2013/10/30/kids-getting-youre-fat-letters-this-halloween/

     

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57610010/n.d-woman-to-hand-out-fat-letters-to-obese-kids-during-halloween/

  • Sexy Drunk Candy Day

    A blog featured by our IMC predecessors two years ago touched on the roots of Halloween, evidently for informational purposes. But if we look at the origin of the holiday, and compare it to the simple consumer monster it is today, what does it say about our culture? How did it transform from a festival rooted in serious meaning to whatever it’s supposed to be today?

    Halloween started with the Celts many moons ago, over time it was adapted and changed by the Romans, and became what we know it as today in the 1900s. None of that is really important. What is important is how we cannibalized the traditions and passed them along, while turning the holiday into nothing more than a consumption animal party.

    The phenomenon that explains this is Social Construction of Reality, but how did it get to this? It seems that most traditions were forged in some pretty substantial fires, but American culture has a way of reducing the importance of history to make some money. The idea behind the tradition is not communicated to growing generations, and the meaning gets lost behind the ways we celebrate. Then the Americans who grow up and pay money to be a part of the “tradition” end up satisfied with their part in the whole ordeal while walking away a little poorer, and just as ignorant.

    A Google Search of “Halloween Sales 2013” turns up a link to coupons from retailers pushing to sell costumes, candy, and other Halloween-related things. A short list of the companies offering these discounts are Aeropostale, The Popcorn Factory, Party City, Amazon, Toys R Us, the Disney store, Babies R Us, Walgreens, Land’s End, Pier 1 Imports, Petco, Hot Topic, The Home Depot, Urban Outfitters, Williams-Sonoma, Cotton On, Sears, Roaman’s, and Target. Apparently Tide is also in on the Halloween action (from my colleagues’ Monday post).

    None of the companies’ ads say anything about the Celts or the Romans.

    One Halloween participant properly respecting the Celts.
    One Halloween participant properly respecting the Celts.

    Nobody ever told me what Halloween was about. I just learned to associate it with costumes and candy from my mom. It’s kind of like St. Patrick’s Day, which (you would think) is not too relevant to Americans that lack origins in Ireland, but is extensively used to increase sales and get people drunk. The fact is, today, that all Halloween really is about are costumes, candy, and partying. Most holidays end up being just another reason to party in America, but Halloween is the most notorious for partying being its sole purpose.

    Ask around, especially on campus, and people will have a whole slew of methods for celebrating the holiday. If a person has kids, they will dress their kids up and walk around to get candy on Halloween. Some folks may stay inside and hand out candy to other people’s kids if they feel up to it. Those who don’t have kids will probably dress up and get drunk.

    That’s about it.

    I could talk about the implications of the most prevalent American Halloween costumes featured in our local costume shops (which are perfectly in tune with the holiday’s roots), but everyone knows that it all pretty much ranges from “sexy nurse,” to “sexy M&M”  or “sexy pirate” for women, and “pirate,” to “caveman” for men. Most Halloween emphasis is placed on the costume. The rest is on the party or the candy.

    It doesn’t have anything to do with any of the reasons it was created. Sure, there’re Jack-O-Lanterns that have survived in homage to ol’ Stingy Jack, but does anybody reading this know about him (assuming that any one of the extremely cool tales about him is the one responsible for the tradition)?

    I say, since Halloween seems to just be an arbitrary holiday nowadays, that we change the name completely, maybe to “Sexy Drunk Candy Day.” Let’s reconstruct the reality of Halloween. Why not?

    – Chad Darrah

  • Artichoke Buttercups, Anyone?

    October 31st is the one day of the year that kids get the chance to dress up in their favorite costumes, carve pumpkins, trick-or-treat, and most importantly eat excessive amounts of sugar. This Halloween season, Crest and Oral-B have teamed up to make a commercial that portrays a child’s greatest nightmare- a Halloween without candy. This innovative and hilarious commercial titled, “Halloween Treats Gone Wrong,” is an unofficial experiment that captures how kids act when they find out healthy treats are replacing candy. This playful scare-tactic is one that parents are sure to appreciate as they attempt to find ways to motivate kids to brush and floss this Halloween.

    Companies consider many different appeals when creating advertisements to grab the attention of current and future consumers. Appeals are often used to influence consumers to purchase a product as well as speaking to their interests.  One appeal that is used often, and in this particular advertisement, is humor. If applied correctly, humor can be extremely successful in marketing a brand. Humor is used in this commercial through the use of children and their innocence and tendency to be blunt regarding their own opinions. The appeal to humor is effective at gaining and retaining the attention of audiences because humor results in better recall. Crest and Oral-B do a good job of effectively keeping their audiences engaged in their commercial while marketing their brands at a time of the year when you would least expect it.  By turning this campaign into a positive and laughable viewing experience, Oral-B and Crest have kept themselves relevant during Halloween and have shown that they too can relate to what parents everywhere are thinking.

    By establishing humor in their commercial, Crest and Oral-B have possibly widened their potential customer bases by creating a memorable narrative to leave with audiences. This emotional link that Crest and Oral-B created with their audiences increases the intent for consumers to purchase their products for themselves and their children. Some appeals to humor are not as successful as the Crest and Oral-B campaign have been.  While this commercial is being shared not only on television but also on social networking sites, other marketing attempts have not been as lucrative. If the humor is not received well by the audience the ad can backfire and create a negative image surrounding the brand.

    Image

    Have you seen any other examples of brands using the holiday season to promote their products? Do you think the use of humor in this ad was successful? What are some examples of humor used in ads that have resulted in you purchasing their product(s)?

    -Aaron Love, Kara Zimmerman, Rachel Clay, Rebecca Hobbs

     

     

  • A Ghost In Their Own Campaign

    When you think of Halloween, you probably aren’t thinking of laundry detergent. Tide is innovatively trying to change this perception by incorporating the spooky tradition into their brand. On their website, Tide has provided a list of common Halloween candy stains and directions on how to get them out of clothing. Tide even suggests several Halloween costumes that can be put together last minute. Furthermore, Tide has included a special tip list for making Halloween fun and stress-free. By the end of reading all of these posts, what you wouldn’t have originally paired together (Tide and Halloween) makes total sense.

    Hoping to capitalize on Halloween even further, in mid-October, Tide posted a video to their Vine page to begin their “Scared Stainless” campaign.

    Vine, created in late January 2013, is an app that allows users to create short, looping videos.  In line with other social media frameworks, users can “like” others’ posts and can follow other users. Sporting a 400% growth rate between the first and third quarters of 2013, Vine is the fastest growing social media outlet in the world.

    Tide jumped on the Vine bandwagon this year, posting their first video in August. Focusing in on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, their Vine featured an animated drawing of a shark jumping out of water, biting a piece out of the Tide logo and showing the copy “we get out blood, too”. This fun video caused a buzz in social media news, and left many wondering if Tide would be a future leader in the Vine world.

    Until the end of Halloween, Tide will be posting scary movie themed Halloween videos, all featuring the Tide bottle. So far, only four Vines have appeared showing the Tide bottle in the scene of the movie Carrie, the mother in psycho, and a replication of the popular scene of the Poltergeist.

    Click here to watch a Scared Stainless Vine by Tide

    However, since their first post the company has neglected to keep the creative and fun videos coming. As of October 27th, the Tide Vine only has 2430 followers and only five total posts.

    Laundry detergent is predominately targeted at women because they are estimated to control around 80% of household decisions.  Tide strives to have middle-class women between the ages of 18-54 act as the purchasers and users of their variety of washing powder products. By expanding campaigning practices to Vine for six quick seconds, is Tide really reaching the target market that they would like to impact? It is no surprise that the higher in age, the lower the chance of a woman using Vine throughout her day to discover these snippets Tide has placed online for the season. This short-lived effort may very well be a wasted attempt at reaching the targeted consumers of their products.

    An underwhelming response from the company leaves us asking: Is it effective for companies to have a social media account just to say they have one even if they fail to utilize it? With Halloween only four days away and barely any notoriety, was the campaign even worth it?

    –Meghan Carey, Morgan Jones, Jade Lester, Caroline Robinson, Savannah Valade

  • Symbols: The Real Creeper

    When we thought of Halloween, many things came to mind: witches, bats, pumpkins, ghosts, and anything black and orange. These things together do not make Halloween, but they certainly reflect and symbolize the holiday. If you came out of hibernation and had no idea what time of the year it was and entered the nearest grocery store to find aisle after aisle of candy, costumes, and spooky decorations, you might get the hint that Halloween is here. Characters, Candy, costumes, and scary décor are some of Halloween’s most notorious symbols. Symbols serve as great resources for allowing the public to recognize a brand, whether it’s a holiday or simply a pair of shoes. Symbols stick in customers’ minds. Think about all of the symbols that most Americans would recognize in a heartbeat; the infamous golden arches (McDonalds), a the check mark on the side of a tennis shoe (Nike), an apple with a bite taken out of it (Apple).  These aren’t just pictures, and they are certainly not chosen at random.  These logos and symbols are not the product itself, but a representation of the brand. So why the overload of spooky sound effects and Dracula fonts around stores and on TV? Because everyone knows it’s almost Halloween, and these symbols are reinforcing this fact and preparing you for tricks and treats whether you realize it or not. Creepy, huh?

    -Claire Dillard & LaPuasa

  • The 31 days of Hallomedia

    On a scale of one to fun — Halloween is by far the most-fun holiday of all holidays. Christmas is great, Easter is swell, and Hanukkah has the tendency to get crazy, but Halloween tops them all in terms of an all-around good time. It is such a good time that there is an entire month, “Monstober,” dedicated to it on the Disney Channel! On ABC Family, 13 solid-packed nights of Halloween are sure to get you in the spooky-spirit!

    And how could we ever forget the infamous annual hour-long special of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, which airs tonight at 8pm on ABC.  Other holidays are also heavily recognized in the media, such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day, however, they do not compare to the hype of Halloween and the month of October.

    If you think about it, although Christmas is considered a Christian holiday, it is celebrated by a large number of non-Christians as well. The only thing is, Christmas is surrounded by other holidays that “steal its thunder,” if you will. Hanukkah and Kwanza, with New Years’ celebrations shortly after, withdraw some of the attention to Christmas. On the other hand, Halloween has October’s attention-span all to its self!

    Every morning in the month of October talk shows across network television showcase all that Halloween has to offer in terms of recipes, decorating, and entertaining. The Today Show with Kathy Lee and Hoda provide you with the tasty treats and monstrous-mixed drinks. LIVE with Regis and Kelly share ideas for how to dress the snazziest at your Halloween event, while The Martha Stewart Show gets you ready to decorate your house in a ghoulish, yet glamorous way.

    When else can you convert a fruit or vegetable into a bird! Our own blogger, Jordan, made these adorable Angry Bird-inspired pumpkins.

    Later on in the day, while you are prepping your plans for the holiday with all of your newfound knowledge, holiday favorites are featured on T.V. Who doesn’t love seeing the Disney Channel’s Halloweentown and its three other entries, Halloweentown II, III, and IV. Hocus Pocus, Beetlejuice, Nightmare Before Christmas, and Casper round out some of the classics featured on television during the month of October. It’s amazing, if you think about it — all of these great movies and shows that are featured each year were filmed many years ago; yet, they continue to market to us and we keep tuning in!

    With Hallomedia, we can enjoy the entire month of October with all it has to offer, not just the last day!

    — Michela Noreski, Jordan Hill, Ashley Nelson

  • The Spooky Branding Reality of Halloween

    What is the most important thing about Halloween?  Your costume!  When we were younger, we thought running around the neighborhood for a few hours trick or treating was the essence of Halloween.  But as college students, we start pondering our costumes weeks or even months in advance, while candy and parties are afterthoughts.  A Halloween costume allows you to express yourself more freely than you can in everyday clothes, and for many college students it is the most important outfit of the year.  Some people spend hundreds of dollars putting together the perfect costume, complete with make-up, wigs and props.  Last year, the costume most searched on Google was Lady Gaga.  This year, the two top searches appear to be Nicki Minaj and Charlie Sheen.  Among other popular searches are Pan Am, Amy Winehouse, Rihanna and Katy Perry.

    When we were children, we dressed up as witches, robots, zombies and the occasional super hero.  Today, we dress up like celebrities.  Maybe this indicates that during college, our behaviors are influenced by ethos more than when we were younger.  The fact that many college students transform themselves into their favorite stars for Halloween may correlate with the general spending habits of people ages 18-24.  If many people are buying things to look like celebrities for Halloween, it is safe to assume that they are buying things related to celebrities for everyday items as well.

    Being in the headlines helps celebrities promote their brand whether it’s intentional or not.  Halloween gives celebrities the greatest opportunity for celebrities to increase their brand awareness.  Those featured in the news and by other media outlets are getting their brand out there.  The people dressing up as these celebrities for Halloween are ultimately walking advertisements for the celebrity they are trying to imitate.

    -Stephanie Bakolia, Claire Outlaw, David Glaubach