Here are 5 elements of Halloween that you can use to build your brand.

1. © 2013 Bill Barlow
Comparing Your Brand To Halloween

2. A quick study on how to
build better brands by
modeling them after
Halloween

3. Halloween

4. Halloween
has already gone
into the
advocacy stage
Advocacy: Actively supporting, participating or
recommending a course of action or activities

5. 5
Key Elements of the
Halloween Brand

6. Involve Children
Anyone who grows up in a brand has a soft
place in their heart for the brand forever.
Why else does McDonalds focus so much
attention on Happy Meals and playgrounds?
Kids love them and parents use them and
they purchase when they do. When the
children grow up, even if they have
outgrown the food they want to bring their
own kids there to relive their childhood
salad (burger) days.

7. Involve Children
Halloween has done a terrific job by
starting the holiday leveraging children.
First they need a costume, and yes a
different one every year, then they need a
sack, an optional flashlight and they are
off to the neighbors houses. The beauty
of the next part of the brand involvement
is that all of the neighbors need to buy
candy and decorate their houses.

8. Cards
Whether you are participating in
the Halloween brand in any
other way people started
sending each other cards to
celebrate the brand. How great is
a brand when people send each
other cards to celebrate it?
You may think this is somewhat
of a stretch but when a neighbor
throws a Tupperware party cards
are one of the ways that people
use to invite others.

9. Cards
Cards are also the way that
the host or hostess uses to
thank people for attending.
If you can incorporate cards
into your brand, especially if
you supply the cards, you are
clearly taking your brand to
another level.

10. Costumes
If Halloween had a slogan it
would most certainly be
“Don’t be Yourself”. The pure
essence of the brand is to
become someone or something
else for a while. Costumes and
dressing up is the center of this
concept. But before you
discount how costumes can be
part of your brand think about
them millions or items of team
and brand clothing that are sold
every year.

11. Costumes
Even if you just offer brand
team hats, you are entering
this playing field. Brand
merchandise is advertising but
when it is proudly bought and
worn by loyal brand fans it
takes on an entirely new
meaning. It means that your
brand has entered the highest
level of branding that is often
defined as anything from
customer loyalty to worship.

12. Decorating
While you are carving your pumpkin and placing
those scary ghosts in your yard you should be
thinking about how you are going to emulate this
practice of decorating into your brand culture.
Remember that decorations come in many forms. Be
it magnetic signs for your car, wall posters of your
mascot or celebrity spokespeople or interactive
decorations like the Staples “That Was Easy” button
to put on peoples desk.

13. Decorating
If your audience is loyal and the item is cool or
has some interesting meaning, people will
decorate for your brand.

14. Parties
By now you are likely on my wavelength.
Halloween is notorious for parties. One
interesting note here is while Halloween was in
the early days a holiday that was focused on
children; most Halloween parties today are for
adults. When a brand is this much fun why limit it
to kids and candy? The obvious brands that have
embraced parties are Tupperware, Mary Kay and
nearly every MLM in the world. But who else
leverages parties as part of their branding?

15. Parties
Have you ever been to a wine tasting or a
culinary demonstration? These are good
examples. How about a sponsored tailgating
event? A playoff event at a sports bar? If you use
some imagination you can find numerous ways
to incorporate parties into your brand. What a
great way to bond with your fans.

16. Trick or Treating
You were no doubt waiting for this one. My
guess is that Halloween owns this one
exclusively. If you can think of how to use Trick
or Treating principles into your branding, I
would like to hear from you.
bill@billbarlow.com

17. Final Thought
Halloween

18. About Bill Barlow
Bill Barlow is a product and branding guru.
He has mastered the art of blending public
relations, direct marketing and social
connections into seamless campaigns with ROI.
With over $3 billion product sales to his credit,
he is apparently doing something right.
Barlow and his team are available to
take your product to the next level.
www.FamousDiscoveries.com
bill@billbarlow.com

19. © 2013 Bill Barlow