Dress your brand up for Halloween

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Have you’ve picked out your costume for this year’s Halloween party? While you’re deciding between Lady Gaga or Hellboy, take a moment to consider dressing up your brand as well.

The typically sluggish month of October is a great time to have a little fun with your brand, and Halloween is the perfect excuse to break the rules a little or show your mischievous side. Here are just a few ways you can bring attention to your brand under the harvest moon:

• Put your website in a clever disguise. Use CSS stylesheets to temporarily change the colors and graphics, without affecting its functionality. With this approach you can easily “re-theme” your site for any holiday or season.
• Send a halloween card or email to your customers. Don’t wait for Christmas or New Year when everyone’s mailbox is full of similar sentiments. Your message may be lost among the heap.  Reach out to your customers now, before the holiday rush.
• Sponsor a halloween event or party in your community. A small investment can reap lots of goodwill among your customers.
• Have fun with your print advertising. This is one of the few times that you can get away with deviating from your brand standards, if you do it cleverly and with purpose.
• Hold an online costume contest for your customers. Invite them to share photos of themselves. Tie in your product or service if possible (perhaps your product must be included in the photo). Let your customers vote for their favorite.
• Create special holiday packaging for food and beverage products. Candy, cookies, cereals, snack foods and beverages have shelf great appeal to customers and their kids when they’re dressed up for the party.

Here are a few great examples of Halloween-branded campaigns that were done by other companies…

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