HALLOWEEN 2009

Status Media, the UK based digital advertising agency and online lead generation specialist, took a look around the internet to see what’s happening this Halloween…

In the UK, Halloween seems to be growing in popularity every year. More and more retailers both on the high street, and online, are advertising Halloween sales and promotions, like Asda’s online Halloween beer promotion and Tesco’s Halloween DVD sale.

The amount of money being spent by consumers seems to keep going up every year too, with one figure reported by online banking firm Egg suggesting families in the UK will spend £200 million on sweets, parties and costumes this year.

Many tourist attractions are offering special Halloween breaks, including Centeparcs, Haven Holidays and Alton Towers, all of whom have invested heavily in SEO to ensure top ranking in Google searches for “Halloween breaks 2009”.

Statistics just published by BT Mobile Broadband, however, suggest that a lot of people on these breaks could well be spending their time surfing the web or uploading photos to social networking sites, rather than indulging in ghostly goings on. In the research conducted alongside VisitBritain, 66% of Brits admitted they’d rather spend time online than with loved ones, whilst on holiday.

Micro-blogging site Twitter is keen to get in on the Halloween fun too, by hosting the World’s first “Tweance” – an online séance in which Twitterers are being invited to post questions to dead celebrities such as Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe and even William Shakespeare. Psychic medium Jayne Wallace will relay the spirit’s responses via live Tweets from her London base.

Over in the US, where Halloween is a multi-billion dollar industry and one of the biggest events of the year, people are searching frantically for this years must-have costumes.

Experian Hitwise, one of the most valuable online information resources for any digital advertising agency, reports the most searched-for Halloween costumes of 2009 are:

1) Michael Jackson
2) Balloon Boy
3) Tinkerbell
4) Catwoman
5) Poison Ivy

With his recent passing, popularity and the obvious Halloween link via the video to his classic hit “Thriller”, it’s no wonder that Michael Jackson costumes are the most in demand. In the US, the three sites receiving the most traffic from the search term “Michael Jackson costume” were BuyCostumes.com, Brandsonsale.com and Amazon.com.

Balloon Boy is a brand new costume idea for 2009 based around the story of the six year old Colorado boy who hid in the attic whilst his father reported him missing, seemingly carried away by a UFO-like helium balloon, which, it turned out was a hoax. This story captured the imagination of America and within hours of the event being reported, “balloon boy” was the number one search on Google, and searches relating to the boy’s father Falcon Heene accounted for 34 of the top 40, according to figures quoted on Wikipedia.

Interestingly, searches on “pet costumes” increased 97 percent in the four weeks ending Oct 24th, compared with the same period last year!

The universal symbol of Halloween is of course the pumpkin, or jack-o-lantern as the finished article is often known. This dates back to the 1840’s when Irish Catholic children, fleeing the potatoe famine, bought the tradition of carving out the centres of pumpkins, turnips and potatoes and placing candles inside, to America.

The celebration of Halloween itself dates back to 700 BC from the Druids of Britain, France and Ireland, who believed the souls of the dead would return to mingle with the living on the “hallowed eve” October 31st.

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