A spooky - not scary - Halloween
A spooky - not scary - Halloween
APRIL 23, 2020
Photo: Jakob Owens from Unsplash
Striking a balance between spooky and scary it a toughie when it comes to hosting a Halloween event - particularly if your audience’s bedtime is before 9PM. Yet there are plenty of easy ways to ensure that your seasonal event caters for your young trick-or-treaters without giving them nightmares!
Halloween is one of our busiest times of the year, and as such we’ve worked with many clients to help them host a spooktacular event which entertains both adults and children. Based on these experiences, we have created this handy little guide with our top tips to consider when planning a family-friendly Halloween party or event.
Timing is everything
When planning a Halloween event, it’s very easy to automatically opt for an evening event for a dark and spooky atmosphere - but be aware that, from our experience, the majority of parents prefer to take their children for outings from early morning into the afternoon (11-3PM) rather than late into the evening. Host your event too late and you may find you have no trick-or-treaters.
Give your event a theme
Of course, while Halloween is a theme in and of itself, it’s fun to be more specific as this will help you determine what activities and characters you choose to help entertain your guest.
Popular themes include:
Mexican Day of the Dead
Monster Mash Ball
Witches and Wizards
Area 51
Sci-Fi
Twisted Alice in Wonderland
Fancy Dress
Specify on the invitation that it’s a Fancy Dress event - children love to dress up, and even some of the parents too! It’s a great idea to offer a prize to the best dressed and have multiple categories so more children can win, such as: ‘Best Ghost’, ‘Scariest Costume’ or ‘Prettiest Costume‘. It’s always a nice idea to offer participation prizes and goodie bags too - the children who carry these around your venue will encourage others to participate (such as within a shopping centre, for example).
Pssst!
Hosting a Halloween event is a great way to increase traffic or footfall within a venue, be it a shopping centre or high street. It’s important to remember that while the children might not be your target audience to actively spend, the more children attend, the more adults attend - and they are your active consumers.
Excite, don’t fright
When booking entertainment for a family-friendly Halloween event, it’s crucial to make sure that the acts will be suitable for your younger audience and will excite them rather than scare them. Our performers are all highly experienced and trained to work with children, and are fantastic as the following acts:
Stilt-Walking Green Witches
Funny Frankensteins
Comedy Draculas
Thriller Dancers
Make it interactive
It’s hard enough at the best of times to capture a child’s attention, so plan lots of activities which are interactive for children to participate in. Here are some activities which have gone down a real trick-or-treat with children at our clients’ previous events:
Craft Bars: create everything from slime and goo to broomsticks, host pumpkin carving/decorating (age dependant) and face mask painting workshops
Face Painting and Glitter Bar
Bubble Workshops
Dance Workshops: learn the dance to Thriller or the Monster Mash
Strike a pose
We all know that parents love to capture memories of their children with a thousand photos, so it’s a good idea to create multiple photo opportunity stations which you can dot around your event - maybe even work this into a game and give a sticker for each completed station for a prize at the end for a completed sticker book. This is a clever way to encourage a natural flow of traffic around the event and even social media activity as you can invite your attendees to post the photos and tag you or use your hashtag. You can even use your logo or social media information as part of the photo station backdrop so your audience remembers you when they next scroll through their photos.
Did you know?
Shopping centres which host Halloween events usually see an increase in spend at their food outlets. Perhaps invite your food outlets to create Halloween themed treats and incorporate them in your event.
Set the scene
Hire props and use decorations to really set the scene - these can be used for your photo opportunity stations or at checkpoints around larger venues, or for smaller venues - create completely themed rooms that match your theme; a laboratory for a crazy scientist, an alien crash landing site, a witch’s hovel. For outdoor events, we recommend using hay bales and pumpkins - as these instantly transform your event.
Don’t neglect the parents
As we’ve mentioned above, a large factor in hosting a Halloween event might be to encourage parents to spend within your venue (for shopping centres, shops and high streets for example). So it’s important to cater for the adults too, to keep their attention and encourage them to stay longer. This can be achieved with entertainment that is appropriate not just for children, but adults too. We recommend promoting act entertainment shows throughout the duration of your event. For example, if your event runs from 11-3PM, then promote shows every hour or at the start and end - this way you encourage your attendees to stay longer or return.
If you would like to speak to our Creative Team for assistance with planning your Halloween event, please feel free to book a free Creative Consultation or give us a call here and we’d be happy to help.
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