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A Halloween Treat for Your Company
By Eileen McDargh

It could have been just a cold, wet and dreary Halloween night in Chicago, but employee power turned this night into a successful business venture that exceeded expectations and fulfilled varied needs. Creativity, energy and vision produced an event that not only garnered immediate press and local attention, but also ensured long-term residual effects for a new business--a hotel. Take heed and see what ideas you can extrapolate for your business. Here's the recipe:

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First ingredient: A lemon. (In the hotel business that means low occupancy.)

Second: A surrounding residential neighborhood with growing families, schools, businesses and senior citizens

Third: A hotel's empowered, creative director of catering and conference services; a town mayor; and an eager-to-have-fun, high-energy hotel team from sales, catering and conference services

Fourth: A dash of courage and an investment.

Mix all these ingredients with laughter, fun and childhood fantasy.

The result: a Halloween party for 3,000 children, their parents and 150 younger-than-springtime folks over 65 years of age; an energized work force; tremendous goodwill; increased awareness of the hotel and lots of press.

But this event did not occur by wizardry. It first took an innovator--the director of catering, Samantha Agnew--to realize that lemonade could be made from the seasonal low of room count and meeting rooms. It took teamwork, creativity and commitment. The hotel approached senior citizens for their help, offering a free room and dinner for Halloween if the seniors would decorate their hotel doors for Halloween, pass out a hotel-furnished pillow case of candy to the children walking down the halls and take fliers out to the local grade schools to get attendance.

Response was overwhelming. Parking was at such a premium that a shuttle ran excited children and their relieved parents to and from their cars. The third and fourth floors were taken over by senior citizens who decorated not only their doors but also themselves. One high-flying grandmother even wore a burlap dress and proclaimed herself "an old bag".

Fifty high-school volunteers were fed dinner and then served as guides to take children through both floors. The costume-garbed hotel staff operated the haunted house, a dozen carnival games, the movies, arts and crafts booths and a storytelling session.

The town mayor, Arlene Mulder, greeted the guests in her best Minnie Mouse dress. The hotel's in-house production company, The Meeting House, festooned fixtures with cobwebs, built the sets and created special effects. The children were bug-eyed with delight and amazingly well-behaved for all the adrenaline rush that comes from make-believe and "treats."

Did the parents love it? You bet! No worry about rain, darkness, safety or dangerous play.

And what about the hotel's paying guests? I can only speak for myself. The tiny clowns, brides, animals, spooks, Power Rangers, Aladdins, lion kings, cowboys and cowgirls carried me back to a time when I played outside at dark, carried flashlights with Mom and Dad and warmed my cold hands with hot chocolate. The twins who appeared as Oreo cookies, the miniature Charlie Chaplin (even to his walk) and the youngster who came as a quilted bag of M&Ms assured me that creativity and innovation were not dead.

There are lessons to be gleaned from Hilton's experience. What might you do to involve employees, community and untapped resources that could generate short-term, midterm and long-terms gains? What could you do to improve employee morale? What would it take to see possibilities rather than problems? Could this Halloween story help you and your company pull some tricks out of the bag?

Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE is president of McDargh Communications. She spends her days helping organizations and individuals grow human spirit and potential. She is the author of Work For a Living and Still Be Free to Live.

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*Work for a Living and Still Be Free to Live* by Eileen McDargh (BookPartners, Incorporated 1996, $12.78). This price, equivalent to 15% off the retail price, is available only through the BeyondWork link to Barnes & Noble books.