4 Community Costume Contest

Everyone from babies to seniors likes getting dressed up at Halloween! Help them show off their costumes by sponsoring a virtual community costume contest with prizes from local businesses. This can be coordinated through the Chamber of Commerce or just by contacting other local businesses. Ask the businesses to donate small prizes –such as gift certificates, low-cost giveaways, or free introductory services –and gather them in prize baskets. Create categories for children, teens, adults, and seniors and offer multiple prizes in each category, such as Most Original, Funniest or Best Use of Makeup. Create as many categories as you can with the prizes you collect from businesses. Set a deadline for people to post photos of themselves in costume and tell all the businesses that offered prizes to promote the contest on their social media. Find some local celebrities to judge the entries and make a big deal out of announcing the winners. Hopefully your local media will pick up the story!

Halloween parades are a fun part of many community celebrations. This year they can still happen –just in reverse! Here’s how it works: Every business or organization that would have normally participated in the Halloween parade is encouraged to create the float or exhibit they would have created during a normal year. Then on the day of the parade, they drive the float to a large parking lot or wide street and park it. People who want to view the parade drive slowly past each float –people on the float can even toss candy to them –and take it all in, just like they would if the floats were driving past them. Of course, everyone involved should be encouraged to wear a costume and get fully into the experience!

Zombie walks might not happen the normal way during COVID… .but the undead can’t be kept underground! Promote a“zombie day” –maybe the Saturday prior to Halloween –in which zombies and zombie families cavort in their front yards and fans drive by in their cars to get a scare! Start the ball rolling by holding a Zoom workshop on creating zombie makeup a week or two in advance. (Be sure to include hospital masks as part of the zombie look, of course!) Then ask all of undead to register in advance so that downloadable maps can be created to show fans where the zombies will be on the appointed day and time. Fans will love driving by and getting a socially distanced dose of the undead, and they can vote on their favorite, or scariest, zombies!

Halloween decorating is unaffected by COVID! Create a community Halloween décor contest to encourage decorators. Offer discounts on Halloween décor in your shop and offer free no-touch delivery for people who don’t want to come into your store. Maybe offer a Zoom workshop on creating Halloween décor and decorating for the season. create an 8.5 x 11 poster (with your store logo) that says,“Vote for Our House in the Halloween Décor Contest by texting xxx!” send a PDF of the poster to every household that wants to participate in the contest. They can print out the poster and put it in a window or yard sign. Promote the event in your community and tell residents to drive by the homes to view the décor and vote on their favorite!

Since few people are going to movie theaters these days, a fun community Halloween event –or series of events –could be a Halloween movie night. If your community has an empty parking lot or field, you might be able to set up a temporary drive-in theater so that attendees can stay safely in the cars. But it’s more likely that you’ll have to do this in a park. In order to safely spread the families, create circles that are 8 or 9 feet apart so families or friend groups can sit at safe distances from others. Movies shown to groups require a special license — one company that provides them is Swank.com and costs range $375 to $450 per movie –and you’ll need a quality projector, screen and sound system. If you do more than one night, choose different types of movies for each night –animated for the family night, scary for the teens, cult classic for the adults. Most important, tell everyone to dress in costume!

Nothing says Happy Halloween as much as a jack-o-lantern! Create a pumpkin-carving contest in your community and make it 100 percent socially distant by asking entrants to simply submit photos of their jack-o-lanterns (with them in costume beside the pumpkin, of course!). Have a panel of local artists or craftspeople judge the jack-o-lanterns and give gift certificates as prizes. Make sure there are several categories –scariest, funniest, most artistic, etc. –and be sure to send photos of the winners to your local news organizations.

Get your community involved with your local attractions by holding a Halloween Photo Scavenger Hunt. Here’s how this works: Walk or drive through your community and take pictures of interesting things that are Halloween related (even slightly!) such as gargoyles on buildings, scary alleys, old houses, etc. Find a dozen or so of those, then post them on your Facebook page or web site. Tell people the general geography of the locations –such as downtown –and ask them to try to find each one and take a picture of it, preferably with them standing in front in costume! Everyone who submits a photo of every item on the list gets a small gift certificate for Halloween décor, costumes or makeup in your shop.

When customers visit your store to buy Halloween costumes, you’ll have to make sure they do so safely. Here are some tips:

- Try to reduce last-minute buyers by offering special deals to shop earlier in the season. Try a“declining discount coupon” that is worth 15 percent off in September, 10 percent off in early October, but zero percent off in late October. Every customer who buys a costume in early October is one less customer crowding your store on October 30.

- Consider offering a special deal to people renting costumes that encourages them to pick it up early and keep it until November. For example, one NCA member offers a day-and-a-half rental and lets the customer keep the costume from late September until early November. This reduces the rush of customers on the last few days before Halloween. When the costumes are returned, quarantine them for at least 48 hours and then clean them how you normally would.

- Offer home delivery if you can. This might increase business, and for sure will reduce the number of customers in your store.

- If you sell make-up, invest in some disposable palette papers and provide daubs of samples to customers on the papers, rather than allowing them to touch the sample packages themselves.

- Don’t let customers try on masks or costumes, but increase the number of mannequins in your store and offer to change them at the customers’ request. Or designate an

- If there’s some reason that customers MUST try on masks, give them a disposable liner to wear underneath (Zagone Studios and Morris Costumes offer low-cost disposable liners designed to be worn underneath costume masks).

- Naturally, follow the protocol every store does –require all customers to wear masks, spread them out 6 feet apart at the cash register, limit the total number of customers in your store, and disinfect frequently.

If you follow these tips, you will minimize the risk of spreading COVID in your store. And customers should feel confident shopping with you!

Everyone should be wearing a medical mask at Halloween this year, of course. Lots of great ideas have emerged that allow people to incorporate a mask into their costume, such as face masks that look like animal faces and masks that feature a scary mouth. But some costumes naturally go with masks or otherwise feature a covered face, such as these:

Doctor/Nurse Zombie Scientist/Researcher Hazardous Waste Disposal Expert Mummy Zorro Bank Robber/Bandit Cowboy Scuba Diver Ghost Superhero Fireman Phantom of the Opera