Halloween: Is Your trace In Character?

Halloween: Is Your trace In Character?

As Jerry Seinfeld might say, "What's the deal with Halloween? " It stale to be a holiday for kids. Dress up after school, hit the neighbors' houses, shock your young body with a sugar high in the moment, and relish the candy that your parents mete out one at a time after dinner until it runs out sometime around Thanksgiving.

Of course, Halloween is now a major holiday for adults as well. Coors Light helped this along, with the vivid "Elvira, Mistress of the sunless" campaign in the 80's, but Halloween's fade to the number three drinking holiday in America after original Year's Eve and Saint Patrick's Day was already well under plan.

Halloween is everywhere, in the workplace, on college campuses, in the bars and restaurants, everywhere. I'm not a mammoth masquerader myself, but I'm all for injecting some fun and irreverence into everyday life.

Yet the other day, as I was boarding a flight at LAX, the Halloween decorations adorning all the American Airline gates struck a sour heed. It all seemed contrived, forced and a bit cheap. Not to mention that I stopped equating airlines with fun quite a long time ago.

collected, I couldn't abet but flash wait on to a night few years earlier and a very different reaction to an airline getting into the Halloween spirit.

Boarding a Southwest Airlines flight from Burbank to Phoenix on a Halloween night, I was greeted by a flight attendant dressed as one sexy witch. (Being married at the time and objective a few years older than this woman, I can categorically train any attraction. Innocent, wholesome amusement. That's my anecdote and I'm sticking to it.) The other flight attendants were also in costume and in character as they served the passengers.

After a long, tough day that couldn't slay soon enough, I might not have been amused. But on this night, the Halloween celebration added a lot of fun to the flight, which also included the best announcement ever broadcast by a flight attendant:

"After remove off, I'll be dimming the cabin lights, because I see so grand better in the soft light."

assist at LAX in the note day, I wondered why these reactions of mine were so different.

And I realized it was all a matter of designate personality and context. Southwest gives you what you pay for. They're a cattle car with wings all apt, but they don't pretend to be anything else. They fetch you from one site to another cheaply and efficiently, and treat you delicate well within those parameters. They're not "classy" and they don't fallacious it, like United or American tranquil do, trying to evoke the glory days of air recede.

The Southwest personality is young, fun, spontaneous and down to earth. They might plight you into crowded planes, but they collected stand for "freedom." I would reflect that corporate had encouraged flight attendants to dress up for Halloween, but somehow it all felt spontaneous, unusual and organic. The costumes had to be self-funded as well.

Sincerity in designate communications counts. A lot.

I know that cardboard pumpkin cutouts and orange crepe draped over a few gates won't crash the bank, but I determined wish that rather than trying to groundless the fun to a largely business target that couldn't care less, that they might try thinking about doing something meaningful for their customers.

More leg room, anyone?