Red Nova Lab employees sport looks from superheros to super Americans. Photo from rednovalabs.com.
Pumpkins, prairie dogs, Power Rangers, oh my! Here’s the rundown of Halloween hijinks in startups and agencies in the Silicon Prairie (which unfortunately didn’t contain any Power Rangers).
Bozell
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Bozell, an Omaha-based integrated marketing agency, created the Zombie Preparedness Center for its client, Westlake Ace Hardware. This one is listed first because it’s also the most newsworthy and it’s more than just a little Halloween fun. In an email from Scott Bishop, director of social influence at Bozell he provided these stats around the campaign:
- Page has received over 132,000 pageviews (+83% Unique)
- Monthly traffic for preceding 5 months averaged just over 45,000 unique visitors
- More than 15,000 Facebook Likes on the webpage
- Number of sites referring traffic to WestlakeHardware.com is up 450% over the previous 30 days prior to the campaign
- Picked up on Ad Age, Associated Press (“Hardware chain offers Halloween ‘zombie defense’ “), Omaha World Herald (“Undead enliven hardware sales“), Red Cross, Laughing Squid (“Zombie Preparedness Center at Westlake Ace Hardware in Kansas“), Top Result on All Top, and many others
“One of our goals and challenges for our retail client, Westlake Ace Hardware (88 stores in 9 states), was to build awareness with a younger demographic of customer,” Bishop said in an email on Wednesday. “Our solution was zombies.
“The campaign was done almost entirely online (guides, Q&A, Facebook App, and videos) and has brought a tremendous amount of international buzz for the retail chain.”
Phenomblue
The Phenomblue team held a pumpkin carving contest. Photo courtesy of Phenomblue.
The pumpkins, up for a public vote, on display at Phenomblue. Photo courtesy Phenomblue.
Phenomblue, an Omaha-based interactive brand experience agency, celebrated with their annual Halloween party, which included the company video-conferencing in its LA offices to drink beers together while competing in a pumpkin carving competition. The carved pumpkins (above) are now up for a public vote through Thursday. More pictures on Facebook. (Thanks to Kate Richling, marketing director at Phenomblue, for the pictures and update.)
Also, in early October they released an Zombie-themed app, I Smell Brains. Here’s what they had to say about it on the Phenomblue website:
I Smell Brains isn’t just about exploding eyeballs and nuclear worms though; it was an internal experiment and R&D project. We tested out Adobe’s latest tools, Flash Builder 4.5 and Flash Professional CS5.5, and simultaneously compiled an application with Adobe AIR that works cross-platform in just one week. I Smell Brains is a reskinned Zombie Christmas, a mobile app we launched last December. Combining original art, sound fx and music with a couple modified stock images, we set out to demonstrate how our team can easily create a variety of effective experiences appealing to various user personas.
Zaarly
The Zaarly “Z” pumpkin. Photo from facebook.com.
Zaarly, a San Francisco-based started with an office in Kansas City, posted Z-carved pumpkin that was carved by one of its ZaarlyU representatives.
Shoplr
The Shoplr gourd. Photo from twitter.com.
Shoplr, an Ames, Iowa-based startup looking to get local deals on people’s radars, posted a glowing gourd that proudly displayed its name.
Flying Hippo Web Technologies
The Flying Hippo crew posing their costumes. Photo from facebook.com.
Flying Hippo Web Technologies, a Des Moines-based web design firm, showed off its diverse set of costumes on Facebook.
Hudl
A mysterious creature lurked in the Hudl offices. Photo from facebook.com.
Hudl, a Lincoln, Neb.-based sports startup, posted this photo on its Facebook page with the caption: “Happy Halloween, everyone! Check out one of the costumes in the Hudl office.”
Red Nova Labs
The Wonder Woman of Red Nova Labs. Photo from rednovalabs.com.
A toddler and a doctor working at Red Nova Labs for the day. Photo from rednovalabs.com.
Red Nova Labs, a Westwood, Kansas-based startup, had a few employees dress up at work and captured the costumes in a photo booth. Check out the pictures on the Red Nova Lab blog.
Infegy
On Infegy’s blog, Buzz Study, it regularly publishes graphs showing the day’s buzz for a particular topic. Sceenshot from infegy.com.
Infegy, a Kansas City-based social media monitoring and analytics startup, showed that Halloween was mentioned online four-times as often this year compared to last year.
Syncbak
“The future of TV is in the hands of a biker and an angel,” Sycbak posted on its Facebook wall.
Syncbak, a Marion, Iowa-based startup taking TV to the internet, posted a picture of its founder, Jack Perry, sporting biker gear. And the team followed it up with a themed blog post, ” ‘Live TV Online’ is more Trick than Treat.”
Silo 88
Taking advantage of the Halloween scare, the folks at Silo 88, a Kansas City-based web design firm, revealed the winner of its “Etisbewdab Bad Website Contest.”
Silicon Prairie News
The Silicon Prairie News mascot, Analog the Prairie Dog, graces the front of a pumpkin. Photo by Danny Schreiber.
And last but not least, although we didn’t do costumes or tricks or treats, we proudly displayed a pumpkin with our friendly little mascot, Analog the Prairie Dog. Next year, I think one of us should probably dress us as Analog.
Did we miss one? Please link it up in a comment below.
Update Nov. 6 – A few that we missed:
- Jim Svoboda of Omaha-based Redstone launched a ghost hunting iOS app, Ghosthunting Toolkit – ghosthuntingtoolkit.com
- Kansas City-based Think Big Partners had employees dress up for the day – thinkbigkansascity.blogspot.com
- Lincoln-based Hudl posted photos of their employees’ costumes – facebook.com
