Dreams and Fears.

Today's Marketing Cookie is about dreams and fears.

While you were out with the family watching fireworks on the Fourth of July, you may have noticed Halloween candy oozing onto store shelves. In August, while we were still going to the beach and flipping burgers on the grill, you probably noticed a frenzied lineup of Halloween movies for kids taking over the theaters, such as Paranorman, Frankenweenie, Hotel Transylvania, and Dark Shadows. Not to mention at least a dozen ridiculously scary and blood-curdling movies for adults too. By September, all the costume stores have already cranked up the volume to eleven and beyond, selling wigs, plastic weapons, cheap costumes, and fake blood through an ever-increasing number of temporary retail locations.

Whew!

Well, it's finally October, and the much-hyped, overly promoted, ever-inflated Halloween holiday is but just a few days away. The TV is loaded with every conceivable Halloween movie that has ever been produced, and the houses are decorated with carved pumpkins—frozen in unspeakable expression, bedsheet ghosts hanging from the trees, as well as creepy cornstalks and fake cobwebs—all inviting a chilly darkness into the imagination. However, before the first child has had the opportunity to get dressed up, and before they have had a chance to knock on the next door neighbor's door to say "trick or treat," the stores have already shifted gears and begun to promote Christmas.

What have we done?

Marketers have successfully kidnapped almost every innocent holiday, strapped them down on a stainless operating table, pulled out the innards and origins, to create an all-consuming monster. We've stolen the soul of each holiday and replaced its heart with a BUY button. Yes. There's now an app for that. We've removed all traces of spontaneous imagination and replaced such creativity with party kits. We've removed the spirit from our holidays and sewn together a shopping cart full of commercials, merchandise, and hoopla... and the batteries are still not included.

I dream of seeing our society come together for one night and participate as a community in holiday festivities like Halloween. My fear though, as a marketer, is that we've commercialized every ounce of organic joy from our holidays.

I dream of seeing the joy on my kids' faces when they've gone out into the night and filled their bags with an unimaginable amount of candy. My fear is that our push for profits has squeezed every last drop of living from our ability to make memories.

It is, in fact, a dream of mine that my children have an opportunity to enjoy the same pleasures I had in my youth. My fear is that we've attempted to fabricate and manufacture some sort of synthetic happiness that sucks life away from my dreams and replaces them with a plastic smile—made in China.

I dream that my children will genuinely want to wear costumes, that they will say "trick or treat" with sincerity, and maybe get a few goosebumps when being startled by a quick rustling of leaves in the shadows. Are we still capable of creating memories, or must we go out and buy them in recycled bags? If you are like me, you dream that they will authentically enjoy and cherish these moments as a rite of passage into adulthood... and as today's fortune says, "Your dream must be bigger than your fear."