If MacPherson’s has a favorite holiday, it may or may not be the one that involves dressing up, decorating, turning the world upside down and tapping into our imaginative, artsy sides. While delivering creativity is what we do on the clock, we embrace (and express) creativity outside of work too—in fact, for many of us it is the fuel that keeps us going! Halloween is a chance for us to show off this creative spark.
Costume Contests
We kicked off the day of Halloween with a costume contest.
The winners in Emeryville:
Jeanine Davids as The Butcher, Ariana Faustini as an American Eagle and Christine Sanchez as Billy the Puppet from Saw.
The winners in Atlanta:
Marianna Powers as a witch, Clifton Turner as a “creepy slasher guy”, Camesha as a bee and Wanda Harrold as a coach; Natalie Simmons as Catwoman
Georgina Aguirre as Spider-girl, Luz Semidey as Jack Skellington.
Haunted Departments
In the weeks leading up to Halloween, various departments in Emeryville strategize, brainstorm and percolate: how can we transform our everyday desk pods into creatively creepy Halloween-themed menageries? Creative Services and Brand Marketing and Category Management had their eyes on the prize.
Creative & Brand built a giant spider’s lair, complete with a witchy conjuring table and a graveyard — but their efforts were no match for the veteran Halloween champions in Category Management. They transformed their area into a haunted house, complete with lights, music and maniacal characters! While it’s hard to capture the experience in words, here’s what it was like to walk through their creative, terrifying house of horror!
Congrats to Category Management for a well-deserved win! The amount of teamwork, collaboration and imagination that went into the haunted house is inspiring.
The haunted house experience began with a scary nun beckoning you in, then a puppet (Christine in Accounting) on a tricycle surrounded by creepy toys asking you to play. Dig deep into a gooey bowl of what feels like eyeballs and get the key from the grim reaper (Dave from IT); proceed down the hall where hands grab you and a masked figure jumps out… only to come face to face with The Butcher herself: Jeanine Davids.
Pumpkins
The week before Halloween, Human Resources doles out pumpkins and challenges us to transform them. The winners:
Best Decorated Pumpkin (left), Meghan Mclean (Creative & Brand) To create her pumpkin-turned-Dragon, Meghan used QoR Watercolor medium, QoR watercolors, Koi Metallic watercolors, Sculpey, POSCA markers and epoxy to hold it all together.
Most Creative Pumpkin (right), Hannah Reineck (Creative & Brand) Hannah adorned her pumpkin with a feather boa and created an avian friend with POSCA markers and glitter.
Best Carved Pumpkin (left), Bruce Graham (IT). Bruce went the old fashioned route – all you need is a kitchen knife (and toothpicks to secure the ears)!
Most Technical Pumpkin (right), Howard (IT). Howard’s process, and his result, won him the best technical pumpkin: he devised the method of marbling the pumpkin upside down by drilling a hole, sticking a curved paperclip in: voila, beautiful designs covering the entire surface. He used Marabu Easy Marble and a manikin.
Did you do anything fun for Halloween with your store? Any staff art or contests? Any Art Dog costumes? Tag us in your posts on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram–we’d love to see.
