Joss paper, aka Ghost Money aka Hell Banknotes are burned to honour ancestors during China's Ching Ming Festival.

Co-written with April Barrett, with contributions from the Barrett and Welsh team

As seasoned Canadians, we often take holidays like Halloween for granted. But imagine landing in a new country, and then on October 31st, seeing a bunch of tiny people dressed up in animal onesies, begging for candy at your door.

Super weird.

Interestingly, the core concepts behind Halloween are not entirely unfamiliar to many new Canadians.

In China and among the Chinese diaspora, on Ching Ming Festival or Tomb-Sweeping Day (usually April 4th or 5th), graves are swept and Ghost Money (joss paper) is burned in homage to ancestors. Among Catholics in places like India, Hong Kong and China, Poland and the Philippines, it’s not All Hallow’s Eve that is observed but the two days that follow – All Saints Day and All Soul’s Day – the latter especially is reserved for visits to family graves, to clean them, leave flowers, pray for the souls of the departed and to light candles of remembrance. Among Mexicans, pre-Columbian ancestor worship rituals have syncretised with the Catholic traditions of the conquistadors and have re-emerged as the Dia de Muertos or as gringos have back-translated it, Dia de los Muertos – celebrated over several days.

But the particular candy-flavoured variety enjoyed with such commercial gusto in North America is a little disconcerting at first to Canadian newcomers.

It clashes with health-related customs. “Candy is bad for you!”

It runs afoul of immigrant concerns about frivolous expense. “That black halo is how much?”

Sonia’s most terrifying avatar

And it crashes in confusion as it runs into what is appropriate and what is not, as the kids stare wide-eyed at some waspy stereotype or insensitive pastiche of one’s own culture that is indubitably going to win this year’s gold medal for Most. Offensive. Halloween. Costume. Ever.

To those who are just getting the hang of this holiday, we feel you. Here are some stories straight from our staff, about their first Halloween in Canada.

Sonia My first Halloween? I was in college — it was fun to see all the makeup artist students creating Halloween characters — I got an artificial scar on my arm. The family I was living with went out trick-or-treating. Assignments were scarier to me, so I stayed home alone to work.

Ben tells Agnes about the new deadline

I was warned to not answer the door as the apartment building didn’t allow door-to-door trick-or-treating on Halloween and there were some nasty elements in the building. Around midnight, I heard a knock on the door. I ignored it but the knocking continued and didn't stop for about 10 minutes. Foolishly, with only a shoe to defend myself, I opened the door to find a bunch of drunk teenagers. I was so relieved it wasn’t a masked killer! I didn't have any candy, so I gave them a few muffins and sent them on their way!

Agnes My first Halloween in Canada was... cold. It actually snowed that day. The country that I moved here from, in October, we still wore shorts.

Ben Two months after we landed in Canada, I opened my door to an army of little ghosts, witches and blood-splattered creatures. My kids shrieked with joy as they recognized their schoolmates and blended right into this beloved Halloween tradition that we also celebrated back home. I ate most of the candy.

Savio threatens to edit Gavin's copy

Savio I had heard a lot about Halloween before moving to Canada. Boy, was I in for a treat. Weeks before the day itself, I saw houses adorned and decorated to look terrifying. I was scared just thinking about how the property value would diminish if their houses really became that way. On Halloween, my 3-year old was inexhaustible. He could barely say 'trick or treat' but every house he went to he left with his hands full. He wanted to visit every house in the city. At the end of the night, we had enough sweet treats to open a small store. Kids would not stop visiting our house screaming trick or treat. But when adults started showing up, pretending to be kids, the situation became frightening.

Gavin Not my first Halloween - but the first in our first Canadian home. I went mad — I made jack-o’-lanterns. Inspired by not-yet-a-jailbird Martha Stewart, I carved 13 or 14 pumpkins and squashes. And realized, with a horror that any well-raised Indian will understand, that a tremendous amount of gourd was going waste. I soothed my conscience by cooking every cup of carved-out calabash cavity into a curried soup rich with coconut milk. I served it to the parents who accompanied their kids on their rounds.
_______

Notice anything in these true stories? We’re being let into a secret.

New Canadians want to adopt the rituals of the new home they’ve chosen, mysterious though they may be at first. Canada has embraced them.

Their instinct is simple.

Return the hug.

Happy Halloween folks.

Gavin Barrett is Chief Creative Officer and Ideawallah at Barrett and Welsh, Toronto's most award-winning multicultural agency. Barrett and Welsh is also the official Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Insight in the Kingdom of the Blind.

Jama Masjid, Old Delhi. Photo by Gavin Barrett

Eid Mubarak to any of our friends, clients or vendors celebrating Eid ul Adha this weekend. And to those on their Hajj journeys, inward, outward, onward, we say khuda hafiz.

Much of the western world tends to think of Eid as the festival that immediately follows Ramadan - or Ramzan - as we call it where I grew up. They are not wrong.

The austerities of Ramadan culminate in the celebration of Eid ul Fitr - literally, the feast of the breaking of the fast. Eid al Fitr celebrations are marked by a spirit of generosity and hospitality is lavished on friends and family.

But it is Eid ul Adha, also known as Greater Eid, or the Eid of the Great Sacrifice, that is the most important feast in the Muslim calendar. Back in India, it was known to all by its colloquial name, Bakri Eid (Eid of the Goat). The name springs from the Eid tradition in which a goat is ritually slaughtered and shared among family, friends and the poor.

For three or four days our Muslim friends around the world set out in brand new clothes, to visit and celebrate with each other and to pray on one of their faith's great solemnities. Unsurprisingly, food and spending on food is a big part of the celebrations and in places with large Muslim populations, messages from major advertisers reflect this focus, as we can see in this ad for McDonald's in India.

In Canada, Muslims now account for nearly 3.2% of the population. At just over a million people, they are the second largest faith group in the country according to the much maligned 2011 census. The linguistic diversity updates from the 2016 census tell us that the fastest growing non-official languages in Toronto after Tagalog are Arabic, Farsi and Bengali - all of them are largely languages of Muslim immigrants. Calgary's Baitun Nur Mosque is believed to be the largest in North America and serves a large, growing congregation.

So, it's somewhat surprising that very few Canadian marketers have taken note of the opportunity, with some notable exceptions like Metro's Adonis grocery store banner and brands like Maple Leaf's Mina Halal and Maple Lodge's Zabiha Halal. Delivering halal products at moments of need and significance to this market of one million-plus hungry consumers is going to be phenomenal for business - especially for those who move first and move fast. It's time to wake up and smell the za'atar. It smells delicious — as most billion dollar opportunities do.

Gavin Barrett is Ideawallah at Barrett and Welsh, an award-winning multicultural advertising Toronto agency that specializes in the new Canada, a magical place where all cultures are understood, shared and enjoyed and the ideas are delicious, meaty and aromatic with spices.

Tesco makes a generous donation to our library of multicultural mistakes, with this Ramadan blunder: bacon flavoured chips on a stand with the message Ramadan Mubarak.

The scene of the marketing crime? The Tesco store on Liverpool Street in London, not far from Whitechapel's East London Mosque, one of the largest Muslim places of worship in Europe. An amused Muslim shopper saw the stand and tweeted it and it quickly rippled through the twitterverse, before the chips were moved.

Who moved the Pringles? Tesco. To their credit they acknowledged their mistake and issued a statement:

We are proud to offer a wide range of meals and products to meet the needs of our customers during Ramadan. We recognise these Pringles weren’t in the most suitable place and our store colleagues have now moved them.

As I've commented elsewhere before, marketing and advertising are all about perception and persuasion. Consumer opinion both reflects and affects brand perception.

Interestingly, some of the reaction in marketing circles has been less on the mark than Tesco's.

One media professional defended the mistake saying "if you walk down to any large Tesco you will be surprised to see the number of Muslims picking up this product" - a classic reactive defence based on anecdotal evidence.

We have to be cautious with such evidence when acting as professional counsel to our clients. I have observed some of my (devout but heterodox) Muslim friends indulge in a dram of Scotch from time to time, but it would be an act of insanity for me to recommend to an alcohol client that she begin advertising Eid specials on Scotch based on my observation.

Another commenter observed, "I believe you are from India" and reminded me that there are Muslims there who sell alcohol during Ramadan.

Yes, I am from India, but my knowledge of the actions of individual Muslims cannot be used to explain away a marketing error. Marketing for the most part is a social-risk-averse, share-building discipline in which marketers tend not to risk slim brand marketing budgets on the behaviour of the individual, but rather to invest on the preferences of majorities so as to achieve success on a scale shareholders can go out to dinner on.

Niche brands - like hedge funds - often swim the other way but it is rare for a large brand to do such a thing. When it happens, without all the accompanying fanfare, one can be relatively certain it was a mistake. I'm no fan of political correctness in a conversation, but would think it horrifying in our times, if a brand were to use that to excuse the ignorance, laziness or negligence that produced a racist or sexist advertising message.

Our business is all about influencing consumer perception positively.

This focus is often lost in these days of mindless network ad distribution and aggregation, when the motto seems to be "anything goes as long as it goes everywhere" – placing a premium on efficiency of distribution over the effectiveness of the message distributed.

In reality, the wrong ad placed in the wrong medium or the wrong product placed on the wrong shelf could easily leave a bad taste in the mouth.

This is surely not something Tesco intended. A single act of thoughtless product selection on its part resulted in it knocking over its own well-meant Ramadan display.

Tesco's Pringles mistake was neither racist or sexist - it was just dumb - and, I believe, just a mistake.

Like selling combs to bald men. Yes, there will always be a few vain men who buy combs for that single lonely strand they nurse. But most bald men will either treat the message like unaddressed mail or feel insulted by its utter thoughtlessness.

Neither response is the desired response.


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Gavin Barrett is Ideawallah at Barrett and Welsh, a Toronto agency that specializes in the new Canada, a magical place where all cultures are understood, shared and enjoyed.

80 years ago, Maxwell House began doing a Passover campaign that touched the Jewish community in a then new and now still intensely relevant way. Stuart Elliot, the New York Times' Media And Advertising reporter covers the campaign here.

Today it's called multicultural advertising.
80 years ago, it was called good business.
It still is.

At first sight, this Eid ul Fitr ad from Levis Indonesia, seems relatively straightforward. The kind of harmless but useless festival advertising that most banks in Canada like to do, for instance. The headline is what you'd expect of just such an ad: Let us celebrate this day of glory together. Happy Eid ul Fitr.

But a closer look reveals that it's not just another pair of blue jeans - it's a stunning visual depiction of the massed congregations so typical in Jakarta's giant mosques. A beautiful surprise set against that straight headline and proof that, yes, even in advertising, you can find God in the details.



Article: Creative Commons License 2010 Gavin Barrett
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

India just celebrated the incredible, colourful, uninhibited festival of Holi. Enjoy the The Boston Globe's photo essay on the festivities from its spectacular Big Picture website. And in the words of one billion revelers, "Holi Hai!"

Let go and let yourself have some fun.
Click here to see the photo feature.


Image: Makks2010 via weblink to from Wikimedia Commobes

Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.