It’s a good day when you learn that an effort you helped kick off a year ago that brought com­fort to so many has poten­tially inspired sim­i­lar efforts exactly one year later. This is one of those days.

I woke this morn­ing to see a pro­gram touted on NBC’s The Today Show aimed at send­ing trick-or-treat candy to the troops serv­ing in Iraq at the expense of den­tists through­out the coun­try who would buy back sweets from chil­dren the day after Hal­loween for $1 per pound. The program’s web­site, www.halloweencandybuyback.com, allows den­tists around the coun­try to reg­is­ter for the pro­gram. Eerily (I use that word only in the spirit of the hol­i­day), this national pro­gram and many local one like it look dead on sim­i­lar to one we pro­moted for our own client, Hagen Den­tal Prac­tice, at exactly this time last year. While I can­not say for cer­tain that our pro­gram inspired any of the other pro­grams under­way today through­out the coun­try, I can cer­tainly hope we had a lit­tle some­thing to do with it. And will feel proud of our efforts, regardless.

Last fall, Dr. Lawrence Hagen, for whom O’Keeffe Com­mu­ni­ca­tions writes and man­ages a quar­terly newslet­ter and occa­sional pub­lic rela­tions efforts, asked us to include in the fall issue a sim­ple arti­cle pro­mot­ing his practice’s “Hal­loween Candy Buy­back” pro­gram. To be fair, he had learned of a sim­i­lar pro­gram launched a few years ear­lier by a den­tist in Min­nesota. Dr. Hagen and his wife, Jenny, thought it would be a good fit for their patients. We agreed, and at the Hagens’ request sent a sim­ple news release and e-mail pitch to local Cincin­nati media to help drum up donors out­side of the Hagens’ patient base.

Before we knew it, the story had been cov­ered in almost every local paper and on nearly every local tele­vi­sion chan­nel in the area. And six local ele­men­tary schools, Brownie troops and fam­i­lies through­out greater Cincin­nati had deliv­ered more than 6,500 pounds of candy to Dr. Hagen’s doorstep. Not only did pint-sized mon­sters, witches, pirates and ghosts from all around the Tris­tate hap­pily fork over their hard-earned loot, but they did so with­out com­pen­sa­tion. Almost all the candy col­lected by the Hagens was donated. Some local fam­i­lies and char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions even picked up much of the cost for ship­ping the candy to the troops. Then, imag­ine our sur­prise, con­sid­er­ing the local­ized nature of the pro­gram, when we learned that news of the Candy Buy­back pro­gram had been fea­tured on CNN [http://www.okeeffecom.com/newsroom/HagenNews.asp] on Hal­loween day. One Hagen patient even informed us that they saw a brief men­tion on one of Canada’s national news networks.

I should add that this effort hit close to home for the Hagens. At the time, Jenny’s son, Matt, had just com­pleted his sec­ond tour as a Marine sniper in Iraq. For those unaware, sniper units rarely receive their care pack­ages because they are typ­i­cally roam­ing in small two-, three– or four-person units for weeks and months at a time with lim­ited provisioning.

Need­less to say, the Hagens repeated the pro­gram this year. While we do not yet have the lat­est col­lec­tion fig­ures, I can tell you news of this year’s col­lec­tion has already appeared in The Cincin­nati Enquirer, on nation­ally syn­di­cated talk radio sta­tion 700 WLW AM and on numer­ous local network-affiliated TV chan­nels. I guess you really can’t get too much of a good thing.

The gen­eros­ity of our com­mu­nity con­tin­ues to amaze and ener­gize us, as does the ded­i­ca­tion and hard work of our troops serv­ing here and over­seas. What bet­ter way to get into the spirit of giv­ing, not only for Hal­loween, but for the upcom­ing holidays.

Happy Hal­loween, everyone!