Zillow just scored a nice Wall Street Journal hit, along with 300+ references in Google News, for its inaugural “Trick-or-Treat Housing Index.”  Timing of its October 26 blog post was excellent, with ample time to spread virally before Halloween.

The premise was to look for the most affluent and safe neighborhoods where the houses are closest together, reasoning that’s where costumed kids could haul the most candy with the least amount of walking.  It’s great branding for the Seattle-based online real estate resource, which promises to spread the index beyond its hometown next year. (Childhood obescity experts will undoubtedly position themselves for the counter attack.)

When I was a kid in Rochester, New York, the Rapp family was the local Canada Dry soda distributor.  They handed out cans of pop to kids in the tony Browncroft neighborhood on Halloween.  (One of the kids, C.J. Rapp, grew up to invent Jolt cola.)

This Saturday night, kids everywhere will readily share Halloween strategies that are not dissimilar to Zillow’s methodology.  But no matter how many Saf-T-Pops, Mary Janes or miniature Snicker bars are proffered, the real prize on Halloween will be figuring out which houses are doling out full-sized candy bars, whole packs of gum  or other top-shelf goodies.

A marketing and PR coup would be a branded mobile app that used GPS and crowd sourcing for strategic trick-or-treating.   Lord knows it’s possible.  Garmin makes GPS navigators capable of displaying known police speed traps, and FourSquare tells me which nearby bar is giving the first glass of wine away for free.

Those who say this could ruin Halloween should look at the benefits before passing judgment:  Kids with peanut allergies could tag houses handing out Skittles.  Vegetarian kids could avoid the Skittles (which contain gelatin).  Dentist homeowners could opt in to author their own “No Candy Here” disclaimer to lessen the chances of getting TP’d for giving away pencils and tooth-shaped erasers.

I’m going to stop now and write my CandySniffer app business plan.  Anyone know which VC funded Webkinz?

Photo credit: amykclark via Photobucket

Chocolate’s in the news today.  If Cadbury is gobbled up by Kraft — or Hershey or Nestle for that matter — how would that impact you or your clients?

With gold surpassing the psychological barrier of $1,000 an ounce, eBay reported 14k gold was the “biggest mover” today.   Not surprising, similar action is being seen on Craigslist. Investment advisors and consumer protection agencies should be having a field day.

The United Nations General Assembly is preparing to meet in New York September 15.  If your organization is gathering at the same time, can you draw parallels and attract attention?  Or maybe you have some wonderful gridlock-busting technology you should be showcasing in Manhattan during the mayhem.

Look out Conference Board, The Economist claims its Big Mac Index is an accurate financial indicator?  If you represent a global product or brand (and don’t mind calling attention to market-by-market pricing), challenge the sandwich to a duel.

Friday marks eight years since the attacks by al-Qaeda on New York and Washington. Is there a tasteful angle that points to ways you or your clients are dealing with the memory of the attacks, helping the families of victims or contributing to a safer world?

Red hot on Twitter over the past 48 hours are thousands of postings under the heading “When I was little, I…” Does this data reveal anything useful? Any emblematic kids’ products or insightful parenting authors want to jump on the bandwagon?

September is when thousands of green interns arrive at PR agencies to make a substantive contribution.  Too often, they are told to organize messy stacks of magazines and newspapers or validate media lists — anything to keep them from jeopardizing actual client work.

If you feel like trying something new — even beyond monitoring calls for help via ProfNet and HARO –  challenge your interns to establish a real-time assignment desk of sorts?  Have them monitor what’s happening right now, not events that occurred last month, last week or even during yesterday’s news cycle.

Very few agencies look at early social media indicators to predict what stories will spill over into mainstream media in the coming days or weeks.  Those who do often look only for specific keywords, like their clients’ and competitors’ brands, personnel and hot issues rather than taking a blue-sky approach that invites more creative connections to less obvious events and topics sure to command media attention.

By training the interns — and potentially a more experienced in-house staff of  “war room” news hounds — to use readily available, free Web resources, they can surface trending topics and match them against issues your clients are facing.  Account supervisors and management could hold a huddle each morning or afternoon to review what the interns have discovered.

Key to making this work is understanding the type of expertise you can offer influential bloggers and media covering a given story.  Are there experts within your client’s organization who could be interviewed? Do you have b-roll or digital photos to illustrate a point?  Is there any current research that could be summarized and distributed?

Any smart PR agency pro knows that this kind of approach could backfire if an ill-prepared client expert is powdered up for hastily prepared CNBC interview only to bomb on-camera.  Advance media training and content development are key. So is production and digital warehousing of media assets that can serve as sidebar material to amplify the points you’ll make in writing and on-camera.

Many of us continue operating as though year-old editorial calendars, quarterly account reviews and weekly client-agency conference calls are adequate to maximize opportunities — and minimize risk  — in a new generation where user-generated content contributes to a more fluid and often volatile online presentation of hot topics and news.

The new crop of interns might just teach us all something if given the chance.