Mardi Gras: A Missed Marketing Moment For Brands

Both local and nation­al brands use the Mar­di Gras cel­e­bra­tion to push out social con­tent, but could they do more to con­nect with con­sumers?

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 1 comment

Mar­di Gras pro­vides plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for beads, booze, and bosoms, but could it also present untapped mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties? Tom Mar­tin, founder of New Orleans-based dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Con­verse Dig­i­tal, cer­tain­ly thinks so.


Mul­ti­ple brands tweet­ed from parades and shared con­tent like recipes to get into the Mar­di Gras spir­it this year.

While the car­ni­val cer­tain­ly presents obsta­cles on the sur­face – a rep for the New Orleans Tourism Mar­ket­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, for exam­ple, says no brands are allowed in Mar­di Gras parades what­so­ev­er, which is on top of their pre-exist­ing rep­u­ta­tion for lewd and las­civ­i­ous behav­ior – Mar­tin specif­i­cal­ly points to missed con­tent mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties among brands that can look beyond the drunk­en debauch­ery of Bour­bon Street and weave them­selves into the cul­ture and sto­ry­line of Mar­di Gras.

The Greatest Free Show on Earth”

Mar­di Gras is a huge event that attracts a mil­lion or more con­sumers, which means a big mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, but mar­keters tra­di­tion­al­ly look at it from a spon­sor­ship approach, Mar­tin said.

There’s no gate. It’s the great­est free show on earth. You stand there, watch and catch beads. It’s very unusu­al from an event stand­point,” Mar­tin said.

In addi­tion, the city of New Orleans has spe­cif­ic anti-cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship rules in place and throw­ing brand­ed items from floats is strict­ly ver­boten.

So it per­plex­es mar­keters. They don’t know how to lever­age it,” Mar­tin said. “What you see is they share con­tent or they ride a Mar­di Gras hash­tag and maybe they have street teams. You see a lot of street team activ­i­ty.”

In pri­or years, he said that came from brands like ener­gy drink Mon­ster pass­ing out sam­ples.

I think that’s about as cre­ative as most peo­ple get with it,” he said.

Tabasco’s Virtual Mardi Gras Experience

He points to work he did with Tabas­co in 2010, which he said endeared the brand to the local com­mu­ni­ty, gave it an acti­va­tion in the social space, ramped up fol­low­ers and had a mea­sur­able impact on intent to pur­chase, as a good exam­ple for future acti­va­tions. In it, Tabas­co cre­at­ed a web­site, MyMardiGrasExperience.com, which allowed con­sumers around the coun­try to vir­tu­al­ly expe­ri­ence Mar­di Gras via a live Twit­ter feed and stream­ing video. The effort was also pro­filed in AdAge.

You could sit at your com­put­er and watch the parade from the van­tage point of a local embed­ded in the route just like you would watch the Macy’s Thanks­giv­ing Day Parade,” Mar­tin said. “Here, local­ly, TV sta­tions do it, but if you’re out­side New Orleans, you could nev­er watch them live as they are hap­pen­ing.”

The brand also embed­ded a cam­era on a float, which allowed con­sumers to see what it was like to ride in one of the parades.

That cre­at­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to real­ly expe­ri­ence some­thing they couldn’t expe­ri­ence them­selves and to rein­force Tabasco’s New Orleans her­itage and roots,” Mar­tin said.

More Than Drunken Debauchery

And, in effect, it helped the brand show a dif­fer­ent side of Mar­di Gras, repo­si­tion­ing the fes­ti­val in the minds of con­sumers from “Girls Gone Wild” to fam­i­ly fun.

If you have kids, [Mar­di Gras] should be on your buck­et list,” Mar­tin said. “It’s like Dis­ney, but bet­ter.”

This drove a lot of atten­tion from the media and with­in the social space.

That’s because they weren’t try­ing to mar­ket,” Mar­tin said. “When you embrace its tra­di­tions and themes and turn it in a way that ben­e­fits the brand [with­out] try­ing to be a spon­sor­ship, you can attach at a deep­er lev­el. But brands miss it. They can’t get out of the tra­di­tion­al event-based mind­set – ‘Where can I put ban­ners and street teams and beat peo­ple over the head with brand­ed mes­sag­ing?’ – rather than weav­ing them­selves into the fab­ric of Mar­di Gras and link­ing to the essence, which is fam­i­ly and cel­e­bra­tion and not drunk­en debauch­ery like you see on Bour­bon Street.”

Accord­ing to Mar­tin, the city of New Orleans does livestream video, but he still hasn’t seen many brands out­side of the liquor indus­try attempt to link them­selves to Mar­di Gras and there still isn’t much in the way of dig­i­tal con­tent “using the full­ness of Mar­di Gras as a way to cre­ate cool, com­pelling stuff that peo­ple might want to watch.”

A Five-Day Tailgate if Your Body Can Handle It”

At the same time, he notes brands are under­stand­ably hes­i­tant giv­en Mar­di Gras’ rep­u­ta­tion.

When we did Tabas­co, we said, ‘We’re going to do live video right from parade route with no delay’ and it scared the beje­sus out of us and right­ful­ly so. That was the biggest hur­dle. We had to get [the brand] so com­fort­able and con­fi­dent that…it wasn’t going to be the Tabas­co show and then a bunch of peo­ple naked,” Mar­tin said. “And that was a Louisiana com­pa­ny. The mar­ket­ing direc­tor lives right here and she knows Mar­di Gras. She knows that crazy stuff hap­pens. That’s the big­ger chal­lenge.”

But, as the Tabas­co exam­ple proved, Mar­tin said there’s more to Mar­di Gras. And, call­ing Mar­di Gras “a five-day tail­gate if your body can han­dle it,” he says there’s a great fit for brands typ­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with activ­i­ties like tail­gat­ing or camp­ing.

Mar­tin said brands with log­i­cal fits could “come in and cre­ate a ton of super-help­ful, use­ful con­tent that makes [their] prod­uct look like a star. That gets you on the ground and event-based aware­ness but also gets you the eye­balls of peo­ple who are inter­est­ed in Mar­di Gras beyond the crazi­ness.”

How­ev­er, he notes it will prob­a­bly take a few big­ger brands with real mon­ey to make a com­mit­ment and have some suc­cess before many more fol­low suit.

Cook Me Somethin’ Mister

For his part, Mar­tin said New Orleans-based food prod­uct brand Cook Me Some­thin’ Mis­ter has an excel­lent brand inte­gra­tion into Mar­di Gras 2015 that cre­ates mul­ti­ple lev­els of val­ue with its Cook Me Some­thin’ Mis­ter Café.

The Cafe, which is actu­al­ly a table for two on a parade route where rev­el­ers can eat fresh jam­bal­aya, dis­tin­guish­es the brand from oth­er food trucks and carts while also cre­at­ing sam­pling for both locals and tourists in an “inher­ent­ly more fun and social­ly sharable way” for a local brand that can also be pur­chased via Ama­zon, Mar­tin said.

Mar­tin also notes it has a built-in social media plan “and not just the brand shar­ing social media posts about what they’re doing, but, more impor­tant­ly, Mar­di Gras rev­el­ers shar­ing pho­tos of them­selves enjoy­ing a table for two on the parade route.”

Call­ing the effort unique and dif­fer­ent, Mar­tin said, “Big brand, small brand – it mat­ters not — it’s ful­ly inte­grat­ed into the cul­ture of Mar­di Gras ver­sus feel­ing like anoth­er stu­pid sam­pling tent that you see at any big event these days.”

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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