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.”