Why You Should Use Fun Mardi Gras Promotional Products

The biggest event for New Orleans is by far Mardi Gras. In 2000 the amount of money generated for the city reached a billion dollars. A lot of the tourism for New Orleans revolves around Mardi Gras. I mean, the event is huge! In any given year the average crowd for Mardi Gras is anywhere from about 700,000 to over a million.

There has also been a long standing 300 year tradition not to commercialize the event. That is still pretty much the case as far as having no advertising on the floats and other restrictions. But if you want to get your brand noticed by almost a million people in a week, there are still some ways around it.

Mardi Gras promotional products

Fun promotional products are a great way to get your brand noticed at Mardi Gras without violating the no advertising rule. Nobody can tell you you can’t wear a T-shirt with your brand’s logo on it. Having just one person wearing a T-shirt with a logo might not stand out in the crowd. But if you had a whole group of people wearing T-shirts with a brand logo it just might attract attention. Of course everyone will be wearing a costume, so you would have to get very clever with the way you display your logo. If your company has a mascot of some sort, you could use that as your costume.

Give away fun promotional products like bottle openers, lighters or keychains that people will keep and use. Give them away at one of the many private parties you’ll find in pretty much any given neighborhood. You can also give them away to people who are hosting parties and as prizes. If the fun promotional products are something they will use during Mardi Gras and keep afterwards, you have a winner.

You can’t carry an open glass container on the street, but you can wear your booze on your wrists and fill them up at a local bar with your favorite drink. Wrist water bottles aren’t just for water. Companies have put their logos on them for student orientation week and pub crawls. Hash House Harrier groups around the world fill up swiggies with beer and use them as a beer carrier when going from keg to keg.

Here are some reasons why you should use fun Mardi Gras promotional products:

Brand Visibility

Mardi Gras is a lively and colorful event that attracts large crowds of participants and spectators. By distributing fun Mardi Gras promotional products with your logo or brand message, you can increase your brand visibility and exposure to a wide audience.

Positive Brand Association

Mardi Gras is associated with joy, celebration, and a festive spirit. By aligning your brand with these positive emotions, you can create a strong and favorable brand association in the minds of your target audience. Fun promotional products can evoke positive feelings and make your brand memorable.

Increased Engagement

Fun Mardi Gras promotional products are likely to attract attention and generate interest. When people receive or interact with these items, it can spark conversations, encourage engagement, and create a buzz around your brand. This can lead to increased brand interactions, social media mentions, and word-of-mouth marketing. swiggies, wrist water bottles that have an alcohol company log on them definitely gets noticed and people talk about it. Especially when you can fill them up at the bar.

Enhanced Customer Loyalty

Offering fun Mardi Gras promotional products to your existing customers or loyal supporters can strengthen their bond with your brand. It shows that you value and appreciate their support, and it adds an element of surprise and delight to their experience with your company.

Memorability

Mardi Gras is a unique and memorable event, and associating your brand with the festivities through fun promotional products can make a lasting impression on your audience. When they use or see these items after the event, it can serve as a reminder of their positive experience and your brand.

Differentiation

Mardi Gras is a crowded and competitive environment for businesses and brands. Using fun Mardi Gras promotional products can help you stand out from the crowd and differentiate yourself from competitors. It allows you to inject personality and creativity into your marketing efforts, making your brand more memorable and distinct.

Social Media Engagement

Fun Mardi Gras promotional products can be highly shareable on social media platforms. When people receive unique or entertaining items, they are more likely to post about them on their social media accounts. This generates user-generated content that showcases your brand to a wider audience.

When using fun Mardi Gras promotional products, it’s important to consider your target audience and the relevance of the items to your brand. Choose products that resonate with the Mardi Gras spirit, reflect your brand’s personality, and offer practical value or entertainment to recipients.

Mardi Gras is a multi-million dollar party where everyone is in the mood for fun. If your brand is fun and you want to reach a million fun partygoers, think about using some unique promotional products at the next Mardi Gras celebration.

Make Running Fun For Kids

Kids are like adults. They need variety to keep them from getting bored. This is true for running too. So if you want kids to be interested in running so they will want to keep it up you have to make running fun for kids.

Make running fun for kids

That means adding plenty of variety to their running program. Get them warmed up with some stretching exercises and some simple games like Red Rover, Red Rover, Red Light, Green Light, and Simon Says. Start out slowly with short distances and move up to longer ones. Create an obstacle course for them by putting items like cones at strategic distances. Turn it into a fun game for them. Make it a cross training course by alternating running with climbing, hanging and balancing.

Run with your kids. They like to imitate adults and will do what you do. But pay attention to make sure you don’t overwork them. Little kids can usually only run for a few minutes at a time.

Work in some relay runs in there with continuous and three person relay runs. Some kids running programs also have scavenger hunts. This is another way to break up the running and make it fun for the kids.

Help them to create a goal like running a kids fun run and help them stick to it. Train with them. Gradually build up to better timing.

Whenever your kids achieve a goal, reward them with a healthy snack. And always make sure they have enough water to drink, before, during, and after their run.

Encourage kids to do their best, but let them progress in their own time. If they enjoy it they’ll stick with it. And if not, don’t force it. Let them find another activity they are really interested in.

Simply running around a track might be enough for adults, but for kids try to mix things up a little.

Why Kids Should Have Their Own Kids Water Bottle

Dehydration for adults is bad enough, but for kids is can be downright dangerous. Part of the reason is that kids absorb more heat than adults, but they sweat less. They also have less fluid and therefore can easily go from mild dehydration to severe dehydration more quickly. They don’t know how dangerous it is for them not to drink water. As a parent you have to encourage kids to drink more water. If kids have their own kids water bottle they are more likely to drink more water. There are some other tricks you can use to get kids to drink more water.

Make drinking water fun

If you can make drinking water fun for kids they are more likely to see it as something they want to do instead of something adults are forcing them to do. Kids should have their own kids water bottle in their favorite style and color. If they look at it more as a fun toy than a necessity they will use it more often. They also like to feel like they are “cool” around their friends.

Make water accessible

Kids should have an accessible kids water bottle and also have access to good, clean water without having to ask an adult to get it for them. Since small kids may not be able to reach the sink, make sure they have water in the refrigerator or the refrigerator door. If kids have their own water bottle they can easily fill them up with water that’s within their reach. Kids like to imitate what adults do, but they also like their independence. If kids have their own kids water bottle and don’t have to ask for permission from adults they feel more empowered.

Make water tasty

Adults and kids alike are more likely to drink more water if it tastes good. Studies have shown that kids will only drink about 50% of the water they actually need if it’s plain and about 90% if it’s flavored. There are plenty of ways to do that even without added sugar. Simply adding some fruit like lemons, limes or oranges helps add flavor to the water without adding sugar or calories. It’s a healthy alternative to sugary drinks and drink mixes.

These methods may not make a lot of sense to adults, but the point is to get kids to drink more water. If kids have their own kids water bottle and easy access to some flavored water, they will drink more water and you can rest easier knowing that they are safe from dangerous dehydration.

Improve Your Running Speed

Slow and steady won’t win the race, but is just fine for most recreational runners. However, if you want to improve your running speed, there are some things you can do.

Improve your running speed

Dynamic stretching

This type of stretching is preferred over static stretching for the athlete who wants to run faster. Through dynamic stretching your limbs get continuous movement and range of motion which helps improve blood flow and warms up the muscles. This type of stretching has been shown to improve running speed.

Interval training

Interval training involves mixing super fast running with recovery periods. It’s a little like the run/walk method ramped up. This kind of training isn’t for the beginning runner. Your body needs to adjust before you get to that point. But if you’re running and training hard on a regular schedule, but not progressing, it’s time to start thinking about interval training. It’s basically pushing your body to the point of lactic threshold and burning muscles, then taking a short time to recover. An easy way is to start interval training is with a slow run and then do a high intensity sprint for about a minute. Then repeat the process until you can lengthen the sprints.

Hill training

Hill training combines cardio and strength training for a great workout. It lessens the impact force of footfall and reduces the risk of injury. Try adding one hill training session each week to mix up your routine and improve your running speed.

Cross training

Cross training is great for runners, but make sure you choose exercises that don’t just mimic running for it to be effective. Try cross training with squats, lunges, and vertical jumping exercises. This trains and strengthens your leg muscles in new and different ways. Cross training helps bridge the gap when you can’t get out and run every day.

Rest

And last, but not least, make sure you rest one day a week to give your muscles time to rebuild. Overtraining puts too much stress on your joints and they can become sore or inflamed.

Running Innovation

Being an innovation keynote speaker and inventor of a running innovation product, I like to keep up on the latest innovations in all industries, but especially in the ones I’m connected to, like the running industry.

I love the sport of running because it doesn’t involve expensive equipment, you can do it almost anywhere, and you don’t need other people to get started. Just put on your running shoes and run out the door. But just because running is simple, that doesn’t stop running innovators from trying to reinvent the wheel… or the running shoe.

One of the first things inventors do when they want to come up with a new innovation is start asking questions. Think about the problem and ask as many questions as you can come up with to help solve it. What if I could come up with a better system for hydration for runners? What if I could come up with a hands-free hydration system for runners?

Wrist water bottle

That’s the question I asked myself when I passed out from dehydration while running in the summer heat in Texas. I thought I had drunk enough water to sustain me for a long long, but I was wrong. Instead I passed out from dehydration by the side of the road. Luckily, a friendly passerby took me to the hospital. While lying there I realized running without water wasn’t a good idea. I would run with my keys and music, so I didn’t have any way to hold a regular water bottle. I looked at my IV connect to my wrist and thought there had to be some way to carry water hands-free. Then it hit me – a wrist water bottle! A unique twist on running innovation.

I made a simple prototype out of clay and a wrist band to get an idea of what it would look like. Then I took it to a mold maker and they made my first bottle. I had bands made from terry cloth and attached an off the shelf cap to the bottle. This was my first wrist water bottle, which I called HydroSport. They were kind of clunky, but they worked. I eventually perfected the product with vel-stretch bands and nicer packaging. I’ve since gotten them into 25 countries through distributors and they became a NADAQ product of the year semi finalist. Strong trade dress IP was recently issued, and the line is expanding to include a drink mix.

Heelless running shoe

What if your running shoes don’t have heels? That’s exactly what physiotherapist Adri Hartvelt asked the day he came up with the concept for his heelless running shoe. Hartvelt’s company Healus Technology came up with the prototype and partnered with Staffordshire University to develop and test the shoe.

The purpose of this new innovative running shoe is to avoid direct impact on the heel and therefore it helps to reduce running injuries and allows runners to run longer. Faster runners tend to strike the ground with the ball of their foot instead of the heel. Joggers tend to strike the ground with the heel, leading to more injuries.

The Healus shoe concept has been around for a couple of years.

Check out this interview with the inventor, Adri Hartvelt:

http://youtu.be/KZIfgIPvCG4

Headlights for your running shoes

The idea for Night Runner, headlights for your running shoes, started off similar to my wrist water bottle product. Co-founder Doug Storer had headed out for a run to prepare for a marathon. But instead of running in the heat, like I did, he ran in the early morning when it was cool. This was great until he tripped over a pothole in the darkness. He mentioned to his wife Renata that he needed headlights for his shoes. And together they decided to set out to make it happen.

As most inventors do, they cobbled together different things to test like small flashlights that attached to their shoes, and eventually had a prototype made. The final product has 270 degrees of visibility with 30 meters of beam distance.

After having the product on the market for just 8 months, they got the chance to pitch in front of the Shark Tank investors. They eventually went with Robert Herjavec, but the deal fell through later after the Storers decided against it.