My Mardi Gras Experience: Not All About Beads & Body Parts

Crazy Wild Parties.  Boobs.  Bourbon Street. Drink ‘Till You Drop.  If somebody was playing the word association game with Mardi Gras, you’d probably hear the following words or phases pop up.  For locals, the Mardi Gras atmosphere is second nature.  I’ve never missed a Mardi Gras season in my life so things like nudity, public drunkenness, and other crazy acts aren’t out of character during this time of year.  But this has also painted a picture for out-of-towners that they may not be so fond of.

Tom Martin, President of Zender Communications wants to create an “experience” to combat this.  His plan rides on his own experience with the way social media can change people’s perception about something.  Last Mardi Gras, Tom used his cell phone to send out tweets and photos to people that could not participate in the festivities.  But instead of showing the X rated version of carnival that so many people hear of, he showed the family side of Mardi Gras. The side that welcomes families, promotes southern hospitality, and the feel good aura of the season.  He wanted to change the brand perception of what people thought about Mardi Gras because most people base it off what they hear or read.

This year he has partnered with WWL-TV and Tabasco for a project called My Mardi Gras Experience.  My Mardi Gras Experience will host local bloggers, bloggers who have recently moved to New Orleans, and bloggers from around the country to document their stay so others can have a virtual experience of Mardi Gras. The bloggers will be camped out at parades and events and use social media in hopes that others will see the a family-fun side of Mardi Gras.  Tom is even partnering with Livesteam and will be using a LivePak which is a backpack that will mobility steam video in HD.

The inspiration for this effort is try to give back and make the city stronger. Convincing families to come down for Mardi Gras of course stimulates travel and adds dollars our local economy.
-Tom Martin

The bloggers will use the Sheraton as  headquarter and utilize a multi-authored blogging platform powered by Wordpress MU.  “Our goal is target people who are not from here.  To change their outlook on Mardi Gras so they don’t think its all about beads and body parts.  While you can acknowledge that things like that do take place, there are other family-fun and cool part of Mardi Gras.” says Mr. Martin

Other familiar tools: YouTube/Vimeo, Flickr, & Twitter will also be in conjunction with the main website to feed content into.  The site itself, which will officially launch on February 1st is apart of the effort to get people to reconsider coming to Mardi Gras and get a new outlook on our city.