Mambo Sprouts Weblog

As we wrapped up our last week of the Northeastern Go Mambo! tour, we kept moving forward with our promotional efforts. The week started out in Hadley Mass. where Whole Foods was celebrating the 25th anniversary; this was a festival extravaganza! Clowns, face painting, barbeque and the whole store jumped alive with activity. Go Mambo! was among the highlighted sponsors for this event. The Whole Foods demo at Beacon Hill was probably the busiest of all, as it is adjacent to Massachusetts General Hospital. Our sample bags were given away in a wild frenzy!
We fit in a few last LOHAS drops and mini guerilla blitzes in the Metro area. Our team started at Davis Square and went to Downtown Boston. There we hit the streets for a guerilla blitz too!
Our week ended with as big of a bang as when we started out. No rest for the weary, as we made a major appearance at the Natural Products Expo East. Our logo wrapped cargo van was seen coming for blocks before the event, and we had many positive comments on our guerilla blitz and shout outs from our fans. Our team hit the streets early each morning to catch attendees and exhibitors heading to the Natural Products Expo East then headed off to store demos. In the afternoon, we blitzed the Expo East and distributed Mambo bags to thousands leaving the event.
It is a bittersweet time as we say good-bye to Boston and the Mambo tour. We hope that the great people of the Northeast loved the free samples we distributed. We want you all to know that after a brief pit stop, the Go Mambo! van will be on the road once again, and traveling across the US bringing you delicious, nutritious natural and organic choices on the move, for all you people on the move.  2009 will be a banner year for the Go Mambo! tour, so keep an eye out for our tour schedule, including when we will be visiting your neighborhood.

We started Week 5 in the greenest city in the country, Burlington VT. Doug McSweeney, our Best Western contact welcomed the Go Mambo! tour with open arms! We had the opportunity to gift many of his visitors with Mambo bags and leave goodies for breakfast. Later, thousands of UVM parents wearing university colors of green and gold (a wonderful site against the backdrop of Green Mountains’ changing foliage) came out to the UVM Parent’s/Alumni Weekend. We were exclusively stationed at registration, and parents and students alike were excited to enjoy the sample bags and learn about the delicious and healthy products on the Go Mambo! tour. 
Thousands of leaf peepers were traveling through Burlington on tour buses during this peak foliage weekend. We networked with our local business contacts and made sure that many of these travelers also got to enjoy Mambo treats before they hopped back on the bus, and created an entire Mambo experience for them! We also paid a visit to the famous Burton Snowboard Company, and did a drop-in visit to one of Burlington’s most well known grassroots companies.
We spent a lot of time at our beloved and famous Higher Ground music venue, where, sooner or later, all of the great music travel into Burlington. We had the opportunity to dress the Greene Rooms for all their artists, including Margaret Cho, The all Female Bob Dylan Tribute Band (a local fundraiser with hundreds of community members), Assembly of Dust, and Dr. Dog. The biggest show of the week was Yonder Mtn String Band, and as always they were amazing, and they and the fans LOVED Mambo!
We spent a day here on a guerilla media blitz—that was fun!  We hit all of the great newspapers, radio, and television stations in the area. We met some great people, many of which were already aware of Go Mambo! from years past, while others had the opportunity to meet us for the first time.
Of course, the team had the chance to stop and visit some local retailers for demos. Our local coop stop was a wonderful demo at Healthy Living in South Burlington. We also stopped at many of the Shaws in the Burlington area, even as far out as Waterbury. There we took the opportunity to guerilla at Stowe and visit one of our favorite ski resorts!
We are heading back to Boston to wrap this year’s Northeast Go Mambo! tour! We’ll be doing our last few demos, a visit to the teams as they gear up for Head of the Charles, and of course, the Natural Foods Expo East—see you there!!!

We hit the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Valley during peak leaf season.  Janice Crawford, of the Mount Washington Valley Chamber of Commerce welcomed the Mambo team and introduced us to many of the local businesses as well as people.  Go Mambo! was welcomed with open arms on our first trek into the Great Northeast Kingdom.  We met many new friends at the Shaws in North Conway, who loved the goodies and samples they were trying and learning about. Go Mambo! was also invited to partake in the Harvest to Holiday event in North Conway, thanks to our Chamber friends!
The team had a chance to do some fall visits to some major ski areas in the region. We did a number of LOHAS for their upcoming events: Fall Harvest Fests, Oktoberfests, fall junior development programs, as well as women’s clinics.  In all, stopped at Cranmore, Attitash, and Mount Washington (Bretton Woods) Resorts.  
The Team represented at the Fryeburg Fair, in its 158th year.  This is one of the nation’s oldest fairs, and hundreds of thousands of visitors from the US and Canada travel to this event.  Team Mambo visited the campgrounds, production support, and the local fire fighters’ organization with Mambo Bags to keep the Fair rollin’.  Our mobile sampling team was also invited into the event to distribute Mambo bags at this wonderful event.
No trip through the White Mountains Is complete without a visit to the Appalachian High Point Educational Center and Crawford Notch.  We stopped at the center and made many, many hikers, rock climbers, and outdoor enthusiasts quite happy.  Our Guerilla stop at the Notch was busy.  We would welcome the tour buses pulling in from points North, South, East, and West, who really loved the natural goodies - a perfect compliment to the fall landscapes of the mountains. We also headed out to Portland to visit the coast and Portsmouth, a bedroom community of Boston, was our last stop.
Our first Yankee Trek week was hugely successful. From the mountains to the coast, the Mambo team made many new friends and had the opportunity to introduce Mambo to many new fans. We’re sad to be leaving this wondrous area. But our next stop, Burlington VT, is like an old friend to come home to.  We’ll see you there.

The Northeast Mambo Team had our busiest week yet!!! We worked our way through the greater Boston area hitting many Whole Foods. Go Mambo! has gotten very well known, and people loved seeing us and were eager to try our samples and goody bags. We have run out of goody bags at every demo this week. We were even on the front page of the Medford Tribune! And we also got a radio blitz on 103FM oldies radio for the Woburn demo!
Between our busy schedule of Whole foods demos, we managed to guerilla blitz the busiest intersection of Harvard Square. That was fun! People heard about us, and they kept coming until we were out of bags. 
Saturday night was a big night too! We went down to Farm Aid in Mansfield MA. Huge amounts of people were there for the benefit concert founded by Willie Nelson to help the farmers across the country. Thank you Whole Foods for your contributions! We passed out goody bags to concert goers, VIPS, production crew, and ravenous security guards.
We still managed to do some LOHAS stops along the way, and made some key stops. We finished out this week with more store demos. The Go Mambo! tour is preparing for Week 4-our Yankee trek, in beautiful New Hampshire and Maine.  This will be Go Mambo’s first visit to the Great Northeastern Kingdom, and we’re looking forward to meeting new friends at the Fryeburg Fair, as well as in the Mount Washington Valley.  Look for the Go Mambo! van!  See you there!

After completing our first week as the Mambo Team 2008, we fell right back into the groove when we picked up at our first store demo in Boston, the Whole Foods in Cambridge. Each demo was a perfect set-up and take-down, and we greeted all curious customers who came our way.  There were a lot of customers that were very familiar with the Mambo tour from years past, and our fans were excited to see us again. The demos through the first three days all went perfectly and we left a lot of Whole Foods managers looking forward to our tour next year.
After three days visiting Boston Whole Foods Markets, drove off to meet many TV and radio personalities from around the Boston area for our Primedia stops, who were gifted with beautiful Go Mambo! bags. New England Cable Network was particularly excited to find out we would be at FarmAid, because they were also having a presence at this event.
Our guerilla marketing blitz at Boston University could not have been better. We hit the main campus ready to hand out our Mambo sample bags to students and caught them as they were moving in between classes. We also hit the BU “beach” with plenty of bags to distribute. We were mobbed at the scene when students saw the Mambo van pull up with free samples to giveaway.  Our team has their Mambo “game” on and we’re looking forward to the next four weeks, as we tour the Northeast. Get ready Boston, we’ll be back next week!

We kicked off the Northeastern leg of the Go Mambo! tour at the Connecticut Women’s Expo.  Many recognized our colors from years past and were happy to see us back.  We also made many new friends who were eager to learn about the Mambo Tour, and all the different, healthy new products we were bringing to Hartford.  We were quickly the most popular team to represent at the Women’s Expo.  We also had the opportunity to meet and speak with many of our LOHAS contacts, and quickly learned that so many new people were searching for opportunities to improve the quality and well being of the lives they led- they were glad to see the Mambo van zooming around town to spread the word.
Next we cruised around downtown Hartford dishing out sample bags out of the Go Mambo! van. At Bushnell Park we delighted a local university’s Gay/Straight Alliance with healthy snacks as they built a pyramid out of themselves to thank us. After that, we stopped by a Hartford children’s hospital and spread our sample bags to children, their parents, nurses and doctors.
Our store demos were terrific.  With plenty of support from our local stores, the Go Mambo! tour was written up in local papers, and so many interested and curious samplers came by to visit our live sampling exhibit in Westport and West Hartford. They loved the Mambo sampler bags all the way down to Greenwich where we greeted customers at the door. Rain didn’t deter us from a great stop in Westport where we greeted loads of moms who had just finished their daily workouts.
Next stop is Beantown! Our Boston visit will be for two weeks, and we’ll be at all your favorite stores and events.  Look for the Mambo Van!

The final leg of our Go Mambo! tour begins this weekend with the Connecticut Women’s Expo in Hartford, CT. We’ll have a booth at the expo so be sure to come by and get your free healthy and organic samples and coupons! After the expo, we’ll begin a six week journey through New England which will include stops in Massachusettes, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Be sure to check out the schedule to see if we’ll be in your neighborhood!