Red Zmudzien

Category: Social Media Marketing

  • His Car Was Totaled While This Athlete’s Wheel Cover Was Left Unscathed

    The incredible stories you hear by just striking up a conversation with a stranger in the parking lot.

    I was changing shoes after running my own race and noticed this guy’s ripped up wheel cover and I had to ask him about it.

    Turns out this guy’s been running Spartan races forever, that day was his 50th race, and the wheel cover was the only thing that survived after a drunk driver completely totaled his old Jeep 👀

    The Spartan community is unmatched.

  • POV: Run a Spartan Race at Fenway Park

    One of these days I’ll hit that damn Spear Throw…

    Shoutout to Mark Zuckerberg and the Ray-Ban Meta shades for helping me shoot some killer POV videos at Fenway Park while squeezing in a Spartan race of my own (in between running around capturing content all weekend).

  • To Really Understand Your Brand, It’s Key to Walk the Walk

    To really understand your brand and your product it’s key to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk. Experience what your customers experience to really get a sense of the brand and its perception. With that in mind I’ve run a few Spartan races, never having done any before joining the team. As a moderately active guy, avid runner, lifting weights a few times a week, I had a decent base of athleticism going into my first race.

    Right?

    Anddd I completely underestimated how hard a basic skill like climbing a rope or scaling a wall can become after several miles of running, crawling, pushing, pulling, and carrying.

    Persistence and grit become that much more important. Without one or the other you’re going to have a rough day, but without either you’re cooked.

    The athlete shown slamming into the Stairway to Sparta obstacle in this video later told us this was her first Spartan Race and sheepishly mentioned she had no idea how to do some of the obstacles so she was banking on persistence and grit. Now she could have easily admitted defeat, accepted the penalty loop, and been on her way. Probably would have been quicker too.

    Sometimes you just want to prove it to yourself that you can conquer any obstacle life throws in front of you, on or off the course.

    That’s exactly what this athlete did as she crashed into the wall time after time before securing the grips and hoisting herself up and over the towering A-frame wall.

    Persistence. And. Grit.

    Moral victory?

    Nope.

    She continued to bomb through the course, applying equal parts persistence and grit, and ended up climbing the podium to take 1st place in her Age Group along with some well deserved hardware.

  • Covering a World Championship at 10,000 Feet Above Sea Level

    🏈 Growing up watching the NFL, every time a Broncos game was on TV you’d see visiting players on the sidelines sucking on oxygen masks in between plays, clearly not used to the altitude of Denver (5,280 ft). I remember always thinking, “Dude it cannot be that bad!”

    🏆 Well, now picture Mammoth Lakes in California, double that altitude (10,000+ ft), with athletes racing up and down a mountain, and you’ve got the first ever Spartan Super World Championship.

    🏔️ Earlier this month I was fortunate enough to be covering this inaugural event and I was *shocked* at how quickly I gassed out. Roaming around at 10,000 ft with zero time spent acclimating had me sucking air just running between obstacles to capture content.

    🥇 Kudos to the truly world class athletes that bombed through a 10K course that was 30 degrees at the start line, featured 20 obstacles of carries, climbs, and brutal barbed wire crawls (not including the penalty burpees), up and down a mountain, while running flat out the whole time.

    Insane.

    Thinking back to those NFL players with the oxygen masks…can I get in on that?

  • How to Capture Content While Covering Elite Athletes On the Move

    🏆 Recently I had the opportunity to cover the 2025 Pan American Championship in Seattle and I am always in awe of the relentless pace of these elite Spartan athletes. Despite taking on the Beast (13+ miles & 30 obstacles), with stretches up mountains, through rivers, and gnarly terrain the entire way, the top athletes never slowed down or shifted into a lower gear.

    ⏰ Although it’s a 13+ mile race, there’s no time for setting up the perfect shot or getting a second take. The athletes are flying through the course as fast as possible with real prize money on the line. So it takes extensive pre-race planning, understanding what obstacles are where on the course, how you’ll get around the property, while still getting up close to capture the emotions and struggles experienced during a grueling race.

    🐊 Thanks to the build team and course markers, I was able to hitch a ride and capture a lot of footage on the back of a Gator bombing around the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.

    🐟 The coolest part of the weekend though? Getting ahead of the leaders and setting up on the bank of the Snohomish River right before the action arrived, taking a moment to look around and appreciate the silence with the only noise coming from the salmon and trout leaping out of the water.

  • Chicken Or The Egg: Does My Business Need To Be On TikTok?

    Photo by greenwish _ on Pexels.com

    Years ago I once asked a Facebook rep whether a recently released ad format was successful because it truly was what users were engaging with the most *or* if it were simply because Facebook was pushing the new format and serving it to users the most? 

    A true Chicken or the Egg conundrum. 

    The Facebook rep was unsurprisingly unwilling to commit to a direct answer. It’s not uncommon for tech platforms to implement new features and then chase the desired behavior after the fact. As marketers and business owners we simply need to acknowledge the tools available to us and understand how to maximize their effectiveness. 

    With that being said the latest example of the Chicken or Egg conundrum is the explosion of TikTok and Reels over the past couple of years. Reels are Meta’s answer to TikTok, similar to how it created Stories as a response to Snapchat. I can say from personal experience the introduction of Stories on Instagram drastically reduced my time spent on Snapchat, effectively weaning me off of Snapchat’s ephemeral content. Meta has attempted to do the same with Reels to combat rising competitor TikTok with mixed results as TikTok continues to dominate the rankings of app downloads, time spent on app, and user engagement metrics. So the question as marketers and business owners: Is this going to stick? Do I need to be making TikToks? What about Reels?

    Yes.

    Okay, the answer is obviously more complex than that depending on your brand, your audience, your goals, your resources etc. But, brands need to be paying attention to what consumers are doing and where they’re spending their time. More and more of that time is being spent on platforms like TikTok. Video content still reigns supreme over static social posts, with vertical, shorter, engaging video content currently presiding at the top.

    Not sure where to begin? My team can help your business jump right into the deep end, but if you want to dip your toes in first there are a few ways to do just that. To skip spending the hours necessary to understand top performing trends, content styles, formats etc. below are a few tips on how your business can get started on TikTok right now.

    • Create for sound on
      • Unlike Facebook and Instagram where content is automatically muted and it’s a best practice to optimize videos for sound off, TikTok is the opposite. Users browsing their For Your Page on TikTok will be shown full screen videos with sound on and each piece of content served based on individual engagement and interests. Compare that to the Instagram Discover section where users see thumbnails of posts as well as muted videos and Reels, which they can choose to engage with, or not.  
    • Keep It Short and Simple
      • Multiple studies recommend the ideal video length is 9-15 seconds with no longer than 60 seconds
      • With this being said, it’s vital to create hooks in the opening frames
    • “Don’t make ads. Make TikToks.”
      • It’s the north star of TikTok content guidelines as brands will perform much better interacting more like an individual than a business. 
      • Humor and authenticity are key
    • Be consistent
      • The TikTok algorithm looks at the amount of activity and engagement a post has in determining its reach, but according to TikTok it does not factor in total follower counts or virality of previous videos. What this means is even if your brand is completely new to TikTok, you’re only one piece of content away from going viral. Give yourself plenty of at bats.
      • A best practice in terms of what to create is 1/3 original content, 1/3 jumping on trending topics, 1/3 directly engaging with your community.

    These are just a few tips to get you started, but the key is to just experiment with your voice and your messaging. It’s your brand, but don’t pigeonhole yourself into one type of content out of the gate. The more types of content you experiment with and create, the more opportunities you’ll have to find and reach new audiences.