Aspiring Athletes: 3 Nutrition Practices to Better Enhance High Performance Training

Whether you're preparing for a marathon, enjoy triathlons or find a passion for intense cardio classes, high performance training requires a level of dedication and commitment beyond the typical workout. While there are countless perspectives on the best supplements and diets, it's more important to adopt healthy habits for long-term success. As a Division I student athlete, I believe it's important to be consistent with your nutrition in order to prevent injuries, optimize your performance and find athletic success in the long run (no pun intended!).

Rachel Paul's article, How To Build a To-Go Lunch, gives meal prep tips for fueling with a busy schedule. When people have a jam-packed week, it's often hard to eat the right foods for a high intensity workout. Paul puts her formula to use by suggesting quick and easy recipes to make the night before a busy day. She also organizes her recipes by showing the health benefit of each ingredient. Through these simple meals, it's easier than ever to stay energized and prepare for a high intensity workout.

Image from @fuelupnu located on Instagram

And what about hydration? In Andy Blow's article, How Much Dehydration Can You Tolerate Before Your Performance Suffers?, he busts the myths and uses data-backed information to show the effects of dehydration. Blow talks about the relationship between bodyweight and sweat-loss, and analyzes the "threshold" of hydration based on the intensity of performance. But the best part of his article? The free online sweat test. Here, you can learn the best hydration regime for your training, which you can later refine through trial and error. 

Based on my experience and review of these two articles, I have developed three nutrition practices that will optimize your performance training. 

Action Recommendations: 

1. Maximize your Preparation – While it's easy to skip meals due to a busy schedule, it's important to plan ahead and intentionally select the most beneficial nutrients for an energized training session. 
2. Hydrate to Perform Great – Carefully track your water intake before, during and after a heavy training session; Track your fluid intake on an app, refill your bottle as soon as it's empty, and remember to take gulps every 15 minutes of a workout! 
3. Recovery is Serious – Strategize your nutrition immediately after training by eating a well-balanced meal, replenishing your fluids and setting goals for your next session. 

So the next time you're looking to purchase the newest and Instagram-worthy fitness trend, remember these essential nutrition practices for a healthy and strong training session.

Lily Katzman 
I am a current senior at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism where I'm majoring in Journalism and minoring in Spanish and Integrated Marketing Communications. I'm also a student-athlete on the Women's Field Hockey team. I have a passion for the sports industry, and I'm always looking for ways to bridge my journalism experience with creating important brand narratives. Connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.  

Game Marketers: 3 strategies for your esports marketing business

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Great articles for marketers in the E-sports industry!

Article 1 : Game on: seven insights on formulating an esports marketing strategy                                                    https://www.eventmarketer.com/article/insights-formulating-esports-marketing-strategy/

                 Posted on May 13, 2019 by Kaylee Hultgren

https://www.gamblingsites.org/blog/3-reasons-use-strategy-reviews-esports/

Article 2: 11 Esports Marketing Strategies That Will Get You In The Game

                  https://penji.co/esports-marketing/

                 Posted on September 5, 2019 by Karen Garces

Recommendations:

1.     ACTIVATE LOCALLY - Focus on a local market firstly, then move into larger national and global campaigns.

2.     STUDY THE FANS  - Know your fans community is extremely important to esports。

3.     THINK DIGITAL FIRST - Engage with audience digitally all the time.

Ecommerce Sellers: 3 recommendations on preparing for the holiday season

As an ecommerce seller, you probably already know that the holiday season is a great time to attract buyers and boost sales. The holiday season is approaching and more and more people are shopping online, so it is crucial for ecommerce sellers to get ready for it.  As an IMC student who is interested in ecommerce, I find these two articles below that provide useful tips for sellers to prepare for the holiday season and stand out in the competition.

The 2019 Ecommerce Holiday Readiness Checklist: Technical and Marketing Preparedness — from Local to Global

Author: Rally Stanoeva 

Publication

The first article is written by Rally Stanoeva on the subject of getting ecommerce ready for the holiday season. In the article, the author creates a detailed checklist for the sellers to make sure that they can fully leverage the end-of-the-year shopping season. The article includes topics on mobile commerce optimization, SEO seasonal updates, campaigns and promotions, packaging guidelines, customers’ shopping experiences, the global marketplace, and new technical preparations. As shoppers are getting ready to shop for holidays with excitement, it is important for ecommerce sellers to get well-prepared to attract more eyes to generate more profit.

source: https://is.gd/HolidayShopping

5 Tips To Increase E-Commerce Sales During The Holiday Season

Author: Austen DiPalma 

Publication

The second article is written by Austen DiPalma on the subject of tips to increase online sales during the holiday season. According to the article, end-of-year holidays drive more sales than non-holiday months. Moreover, shoppers also use ecommerce as a search portal for their gift ideas. To increase sales, is suggested that sellers use advocacy marketing by inviting loyal customers to share your content out. You should also make sure that your site is “holiday-ready” just to provide a smooth shopping experience for customers. You may also want to get your site “mobile-ready” for those who shop on their phones. Lastly, holiday-themed content is a good way to attract shoppers’ attention, and personalization message is a great tool to lead shoppers to make purchase.

Recommendations

1.     Use push notification

-       In your apps, use one-time messages for special offers and use automated notification based on user activities

2.     Get personal

-       Send personal recommendations and coupons to existing shoppers in the apps or over emails and offer personalization on your products' listings to build customer intimacy.

3.     Leverage social media

-       Make social media posts about deals and products and create social campaigns before the holiday season starts. 

Now the Christmas season is considered synonymous with the shopping season. Ecommerce sellers have to get ready for it ASAP and react fast to boost end-of-the-year sales.

About the Author:

Nancy Zheng is from the Northwestern IMC program and will graduate this December. She is interested in social media, ecommerce, and the indie music industry. Here is her LinkedIn. You can also follow her on Twitter and Instagram

Makeup Artists: 3 changes that will drive significant traffic to your YouTube Channel

Among all the influencers that are trending on social platform, a group of them has been getting most attention since the beginning. They are the makeup artists that share their routines or favorite products to the public. Since there are no professional classes for applying makeup, a lot of people rely on these videos to learn more about beauty and makeup and I'm of them. I found these two videos that are very helpful and, as a a graduate student studying Integrated Marketing Communications in Medill, Northwestern University, I would also like to share my take on them.

Wesley Benjamin Carter often shared amazing makeup style on his YouTube Channel. He is genuinely an artist. In this video, Natural Male Makeup Tutorial, he shared a more natural and everyday style. He talked a multiple of his favorite products and his routine in applying them. The products he talked about are all quite affordable and I believe it's very useful for any guy trying to learn how to apply an everyday style make up.

Image Source:  https://www.cakapcakap.com/mengulik-tentang-serba-serbi-influencer/

The second video is by EMAN. In this video, The Best Makeup for Work / School/ Everyday, she introduced her make up routine that is suitable for work or school. She focused on the needs of this group of people, that is they need their makeup to stay on for an entire day. As this video was published in the beginning of fall, she also introduced colors that are suitable for fall weather and outfits. 

I learned a lot just from watching these to video. But as an audience and a student in marketing, I believe there are improvements that can be made which will further increase the traffic to their channels.

• What is it?: List the product's name in the video instead only in the intro area will make video easier to follow.
• What about me?: Everyone has different skin situations, so keep in mind to make differentiate tips for different group of audiences. 
• Hong long will it take?: The audience would be interested to know how long the routine will actually take (minus the introduction process), so maybe include the time consumed somewhere. 

Makeup tutorial video is a highly competitive market. Thus, if you are looking to become a makeup artist YouTuber, make sure you keep these three points in mind.

Richard is currently studying in the Integrated Marketing Communications program at Medill, Northwestern University. He has great passion in branding and hope to make a career in marketing or advertising industry. Outside of school, Richard has great interest in photography. He believes taking photos is a way of sharing how he sees the world. He is also very fond of the fashion industry. He always stay on trend by following the latest styles and newly released collections. Learn more about him on his LinkedIn and Instagram.

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Sports CMO’s: 3 Recommendations to Improve Emotional Connections with Consumers

Even though consumers have never been more accessible to brands than they are today,

building an honest relationship with consumers in any industry is becoming increasingly difficult with the addition of new technologies across multiple platforms. As a student at Northwestern University who is passionate about sports marketing, I have found two videos that show the old ways of sports marketing, which was to praise the ego of a specific athlete, is becoming less relevant while more consumers are finding that there is a much deeper emotional connection that can be satisfied through these sports figures and brands.

In his video titled, Nike Marketing Strategy: How Nike BrandingFlatters Athlete’s Egos, from 2013, Graeme Newell does an outstanding job of explaining the thought process behind the storylines of Nike advertisements seen in the past. He touches upon how Nike is selling something that has incredible passion and tenacity, both traits we, as consumers, believe we embody. Newell identifies a five step formula that provides an outline for a narrative of a universal story that just works when it comes to appealing to consumers. This five step plan has been tried and trued in their marketing, as everyone loves a victory tale, but I am not confident that the modern day consumer is buying this narrative as much.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfSIOu_BMHF/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_locale_test

More Than An Athlete World Tour,  LeBron and Nike use sports as a vehicle to encourage people from all around the world by uniting them around one common interest. This is a prime example of a brand and an athlete trying to make an impact beyond the playing field.  Nike took a risk deviating from their traditional style, however, by stepping back and allowing the focus to be on LeBron’s mission to inspire communities the narrative appears much more authentic.  People identify with the relationships being built on screen and while they may not have met LeBron personally, they now see Nike in a new light.  By serving a purpose other than ‘performance enhancing gear’ Nike is able to connect on a deeper emotional level with consumers.

After examining both videos above and learning from my marketing classes at Northwestern, I recommend three action ideas for sports CMO’s to consider when creating marketing content.

• Think People First - Athletes might have a special set of skills that seem unnatural to the normal viewer, but athletes are most importantly people first, often times sharing much more in common with the normal viewer than expected.
• Make an Impact - Sports are just the platform athletes are now using to make an impact on the world and marketers need to recognize the collective benefits of giving athletes the attention they deserve, off of their respected playing field.
• Use Stories to Inspire - The art of storytelling is becoming more and more important and there are a vast number of important stories that need to be told; we must find them and let them inspire.

Sports marketing has always been about building up the individual athlete, however the future of sports marketing will be centered around building emotional connections with athletes on a much more personable level, as athletes continue to take advantage of the platform that they stand upon.

My name is Steven Reese and I am a senior at Northwestern University. I am pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies with certificates in Leadership and Integrated Marketing Communications. Currently, I am volunteer coach at the local high school while I finish my degree. After graduation, I will hopefully start my career in sports marketing. Please follow me on Twitter and Linkedin.