Grades for “Ski It To Believe It” will be posted in mid-March at the annual meeting of USIA when year two of the plan is unveiled and voted. Even before this year’s ads are fully aired, next season’s goals and strategies are being set. At this mid-point, review time is at hand to prepare for the expensive decisions that soon must be made.
The original national marketing program put together last April included a $13 million budget. Cash contributions and assessments would total $7 million, $4 million from ski areas, $2 million from the mandatory assessment of SIA members and $1 million from retailers. By the end of November, the count was $600,000 from retailers, $2 million from SIA members and $3.6 million from ski areas. The cash pot lacked $800,000.
So the USIA marketing task force went to market without enough to pay for all the groceries. Committed media money as of December 1 was $3.48 million. This included $1.7 million for network TV spots that ran for three weeks beginning November 2 during morning and late evening talk shows; $650,000 for 19 additional TV spots during the same time period in 45 high-potential-skier markets; $90,000 for 10 ads in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today between the dates of November 3 and January 26; $300,000 for 300 “Ski It To Believe It” Metro Traffic Control radio spots in 30 cities during November and January; and $562,000 to run the ad on 4,000 movie screens in 1,536 Screenvision theaters during the ski season.
While the April marketing plan called for a January amount equal to the November network, spot and cable television expenditure, the marketing task force, because of the $800,000 shortfall, changed the schedule. Instead of $1.7 million for network ads, only $500,000 would be allotted. Instead of $650,000 for spot market ads, $1 million would be spent. Planned are spots during pre-game shows of the National Football Conference and the American Football Conference play-off and championship games.
Down, too, from the budget figure of $6 million was the bartered and traded value counted as “soft” dollars. In the barter budget, John Cossaboom, marketing coordinator at USIA, reported an inventory of goods and services for trade valued at approximately $250,000. Kathe Dillmann, marketing director, set the “soft” dollar figure at $2 million. “The People Magazine insert is an example of the ‘soft’ dollar value,” Dillmann explained. “The value of the ad was $1.4, but because of the way it was put together, we used only $200,000 in out-of-pocket cash. We’re satisfied with this figure and expect more.” She conceded, however, that the $13 million total budget figure, which included the traded value, was touted too loudly by USIA marketing leaders and perhaps too long by the media. Though it presented a marketing plan of more grand proportion than existed, the actual television and print advertising program was always based on the cash portion of the budget. “We haven’t lost any concrete programs as a result of the low trade/barter figure,” she said, “and we have just had to accept that it’s hard to convince potential partners of the program’s value without evidence. Next year will be different.”
For next year, evidence will be gleaned from research conducted by NFO Research in Chicago and from measurements taken at the ski areas by ski area personnel, according to Cossaboom. “We will be sending research tools out to ski areas that will help them assess for themselves how valuable the program was, and is, to them,” he said.
Next year will be different for additional reasons. The merger will not be competing for attention. “And we will not be working under the compressed time frame that was a handicap this year,” said Dillmann. “While we have to be sensitive to ski areas’ cash-flow, we will have to ask for money earlier to put the programs in place.”
With a year’s track record she also expects more ski area participation. “We want 100 percent participation [next year],” said Dillmann. The preliminary goal is to raise $8 million from USIA members and retailers, $4.5 million from ski areas, $2.5 million from suppliers and manufacturers and $1.5 from retailers. The formula will remain the same. The increase is projected on the basis of increased revenues.
A total of 215 ski areas didn’t like or couldn’t support the USIA marketing program in its first year. Their reasons provide the biggest challenge for the task force.
Vernon Merrit, vice president of marketing at Vernon Valley/Great Gorge, N.J., said: “We’d be spending almost $40,000 to join. I can spend that amount of money in many creative ways that will serve us much better. For us to have participated it would have had to start later. The timing is skewed to favor the destination resorts.”
“I am 100 percent behind it and want to be in it,” said John Cueman, president of Bromley and Magic Mountain ski areas in Vermont. “The reason we’re not is strictly a budget consideration. We’ve come off a devastating year and that has something to do with it. We’ve been unable to do anything for the last five years because the state hasn’t written the rules to cover waste water disposal. Until we strike a certain balance with real estate development, we can’t do anything and we can’t cut the basics.”
Grady Moretz, president of the Southeast Ski Areas Association and Appalachian Ski Mountain in North Carolina, said: “As a group and as individuals we were not for the merger. We don’t like arranged marriages and decided not to support the result of them. On another subject, every region is represented on the board except us. We need representation before participation.”
“We wish we could join,” said Tim Meyer, co-owner of Caberfae Ski Area in Michigan. “Caberfae was in bankruptcy six years ago when we bought it. And we’ve been in construction ever since then to make the area more competitive. We haven’t even spent money on our own marketing. There’s another thing. When our closest competitor isn’t even a member of USIA and is getting the biggest share of our market, then I wonder what business do we have joining?”
Orville Slutzky, general manager at Hunter Mountain, N.Y., said: “We didn’t quite think that it was suited to our needs. We go strictly for the major metropolitan areas. I feel that this [program] benefits the destination areas and we are a day area, or at least skiers and media people treat us that way. We have our own marketing budget and have exhausted it, and we didn’t think we should expand it for something that didn’t quite fit our fancy.”
Not surprisingly, the feelings of participating members toward non-participating members is sometimes strong. “We’re substantially affected by Hunter Mountain which is one of our main competitors and is not participating,” said Irvin Naylor, president of Snow Time, Inc., which owns Ski Windham, N.Y., and Ski Liberty and Ski Roundtop, Penn. “Hunter is a fine mountain, the Slutzkys are neat guys and pioneered much of what skiing is today. But the ski business has been good to them and I’m sorry to see that they aren’t putting something back in.”
In November, Bill Stenger, as chairman of the USIA marketing task force, said: “There are still some notable exceptions on the list that we’re working on. Areas should see the logic of it and participate. [There are] no legitimate arguments for not participating,” he said. “McDonald’s doesn’t enjoy benefits before investing in new restaurants. A high tide floats all boats.” The tide, Stenger concedes, will take three years to rise completely.
By December, 170 USIA ski areas of the total 385 had joined, many having to accept the idea of delayed gratification. At Jay Peak in Vermont, vice president of marketing, Conrad Klefos, said: “Even though we’re not a learn-to-ski area, we’re going to gain in the long term. None of us [in Vermont] wants to discount heavily, but we will be forced to if we don’t broaden our base. We will be forced to cut up the existing pie with price wars.”
Jim Tusk, general manager of Shawnee Mountain in Pennsylvania, with markets in New York City and Philadelphia, concurs. “We do believe in the national organization,” he said. “We also looked at the flat growth statistics that needed an injection. We couldn’t afford to do it alone. The ads were first rate and very much our message. To see it on national TV in key markets meant we couldn’t help but be in favor of it.”
For the folks at Camelback, also in Pennsylvania, who joined in late November, the $50,000 decision was not easy. “We felt we owed it to the industry. We could not sit back and receive the benefits without being involved,” said Sam Newman, president of Camelback Ski Corporation. “We still have our doubts. There are no skiers in jeans, only in expensive clothing [in the commercials]. This is poor psychology. We don’t do any media advertising at all. It is not a matter of moving advertising money from one buy to another here. This is a completely new line item for us. We question whether you can affect attitudes with TV advertising. We are over-subscribed on weekends and we don’t know if you can change skier patterns.”
USIA staff and marketing task force members seem to be listening to the reactions of members. Some ski area people gave the commercial rave reviews and early public reaction appeared infectiously enthusiastic. “There was a skiing feeding frenzy going on,” said Tim Newhart, marketing director at Heavenly Valley, Calif. “We were out there in our markets with our Warren Miller movies when the ad started. The TV media made a huge difference. They were psyched.”
Enthusiasm for the ads didn’t silence the ski resort people’s frustration with tardy support materials, however. Rick Owen, marketing director at New Hampshire’s Loon Mountain and vice president of the state ski association, voiced widely held frustration that the media support package did not arrive until late October after being promised in early August. It contained the ad slicks, radio copy, media buys, timetables, radio commercials and a booklet, Capturing the New Skier, that explained the whole program and introduced the support materials. “We needed the kit a month earlier to make real use of it,” he said.
Cossaboom agreed that the material was late. “Programs came together at the last minute and pledges from members arrived slowly.” It was a chicken-and-egg scenario with a program that could not be designed properly until a budget was secure and an undefined program that ski areas could not commit dollars to.
But the marketing plan depended on the regions and resorts to carry the message through to local levels and to provide the “call to action.” Whether the tardiness of the support materials was the cause or whether regions and resorts could not afford the time or the money to create the “call,” the fact is, no “call” was there in November in many regions of the country.
The logical “call” for the national campaign was an 800 number, except that the cost depended solely on the number of calls received. “The campaign could not afford an 800 number,” explained Stenger. “I wish we could have.”
At a marketing task force meeting in Chicago on November 29, however, there was a discussion about adding a 900 number to the January TV ads running in nine or ten major markets of the Gillett Network. “We’re talking about adding a 10-second spot to promote the guide with a 900 number to call,” Dillmann said. “Callers pay for 900 calls at a price we set. Because the 900 technology has advanced so in nine months, allowing callers to get more than just taped messages, it makes sense to consider it now.”
The 900 number, if it comes on line this season, addresses one of the biggest criticisms of the campaign. The need for a “call to action” for next year was also high on the wish-list of conclusions drawn up at a November 2 meeting in Chicago, when USIA staff and marketing task force members met with over 50 ski area association representatives to hear constructive criticism.
“We also heard how important it will be to adjust the regional buys to regional needs,” said Dillmann. In all, the group that met in Chicago gave the campaign a 7 on a 1 to 10 scale, judging it beneficial to the industry and to themselves, according to a survey conducted by McKinsey & Company.
“We know a lot now that we didn’t know,” said Dillmann. “Next year we have to make the benefits more concrete for participants, not only for participating ski areas, but also for retailers and potential sponsors.” She listed participation in group health plans or the Signet bank card program as concrete enticements to retailers, restaurants, hotels and coat-tailing profit centers that should be sharing the burden of broadening the skier base.
And likewise, negative consequences for non-participation should be concrete. Dillmann admits that except for missing an address and phone listing in the guide, the consequences for non-participation were negligible. “We will need to find ways to make participation more mandatory,” she said. “PR could be designed, for example, to support only participating members.”
Cooperation is best achieved, however, through positive, not negative, reinforcements. In March, ski industry examiners of “Ski It To Believe It” ’s first year’s test scores should look for evidence of benefits that will be theirs in the second year. They should look carefully at what will likely be only preliminary statistics evaluating the effect of the year-one campaign. How many new skiers did the sport gain?
Assuming members forgave and understood the campaign’s inability to line up more “soft” dollars this season, voters should see a clear map to more dollar support from coat-tail gainers. Whether through persuasion, statistics or increased concrete benefits, smaller areas and retailers must perceive more gain. For the campaign to thrive, non-participating larger areas will need to be convinced or shamed into accepting the wisdom of Conrad Klefos in Vermont. Extrapolated to a national level, it goes something like: “Unless we nurture a broader skier base, our national skier pie will be carved up cannibalistically.”
Even as the industry moves rapidly ahead, it would be fair to reflect as Irvin Naylor did in a letter to Bill Stenger. He said: “For this one moment, you and the industry can stand tall in the light of accomplishment for having put the damn thing together . . . .”
