One of the reasons a number of East Coast ski areas have taken to radio is its immediacy.
New snowfall overnight? Radio is ready to tell the skier.
Roads plowed to the area? Radio is first to communicate.
And it is this immediacy that has made radio so necessary, and popular, with listeners. Transportation problems, or the lack of them, good and bad weather, and the play on local news and community events build loyal radio audiences.
It is because the listerner feels part of the station that ski areas have found it a very effective way of communicating—not just late changes or news—but the whole appeal of a particular ski area.
Alan Fletcher of the Neshoba Valley Ski Area outside Boston, for example, has been using radio on and off for the past 10 years, and his use is growing. “We feel radio is our most effective advertising tool,” he says. “Ten years ago we used newspapers heavily. Now I’d say about 90 percent of our advertising is with radio.”
Fletcher uses both AM and FM, both the hard rock teen-oriented stations and the more adult FM’s. His budget ranges from $15,000 to $30,000 a year. He adjusts his promotion to the station’s audience. On the teenoriented stations, for example he might emphasize his school programs as well as afternoon and night skiing.
Fletcher initially cut back on advertising this past winter, but when he realized that his area was one of the few near Boston that was operating with any consistency he accelerated it. “We could see the results almost immediately,” he said. “We’d advertise an adult learn-to-ski evening, advise them to call for more information and the phones would start ringing almost at once.”
Fletcher keeps the promotions with the stations to a minimum. “Occasionally we’ll give the stations some tickets to give away for contests or promotions they are going to run, but not often,” he says.
Has it all paid off? Fletcher says last winter produced the best gross revenue ever for his area. And he credits much of that (during a poor winter for snow) to the fact that he advertised heavily on a variety of Boston area radio stations.
While Fletcher uses straight stationproduced copy for the most part, another Massachusetts operator leans toward the snow report. Channing Murdock of the Butternut area in Great Barrington draws from New York and Hartford markets, and this year for the first time began using radio as a major medium.
“I can’t prove it was the advertising, but something brought the skiers to Butternut in an otherwise undesirable year,” Murdock says. “At first, I didn’t really think we needed it, but then when the year didn’t seem to hold a lot of promise without some advertising, we began running ads on stations on Long Island, and in New York and Connecticut. We used several stations with several audiences. A rocker in Hartford, WCBS all-news in New York to counter that and a station that has more middleaged appeal in Hartford.”
Murdock likes radio because it’s personalized. “It has great immediacy,” he said. “I could give a report on conditions that was updated to fit exactly what we had. We let the station announce the open and close, and I’d telephone in the report.”
Murdock says he thinks next year he’ll use 60-second, instead of the shorter commercials, using a format also used by Sepp Gmuender of the Ski Round Top area in Pennsylvania.
About eight years ago Gmuender started using a mix of newspapers and TV. But he stopped using newspapers in a hurry when on one promotion, he advertised a coupon worth a free ticket. “Out of the paper’s 700,000 or so readers, only 300 showed up with the coupon,” he said.
He also began using some TV spots to advertise his area, but quickly discovered that the cost of producing the spot and the times viewers watched them, did not give him effective promotion.
This year, his area spent $160,000 on radio alone, advertising on about 25 stations in the Harrisburg, Gettysburg Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Washington regions. Gmuender isn’t afraid to mix promotion with advertising, either. He offered a Baltimore radio station a unique contest prize: he would make snow wherever the contest winner designated. The station gave the contest winner a big party and Gmuender wheeled the snow guns to a local children’s hospital where they made snow. “We not only got a lot of publicity,” he says, “but it showed a lot of people that artificial snow is every bit as good as the natural stuff.”
He begins advertising early: “About November, we begin talking about the up-coming season—about what great Christmas gifts a season’s pass would make.” As the snow develops, he switches over to a report from the slopes. “I do the first report from my house at 5:45 live and we finish the morning calls by seven. In the afternoon, we report on any new snow or changes during the day.”
All of his commercials appear during “drive time” and he advertises their broadcast times on handouts he gives away at ski shows. “We like to get them in the habit of listening for our reports at a certain time and we use the same times year after year,” he says.
Gmuender shares the cost of a 60-second commercial with another sponsor in return for half the air time.
In one case, a local car dealer took half the spot to plug the use of his cars to get back and forth to the slopes. And he alternates between the Gettysburg and the Harrisburg areas from report to report, so the cost is shared by the two. Results? “We had a damned good year,” Gmuender says.
Chan Weller at Sugarbush, Vermont, has a different problem, which he addresses with the mobile medium. As a destination resort, he uses radio to attract skiers traveling to and through the area. He uses radio both in and out of state to remind skiers coming to Vermont that Sugarbush has unique amenities and to talk about the general conditions.
One operator cautioned: stay away from sponsoring weather forecasts.
He said his competition had bought forecasts in some of the metropolitan areas, and because of the nature of the winter in the Northeast this year, wound up getting associated with a lot of rain.
Another caveat deals with overselling. You don’t get the skier to return if you tell him one thing in the ad and he discovers you have embroidered the truth when he gets to the area.
Murdock said he found candor to be effective, because serious skiers have heard most of the boasts and can interpret what they hear on a report. But if you’re honest about it, “neither you nor the skier will be disappointed with the results,” according to Murdock.
Radio’s ability to adapt to quickly changing weather situations, its relatively inexpensive cost and its personality have made it one of the best ways for a ski area to communicate. And there’s the psychological advantage of creating the impression that you’re an area on the move if you use radio frequently and wisely.
The Agency Question
The Question often comes up: should I use an agency? The answer depends on the individual case. Areas that feed ski reports directly to a station probably don’t need an agency to prepare the open and close announcements. The station will do it as part of a contact.
Areas that do display print advertising may already use an agency, and adding the cost of radio production may not be warranted. Most stations will gladly assist in preparing the material, or produce commercials for no charge.
If you buy several stations and change your schedule from time to time . . . or if you have copy changes . . . it may be easier from the standpoint of time (yours) to let an agency handle the details. Generally, the cost is about the same, whether you place the time yourself or have the agency do it.
Most large stations allow the agency commission out of the rate you’d pay if you placed the advertising yourself, but they won’t allow it to you . . . so you wind up not spending any more to have the agency place the spot. But remember, the agency will charge for production or pass on charges —sometimes marked up—which can run into money depending on how closely the agency watches your budget. If you have an agency and they aren’t watching your budget, get another agency.
A good rule of thumb when writing your own copy is that one line of type runs about 3 seconds. So for a 30 second commercial, type 10 lines of copy; for a 60 second commercial, type 20 lines.
