NSAA’s program very intelligently targets teens. High school and college kids make up the only large pool of potential skiers who are impressionable enough that we might persuade them to adopt an adventurous lifestyle (the tobacco business proved this years ago). For that reason alone the proposal stands a better chance of success than any previous SIA/NSAA partnership.
Joint SIA/NSAA marketing efforts have a sorry history. Beginning with the Glendenning proposal 20 years ago, they’ve been lame—inadequate in creative conception, but overambitious in reach. Glendenning called for massive spending in Sunday newspaper supplements nationwide. It was a conventional advertising campaign based on the assumption that if the ski industry’s big guns pooled their resources and advertised aggressively to non-skiers, new skier business should pick up.
But skiing is not a conventional product and skiers are not conventional people. Potential skiers aren’t conventional, either. They’re independent, experiential folks who take up thrill sports for wholly irrational reasons. They can be impressed, but not persuaded. No large group of adults with these characteristics is clearly targetable. Which is why, if you want big numbers, it’s cost-effective only to sell to youngsters.
Organizational factors have also acted to hobble national joint marketing efforts. As David Ingemie points out, SIA members and Rocky Mountain destination resorts market nationally. But 90 percent of NSAA members market locally. Why should Butternut waste money on a program that reaches Rossignol’s customers in Los Angeles? Why should Mammoth contribute to creating customers for the Ski Barn in Paramus?
There’s a timing problem. National suppliers and some destination resorts have to advertise from August to Thanksgiving to support holiday sales. Smaller ski areas need to reach their markets when the snow is on the ground. So in a national campaign, who decides when to spend the money?
Not likely to be discussed elsewhere is the Rube Effect. A large, diverse organization is unlikely to produce a brilliant message. If you want a great ad campaign, hire a small, creative agency. If you turn their concept over to the membership for review, the rubes will peck it to death. The result is lowest-common-denominator mush—unmemorable white bread. The message may turn out warm, friendly and inoffensive. And ineffective. Remember “Take a friend skiing?” Of course not.
It’s not necessarily true that the smaller members of the organization are the rubes. Rubes may easily represent some of the largest players—who have the most to lose and are therefore more risk-averse when asked to endorse an edgy message. The organization that lives in mortal fear of scaring off a single conservative customer will always opt for the Happy-Anglo-Family-All-Smiling photo, indistinguishable from every other HAFAS ad you ever saw. I remember certain small resorts running “Ski Bare” and “Ski it if you can” messages, long after large neighboring resorts had caved in to HAFAS advertising.
None of these factors need affect a joint local campaign, which is why smaller ski areas so often do well by partnering with a local retailer, a national supplier or an affinity organization.
In a local campaign, the message is created by a small group of people who understand the target audience. Building the program around an event—a consumer show, a sale or an on-snow happening—resolves timing conflicts. Targeting an affinity group solves the problem of reaching adults at an effective cost.
This is why SIA considers its grant program a success: it’s helped to create dozens of local programs and thousands of new skiers.
The common ground of timing and national scope between the destination ski resorts and market-share major suppliers will lead to more joint national marketing efforts between those entities. With no involvement by either SIA or NSAA, we may see national advertising by early fall in general-interest media, funded cooperatively by, say, Vail Resorts and Rossignol, or American Skiing Company and Elan. There’ll be more on-mountain demo centers and more on-mountain events aimed at attracting destination skiers.
This will further inflame owners of city and suburban ski shops. City retailers are naturally furious when a customer buys equipment from a resort-owned ski shop, especially if the customer was sent to a supplier’s on-hill demo center by the city shop.
When a city shop finds itself competing with ASC or Vail Resorts, the only rational strategy is to renew its partnerships with smaller resorts. Many retailers long ago gave up encouraging their customers to actually ski. It may be time to bring these shops back into the ski area marketing plan by helping them organize affinity group bus trips, giving them a price incentive to hand out lift tickets with each sale and organizing demo days for their loyal customers.
Ski area marketers who do not forge strong local alliances will soon be outflanked by large competitors who do market locally. Almost every independent local ski area now competes with a resort owned by Booth Creek or Boyne or Intrawest—companies with a strong interest in local marketing strategies.
And those companies are out scouting for marketing partners, both national and local.
Seth Masia will never be mistaken for the HAFAS dad. He’s the sports & recreation producer for Microsoft’s Denver Sidewalk.
