While I’m combining things and connecting dots, I’ll keep that ball rolling with another combo.

I’ll start with some of the awesome resort magazines that are published every year. Two of my favorites include Killington’s 4241…

More @KillingtonMtn "100 Club"ers with their name up in lights in this season's 4241' mag. Love it. pic.twitter.com/CXobFx4UW5

— Gregg Blanchard (@slopefillers) February 16, 2015

…and Jay Peak’s.

I love the way they go behind the scenes, tell the story from a different angle, create unique characters out of otherwise nameless employees and provide some really valuable information along the way.

They are some of my favorite resort content.

Children’s Books
When we go on hikes, my daughter will randomly, excitedly yell “airplane” whenever she sees a 737 starting its final approach into Eagle or SLC. Why does she do this?

She knows every sound to every animal on 6 continents. When we see yaks, she’s pumped. When we hear dogs. She’s psyched. But why does she do this?

We bought a yellow, caterpillar truck for her at Christmas. We’ve had road trips to amazing places where the coolest part was passing a semi that she could see. The reason?

In the 2 years she’s been around, we’ve read close to 2,500 books with Callie. Like many kids, she loves it. When i saw her a couple hours ago, the first thing she said was, “read stories?”

But what does she love even more? The stuff she reads about IN those books.

Combining the Two
What if your resort took all those lessons learned from creating magazines and applied them toward something for younger readers.

Specifically, what if your resort wrote a children’s book about skiing? And what if instead of trying to sell it, you donated them to two groups:

• Local libraries.
• Loyal passholders/customers who you know have had a baby recently.

Not only would certain parents be psyched out of their minds to not have to read yet another book about farm animals and not have to explain to an 18 month old why the dog said “bow wow” in that book but “ruff ruff” in this one, but the kids would get as stoked about skiing as they are about sheep and goats.

Bridge the “too young to ski” gap, get kids excited about the sport their parents love, do good in the community. Pretty solid combo.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.