Copper Mountain released these videos o little over a month ago.

Small skits depicting what happens to skiers when they hear it’s a snow day, I wasn’t sure how people would respond.

But within a few weeks they’d been featured on Adweek as an “Ad of the Day”…

On AdForum as a “Top 5 Travel Ad”…

And, of course, the infamous Unofficial Networks.

Some people loved them.

“If there’s a better way to sell folks on Copper Mountain skiing than dressing actors up as urine—yes, urine!—I’m certainly not aware of it.”

And some people didn’t.

“This is what passes for good advertising these days, huh?

I really want to like these, but its impossible. Heart and hummingbird was kind of funny. Kinda.”

But that’s exactly the point.

A Departure from Vanilla
So much of resort marketing and advertising is vanilla. It’s safe. It doesn’t go too far one way or the other. And, in so doing, it doesn’t create much emotion one way or the other.

But this is how Copper’s Dwight Eppinger described their approach to these videos:

“Our goal with this video series was to expand on our tag line of “Everyone Deserves a Snow Day”. Copper Mountain truly believes in the power of a Snow Day and that there is something special that happens inside you when you realize there’s a day of unencumbered, snow infused fun coming your way. We also wanted to make sure that our new campaign kept with Copper’s irreverent voice of the past few years. We decided to explore the internal reactions your body goes through when you learn it’s a snow day. I think the spots highlight the spirit of Copper and the fun that we had working with Wexley School for Girls building out this concept. One of our tenants is to make sure that our messaging stands out from the competition and there is no doubt in my mind that we achieved that.”

Copper made marketing that stood out from the rest of skiing’s vanilla marketing and, by so doing, made something that was possible to dislike (just think about that for a second). When they did that, though, they made something that people would honestly enjoy as well. The power in this campaign is the departure from the safe zone of cookie-cutter messaging.

That’s why I love this series from Copper. And that’s why other people can, and do, too.

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.