If there’s one thing skiing lacks – especially in contrast to activities that are winning in the neverending quest for constumers’ time – it’s objectives. Something to work for. Or, even better, something to achieve.

Skiing is full of implicit milestones in the form of confidence, run difficulty, or landing a new trick, but the advent of EpicMix and Alpine Replay (now Trace Snow) have introduced a new ability to quantify the skiing self, as it were.

To me, that’s huge. Much bigger than we give it credit for.

The “100 Club”
Part of the power behind these milestones and achievements is the label that comes along with them. People want the running equivalent of saying they ran a marathon.

That’s powerful stuff. And it’s why I love the videos Killington has started to tease in recent months:

There are three, clever things happening here.

#1) Name Up in Lights
The first is what I call the “name up in lights” principle. If you want someone to notice/like/pay attention to you, say something nice about them. There are fewer ways to increase loyalty than to generously and specifically show public appreciation for whatever loyalty already exists.

#2) Selling the Reasons
When you listen closer to these soundbites, you realize that the justification for these people achieving what they have are beautifully paraphrased reasons why someone else might want to ski Killington as well. Plus, coming from someone who walks the walk, it carries little of the hypocrisy we subconsciously love to nitpick as we make decisions.

#3) It’s an Achievement
One of the most powerful aspects of the “name up in lights” principle is the way this content has a tendancy to inspire others to want to do the same so, perhaps, they too can find themselves on such a stage. In other words, Killington has given skiers something to aspire to. Something to work toward achieving.

Good, Good Stuff
The rare nature of the accomplishment is what gives this label (and content about it) extra oomph.

So while it’s tempting to look for ways to create “50 clubs” or even “25 clubs” that may encompass a more broad (and perhaps valuable) demographic (like destination families), doing so without creating extra value or awesomeness around the “100 club” brand could diminsh the value of the brand that inspired your actions.

As is, I think it’s simple, clever, and extremely powerful. I hope to see more of this concept in practice going forward.

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.