When I saw Liberty Mountain’s “Ratatouille The Snowboarding Opossum” video last week, I thought it was a fun change of pace but didn’t expect what would happen next. Less than a minute long and featuring an Opossum cruising on a Burton Riglet snowboard, it took less than two days for the video to get seen by the right pair of eyes and take off.

Among the outlets that gave it some love were:

• The Today Show
• Good Morning America
• Sportscenter
• The Huffington Post
• I Can Has Cheezburger

Now with more than 600,000 views, not only is Ratatouille famous, Liberty Mountain is too. Here’s what Liberty Mountain’s Social guy Zach Koneffko said about how it all went down:

“We posted the video to YouTube on March 7th and did our usual routine and getting it out on Facebook, Twitter, our website, etc. We saw a nice response from it that day of likes, shares, and views and knew it was going to be a little popular but obviously none of us could have imagined the response we have received. The initial thing that sent it into viral stardom was Good Morning America. Apparently someone submitted it to Good Morning America the day we posted it. On March 8th (the next day) I woke up to the text “Your opossum video was just on Good Morning America”.

By the time I got to the office 15 minutes later it was also on The Today Show and very shortly after that I received a call from ESPN letting me know it was going to be on Sportcenter the next morning. In the following few days the video snowballed and has been seen all over the world including the front page of yahoo.com, aol.com, thehuffingtonpost.com, and Facebook and Twitter post by Red Bull and UberSocial. “

I think my favorite quoto from the coverage came from the Huffington Post

We can’t blame the marketing gurus at Liberty Ski Resort in Emmitsburg, Pa., for wanting to part with tradition in their newest promotional campaign

Yes, you figured it out, guys. The ski industry is no longer putting marketing dollars toward traditional campaigns, they are now building entire marketing campaigns around opossums. Zach was the first to admit that they did the usual stuff, but got a little lucky:

“As for what was the X-Factor, I really think it was a combination of a few things. First and foremost, it’s an opossum…and it’s snowboarding. People love animals…combine that with something a little off the wall and it makes for a possible internet hit. I also understand that it takes a little bit of luck as well. Obviously it wouldn’t have received the attention it has if Good Morning America had not played it.”

It’s fun to see a resort benefit from one of the viral videos that catches the world’s attention each week. Zach made a great point when he told me that, ” While this was a fun video we created, it just as easily could have been a negative video someone else posted.”

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.