A couple months ago I wrote about humor and why it’s so easy for humor to come off as anything but.

There’s a danger with trying to be funny that, if you skimp on budget and effort, it just comes across as quirky or cute. I truly believe that to pull off funny as a resort, sometimes you have to do your absolute best work. Perhaps even better than any other videos you make.

No cutting corners, no forcing square team members into a round hole, no tiptoeing around the punchline, and, man, no fighting against your brand.

Before we go on, let’s back up and review where RED has been in the past. Specifically, the classic RED Sucks video:

So, to recap:

• They’d proven they could go all in
• Their brand had already been built on humor
• They used the right people

Which leads us to RED’s latest comedic foray: Now You Know.

Meet Nick
This approach was a little bit more direct which, I must say, makes the humor a bit harder to pull off. So they brought on Nick to help. Here’s their setup:

“Our friend Nick has decided to put right this great injustice by making it clear—once and for all—why RED Mountain Resort is the smart choice to shred this year. “

Truth be told, the first video had me a little worried. Still finding their legs, there were a couple moments that made me wonder if they’d be able to pull of five videos.

But as the series went on, they cleaned up the edges on the quality, the story, and, yes, the humor. While I wasn’t rolling on the ground laughing, I was smiling.

But there was something else I was doing: learning. Learning more about Red than I ever had in hundreds of tweets or Facebook posts or visits to their website. Learning about their acreage, prices, lack of lines, and more.

Maybe
Could Red have upped the humor factor if they didn’t weave in so many stats about the resort?

Maybe.

But from my perspective, they did a pretty solid job of balancing both and while I wasn’t necessarily forwarding it to my friends, I was doing a bit more research about Red as a potential ski destination than I had before. Which, in my book, is certainly a win. Nice work, guys.

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.