Choice of Words: Sugarloaf Used to Make 9 Tons of Snow a Minute

This week I’ll be on my first week-long vacation in…well, I honestly can’t remember the last one I took. Among other things, I hope to spend some time on one of my favorite activities: finding lost ski areas. I absolutely love ski history, and with that topic on the brain, I thought I’d take this week to look back at some old-school marketing and see what we learn.

There are often many ways to say the same thing. If you want believe in global warming, you’ll probably say “global warming” when you talk to people. If you don’t, you may use “climate change”.

Tour guides used the classic “as big as two 747s” or “two football fields” instead of “600 feet long” because it adds another layer of meaning. In other words, they use different words to describe the same thing so it, hopefully, sends a different message.

Snowmaking
We’ve all seen examples of resorts bragging about their snowmaking. “Most powerful snowmaking in [state/nation/region]“, “Top-to-bottom coverage”, “400 acres of snowmaking, “100% coverage”, etc. We see these all the time.

So, when I see something like this from a 1986 Sugarloaf Ad from NewEnglandSkiHistory.com, I smile. Still talking about snowmaking, but a very different message.

Doesn’t that sound amazingly impressive? We think about GPM, CFM, and acres, but weight? I’d never considered using mass to describe snowmaking power. Yet, “9 tons a minute” has a cool ring to it.

The Lesson
The lesson is to find new ways to talking about the same ol’ stuff using words that carry new meaning. Sometimes we’ve said the same thing so many times, we don’t even think about what we’re saying anymore. That can be a dangerous position to be in.

Finding new ways to describe common stuff is a great way to break through the clutter.