I’ve talked about this before, the concern of hiring people that are passionate about skiing and happen to market instead of people that are passionate about marketing and happen to ski.

In other words, people who work hard and ski when they can rather than people who skis hard and work when they can.

And then I saw this quote:

“A lot of guys who got into this industry did so because they’re passionate about skiing or snowboarding. Our passion has always been about the business of skiing.”

And who said such intriguingly similar words? Chip Perfect, the man, the myth, the legend behind the insanely successful Perfect North Slopes ski area.

Maybe he’s onto something.

Another Example
And then I started seeing some interesting things happen.

I’d hear rave reviews about new PR guys who had nothing to do with skiing in their previous jobs. I’d see guys and gals with backgrounds in professional sports or retail jump into resort marketing and quickly work their way up the ladder as they delivered impressive results.

The list goes on.

My Prediction
I predict we’re going to see much, much more of this in 2014.

These non-core folks will better understand how to reach and communicate with beginners and non-passholders, they’ll spend more time in the office than their counterparts because they’ll be less worried about the vertical feet they rack up, and they’ll bring in valuable perspectives and experience unseen by skiing but effective once applied.

They won’t take over a marketing department, but I believe we’ll start seeing more and more of them in 2014.

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.