I’ll keep this short, the real content is found in an interview and a response to that interview. Over the summer, Christian Knapp left his post as Keystone’s Marketing Director and became the VP of Marketing at Aspen/Snowmass. Soon after he landed, a new print campaign was ready to roll that featured a handful of variations on the “Before Aspen, _______” theme. A unique angle I hadn’t seen in a print campaign that certainly caught my attention as a marketer.

Click on each for full size image. Many thanks to David Amarault at Aspen/Snowmass for providing the full size ads.

One Aspen local, however, didn’t get it. In fact, his not-getting-it was so far reaching that he wrote an entire article about why. It’s an interesting perspective but one I took with a grain of salt because, well, the ads weren’t written for Aspen locals, they were written for potential Aspen tourists. I personally, like the campaign quite a bit, but it’s a unique dialogue to read. Here are the two articles:

Original Interview with Christian Knapp
SkiCo’s marketing campaign focuses on what was and is
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/148922

Roger Marolt’s Reply
Skico revisits Aspen mythology
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20110916/COLUMN/110919887/1021&parentprofile=1061

P.S. – I hope you’ll forgive me for not writing a post about all the social media shenanigans (especially from Facebook) of the last few days. I need a nice weekend for that to all settle :)

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.