When a dude is shown puking in a video that is promoting your contest, you know you’r reaching a pretty specific crowd. Such is the case with Heavenly Mountain Resort’s Highway to Heavenly promotion. There are four, simple rules (taken from their Facebook tab):

1. Be a San Franciscan of legal boozin’ age (that’s 21, folks)
2. Follow @hwy2heavenly
3. Every Friday we’ll ask you to tweet us a pic with 3 friends at any SF bar, looking Heavenly-ready in ski gear
4. Get whisked away to Heavenly in a limo that same night (don’t worry, we’ll give you time to pack your bags)

The first week, pics came in thick and fast:

Here’s what John Wagnon, Heavenly’s Marketing Director, said about the contest:

Highway-to-Heavenly is primarily designed to showcase the unique nightlife aspect of the Heavenly brand while serving-up some target-specific vacation packages focused on guys looking to have a high-energy weekend both on the mountain and off. So far, it seems to be hitting the target dead-on and is gaining momentum through social media. It’s definitely a fun promotion.

No Mistaking the Target
No family friendly stuff going on here. Like John said, this promotion is targeted for young, party-loving skiers who live in the San Francisco area. The winners get what Heavenly described as “the weekend of a lifetime”, Heavenly gets lots of buzz, and a brand is built that Heavenly is for party-lovers. Here’s the video i referred to earlier of the winners’ adventure:

Notice in that video how much skiing is shown. I counted: 11 seconds. In other words, this is reminding skiers about the add-ons, the things that happen off the slopes, rather than the skiing (which is likely a smart move this year). The buzz has been building pretty well and, although I’m in Colorado, I’ve still seen it pop up over and over. They took a handful of people like Liftopia crew for a ride in the limo (Smart move in my book. Who isn’t going to tweet about that?) and received some press coverage as well (I can only imagine the local outlets have picked it up as well).

The Special Sauce
One thing that I believe is completely brilliant, is the fact that pictures have to be taken at bars. If I’m a bar owner in the bay area and I have an email list, social media presence, or blog, you better believe I’m going to tell all my customers about the contest because it would help me drive business. This promo gives every bar in a by area (a population of over 7,000,000) a reason to share this promotion.

I’m not sure how much Heavenly is doing behind the scenes (like call, email, tweet to every bar they can find) to help them drive this contest, but if that catches on, an already big contest could be huge. Heck, why not donate “Highway to Heavenly” napkins to bars they can use throughout the week to drive their weekend crowds through the contest.

The Result
I really love this contest. It’s got clear viral possibilities, the reward is on the mountain, it spreads the word about conditions (both on and off the mountain), and it is recurring, meaning they have a week to promote, hype, and execute each round, learning and tweaking the system each time. The brand is pretty obvious, and likely wouldn’t work at many “family-friendlier” resorts, but for Heavenly, it seems to be a pretty solid fit.

UPDATE: Coasters, Not Napkins
So, Heavenly is more on top of this than I could even imagine. They’re giving out free coasters (see image below) to local bars and giving local influencers (like Liftopia) rides in the Limo to spread the word. Great work!

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.