Five years ago I published a quiz on SlopeFillers. The whole thing was pretty simple: visit ~20 resort websites, write down their taglines, publish the list one day with no resort names and then again the following day with the names revealed.

The results were sparse – this was during the first year of SlopeFillers – but intriguing.

So I decided to go back to that list and see how many of those taglines had changed. I loaded up the website of each in my browser and…well..take a look.

SAME – “Like nothing on earth.” (Vail)
SAME – “The Beast” (Killington)
COULDN’T FIND IT – “Everyone deserves a snow day.” (Copper Mountain)
CHANGED – “Colorado’s favorite.” (Winter Park)
SAME – “Rare Earth” (Kirkwood)
SAME – “It’s the snow.” (Big White)
SAME – “The Legend” (Arapahoe Basin)
SAME – “Ski it if you can!” (Mad River Glen)
COULDN’T FIND IT – “Not exactly roughing it.” (Beaver Creek)
COULDN’T FIND IT – “Refined by nature.” (Solitude)
COULDN’T FIND IT – “The top of California.” (Mammoth)
SAME – “Find your happy place.” (Sunday River)
COULDN’T FIND IT – “Pure Vertical Fun” (Wildcat)
COULDN’T FIND IT – “Unmatched in North America” (Telluride)
SAME – “What are you up for?” (Boyne)
COULDN’T FIND IT – “The only thing missing here is you.” (Durango)
COULDN’T FIND IT – “It’s your turn.” (Sugarbowl)
COULDN’T FIND IT – “The rockies biggest, Canada’s best.” (Lake Louise)

As I got further down my list, I started to wonder how I gathered the list in the first place if resorts don’t even show taglines on their websites.

Did I use my collection of print ads? Was it on social media? Did I just know these?

And then it hit me: Maybe they stopped using that tagline. Or, at least, stopped including it on the website. So off to Archive.org I went to confirm my hunch.

Copper Mountain
2011

2016

Beaver Creek
2011

2016

Mammoth
2011

2016

Solitude
2011

2016

Wildcat
2011

2016

Telluride
2011

2016

Sugar Bowl
2011

2016

See the trend? In 2011, all of these sites included a tagline right by their logo. In 2016, no tagline could be seen. Even more, I couldn’t find a tagline anywhere on the website.

Sometime between 2011 and 2016, half of the resorts in my original group stopped using taglines on their website. Wondering if this was a web-specific trend, I saw that some of the Dirigo team (who had designed a few of these new sites) were on Google Chat so I quickly asked them.

In terms of design, here’s what Jessie Lacey said.

” If a tagline is lengthy while not incredibly descriptive or useful to users, there is reason to leave it out. Sometimes their website as a whole can communicate better than any tagline that only serves to clutter up a fresh logo or header area, plus focusing your energies on a dynamic and bold header might make more marketing sense.”

So design trends are leading to taglines being left out or moved, but Jamie Ippolito noticed a decline not just on the web, but overall. As an example he pointed to Nike. While they include “Just do it.” in their page title (presumably for SEO), these iconic words are nowhere to be found on the actual site.

But on Facebook and YouTube, it’s still there.

In other words, taglines seem to still carry some form of present or legacy value, but aren’t quite the same top-priority marketing message they used to be.

But let me get anecdotal for a minute, because the real reason I started this post in the first place was because of two observations.

1. Some taglines seemed to be sticking in my head stronger than ever.
2. Aside from those few that sat right at the top of my mind, I couldn’t come up with a single one besides them.

My theory was that resorts changed taglines so frequently no single quip could get sufficiently lodged in my lobes to stick. On the contrary, it appears that the efforts to create, build, and maintain a tagline along side a logo or name have, in many instances, disappeared for highly visible marketing content like websites.

Which leads me to a question.

Have the resorts who’ve abandoned their taglines in some (or all) of their marketing created an opportunity for everyone else?

Or, put another way, is the reason the Vail and Killington and Sunday River taglines are so stuck in my head because they have less competition in my head to begin with?

It’s an interesting idea that leads directly to the value of a tagline in the first place.

But assuming your tagline has value and assuming it already has legs, I can’t help but wonder if there may be a case for throwing a few more chips on that bet.

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.