I’ve gathered a lot of swag over the years. Probably too much. The vast majority of it is cool swag. Cool swag gets blogged about, gets a high five at the booth, gets whatevered.

But a small percentage bucks the trend and actually gets used. Gets cared about. Get’s appreciated. And maybe, just maybe, gets held onto for more than a few minutes.

Diamond Peak has managed to ship one of these before, and they just did again.

Family Friendly vs Family Friendly
It’s one thing to say your resort is about families, it’s another thing to actually embrace that and understand that to the point that your marketing truly reflects it.

For example, a “family friendly” resort may have a table full of koozies or bottle openers at a show. Or maybe their trail map doesn’t say anything about the best or safest zones for kids to ski around. Or they have a shop full of logo t-shirts, but none in toddler sizes.

And then you hear a resort like Diamond Peak talk about being family friendly and you get swag like this.

You know what those are? Those are stickers. And you know what kids love to a likely unhealthy level? Yeah, stickers. In any shape or form.

Understand Your Market
We talk about understanding never-evers and core skiers. About speaking their language. But the same is absolutely true for families.

That language goes far beyond photos of smiling parents with perfectly obedient offspring. It includes awesome playgrounds, places for mid-day naps, small portions of cheap food (because your kid probably won’t eat it anyway), toilets short enough for a toddler to actually climb onto, coloring books and crayons along side your glossy magazines, heated swimming pools, and, yes, stickers.

Kudos to Paul and Jackie and the gang at Diamond Peak for putting their budget (and their swag) where their mouth is.

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.