Unlike many other people, I wasn’t quite as excited about EpicMix 2.0 as I thought I would be. That’s not to say it’s not impressive, it certainly is. And perhaps it is more a case of piggybacking on an already successful product that makes it hard to play a solo game of “can you top this.” Adding photos will be a great feature to have, and I can only imagine the volume and reach it will give EpicMix, but it isn’t THAT big of a feature in my book. I’m sure dozens of resorts will have bigger announcements (at least in the eyes of their customers) during the next year.

The difference, however, is how Vail Resorts used this feature to gain a huge amount of press, buzz and attention, especially across social networks. From my perspective, more resorts could mimic these tactics and get a greater bang for the buck from their investments in on-mountain improvements. Shooting out a press release is great, but here are 5 other things VR did to make the most of this new feature:

1) Hold an Event
Imagine the difference in drama if the Oscars were announced via press release? Events are fun and exciting in themselves and give you a reason to hand out VIP invitations to a long list of media folks who can use their voice to spread the word.

2) Synchronize with Major Media
Within minutes of the announcement (12:20pm), articles by Mashable (12:21pm), the Denver Post (12:32pm) , and of course the official Vail Resorts blog (12:23pm) were live. Getting exclusive, early details to a news site or blog is golden, that sort of content is hard to resist.

3) Get Everyone Involved (Especially on Social Media)
It wasn’t just @snowdotcom and @epicmix getting people excited, for days before I was seeing all sorts of Vail Resorts employees blogging, tweeting, retweeting each other, and posting about the news. It was hard to avoid on Tuesday, Wednesday morning it was virtually impossible.

4) Have the New Content Ready to Go
Despite a few glitches, the new EpicMix website rolled out (for the most part, still waiting for individual user accounts to reflect those in the video) as soon as the announcement was made.

5) Think “Steve Jobs”
Just like recent Apple keynotes, the EpicMix event was hosted by the big cheese, Rob Katz, but also other players as well. Let the main voice announce the new features, then let people that were specifically involved in the development talk about why they are so excited about it. Getting multiple voices saying different parts of the same script always seems to work better than a solo performance.

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.