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A number of years ago RED Mountain came out with a video that broke many of the molds that were being used in resort marketing at the time.

The edit opens with a brash, cocky guy having what looks like a great time while talking about why RED actually sucks. Of course, as you probably can imagine (or remember if you’ve seen these), it was a similar admission of sucking as we later saw in Snowbird’s famous 1-star campaign. No matter where he went or how amazing the experience was, he whined about how annoying RED Mountain’s strengths were.

It was creative, effective and, as the 165,000+ views on that version of the video alone can attest, had a viral element to it that’s rare for resort marketing. Which made me wonder if, with this kind of response, other resorts would try to follow suit.

Over the 14+ years since that video was released, those attempts to replicate have been surprisingly few and far between or, when attempted, not quite as well executed as RED’s. Aside from Snowbird’s classic 1-star campaign that is perhaps the most successful example we’ve ever seen, even now it’s hard to think of many that made me smile more than I cringed.

That is, until Grand Targhee rolled out a video with a title that hinted at something siimlar:

Grand Targhee, Not That Grand

Their idea was similar but their angle was really clever and unique. A deepy, bassy voiceover guy is narrating an ad for the resort. Every time he shares a key selling point, however, he makes some snarky remark that playfully contradicts the images shown. Take a peek.

It’s really clever and really well done.

And it’s important to remember how tricky this sort of message is to pull this off and, in many cases, get support from higher ups to do so. The sarcasm has to be strong enough that folks won’t get confused by the core message, but not so weak that you lose the contrast you’re hoping for between the parody and the reality.

And the fact that they could play on the fact their name includes the word GRAND? So good.

Well done, Targhee. Well done.

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.