Great resort marketers have a long list of skills. They’re great at listening to their audience, making sense of complexity, telling stories, and understanding the role of technology in what they do. They’re great at making the most of tools, organizing teams, doing a lot with a little, and being organized.
But two skills I’d wager are underappreciated would be:
Now, Jackson Hole is, in my book, the best in the game at video storytelling right now. The quality of both the production and narratives they’re cranking out are on another level. We’ve seen that with many of their recent creations including The Crow’s Nest and On Edge. But their latest video – Gunrunners – shows how good their team is at the two points I mentioned above.
While releasing footage about your snowmaking efforts in real-time is valuable to ride the wave of stoke, having a story to start that stoke in the first place can be a powerful tool as you work your way out of summer and into winter.
The trick with snowmaking, however, is that by the time your guns are blazing and you have the opportunity to tell such a story…well…it’s too late. You need to gather everything you need to tell that story the previous season and then have the patience to sit on that great story for nearly a full year so you can pull the curtain back on your creation right when it’s able to build that stoke in the weeks before you start making snow.
That’s what Jackson Hole did.
Gunrunners is perhaps their best film yet. The editing and sound are incredibly well done. The story is beautifully told. Yet they not only had the foresight to create this story a full year ago, they had the patience to hold onto it until the leaves changed, the mornings turned frosty, and they needed a little bit of fuel to pour on the pre-season fire burning in their audience’s bellies.
That moment was three weeks ago and their timing was nearly as perfect as the film.
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.
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