I love the creativity that comes when resorts celebrate milestones.

Among my favorite is, perhaps, the golden chair that may have been used elsewhere first, but is now a beloved piece of Mount Snow’s story.

Source: Mike Dunn, Flickr

My (new) home resort of Snowbasin has been tying many a campaign into their 75th, among which was a simple switch from paid photos (as a profit center) to free photos (as a marketing expense).

We now offer complimentary photo downloads for guests! More info here: https://t.co/hHVuzPttHx #Snowbasin 75 pic.twitter.com/2M8TxFqd5g

— Snowbasin Resort (@snowbasinresort) December 16, 2015

But Jackson Hole, in typical savvy JHMR fashion, has released three campaigns that I really, really like.

#1) Custom, Anniversary Boards
I’ve never been shy about my thoughts that resorts could use their brands more effectively on the retail side of things, so seeing that Jackson has partnered with a local company to create five, hand-crafted snowboards.

A one-off snowboard made for riding Jackson Hole: https://t.co/IIiTxjlkaY pic.twitter.com/5KgrLEx6iR

— Outside Magazine (@outsidemagazine) January 5, 2016

Even more, I love the tie to the resort and community within every aspect of this idea as evidenced by this quote from Outside Magazine.

“Franco, who’s worked at the resort for 26 years, made two swallowtail boards (a 160-centimeter men’s version and a 150-centimeter one for women) from locally-sourced beetle-kill pine. Each board bears the GPS coordinates for where the tree it’s made from was harvested, as well as the logo for the 50th anniversary.”

Local trees, GPS coords of the tree’s home, and the logo all built by a guy who has been with the resort for more than half of those 50 years.

#2) The Golden Ticket
Next is something that exists at a handful of resorts – discounted skiing with a season pass from any other mountain – but I like the way JH has given it fresh a set of PR legs by tying it to the anniversary with a “Golden Ticket” moniker.

Source: Jackson Hole

The full copy describes it like this:

“Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is welcoming all skiers and snowboarders who own a winter resort season pass ANYWHERE in the world to come to ‘The Big One’ and receive a very special rate. Travel to Jackson between Jan 11 – 31, 2016, show your season pass from any ski resort worldwide and receive a 50% discounted lift ticket based on the valid in-resort, single day rate. Ski as many days as you like at 50% off the daily ticket rate during this time.”

Again, offers like this are common, but grouping it with the anniversary PR and product lineup was a smart move.

#3) Video Series
As we often see from major resorts each season, Jackson turned to a video series to cap off their anniversary messaging.

Though I have a (rather large) soft spot for ski history, I actually like that it wasn’t just a dive into archive footage and interviews with old-timers. Sure the second episode was called “the history” and covered exactly what it name implies:

The series forged on with episodes breaking some of those key pieces out into follow ups about people (“The Heroes“) and some of the elements of the mountain that helped make it iconic (“Corbet’s Couloir, S&S and Beyond“).

But most of all I liked episode #5. It takes all those pieces that allowsed osmething great to be achieved – the mountain, the people, the milestones – and invites everyone to join this story.

It’s beautifully narrated and quietly invites viewers to do what is the hope of all resort videos series: become guests.

Worthy of the Effort
As of today, the play counts for the five videos are:

• Episode #1: 112,457 views
• Episode #2: 34,019 views
• Episode #3: 89,163 views
• Episode #4: 71,619 views
• Episode #5: 79,569 views
• TOTAL: 387,627 views (77,500 avg)

In other words, whether those are organic or paid, they’ve given these videos visibility worthy of the effort. This is not always the case.

Community focused partnerships, great offers, and amazing storytelling. Great work all around.

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.