If you’ve ever heard me talking about my belief that we need to “go much, much bigger” with our efforts to grow skiing, you’ve probably heard me say the name Casey Neistat.

The guy has over 10,000,000 subscribers on YouTube.
He’s got a vibe that’s hard to not like.
His storytelling skills are really impressive.
Oh, and he’s a snowboarder.

A sport like ours needs someone like him to bring our story to the masses in a way (and at a scale) that the masses actually want to engage with. We need a coordinated effort with pooled resources to make this happen. We need to get him out of…

…oh, wait, he just posted a video of himself skiing at Park City.

This isn’t actually what I had in mind with involving Casey in our hopes to grow skiing, but what I want to talk about today is luck.

Pure, stinkin’, dumb luck.

Why
Because this trip wasn’t a coordinated production or some clever marketing campaign, it was based on the fact that he was in Park City for Sundance, he wanted to get some snowboarding in and, well, he documents virtually every other adventure he goes on so why not this one.

That’s not to say Park City didn’t find out along the way, but the genesis was luck. Sorta like when the Beibs showed up at Canyons a few years back.

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A post shared by Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) on Nov 29, 2015 at 4:16pm PST

During a short stay, he fired off a series of photos that generated more than 1,000,000 likes each.

But wait…
But it’s not just videos like this one. Whether or not Jane Skier in Pittsburgh or John Boarder in Sacramento come skiing or book a trip today is luck.

“But, Gregg, I can actually influence whether or not Jane or John come skiing!”

To which I say, exactly.

Because if the marketing success lottery is a giant hat full of resort names, you may not be able to guide the invisible hand that ultimately decides your fate, but you can get your name in that hat a few more times.

So, yes, much of your success is about luck, but marketing in many ways, is the act of increasing your chances.

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.