A couple months ago I, in fairly direct language, asked Jackson Hole to market to me. The request came because, as a rider in a bike race that finished in their base village, I hadn’t seen a single scrap of marketing communications sent my way from their HQ. Oh the difference a month makes. Saturday was that race. Rather than receiving my usual slice of humility, I got the whole pie this time around.

Slice One: The Welcome Bag Triple Threat
My swag bag for the race was full or all sorts of goodies: electrolyte tablets, chamois cream, coupons for Great Harvest bread, and then, oh, three pieces of marketing from the good folks at Jackson Hole Marketing resort. Yes, three. Here’s what I found.

First, this lovely brochure chock full of summer activity ideas at Teton Village. Cyclists have a lot of money and are ready for some well-deserved, post-race respite on Sunday. Lovely move to include this in the swag bag each rider receives.

Second, I also found this coupon for $4.00 of an Aerial Tram ride at the resort. A great activity for cyclists whose “day after” legs may or may not resemble cylindrical hunks of cheese, not that my legs ever feel like that, that’s just what I hear.

Third, they also included a coupon that riders could use to book next year’s lodging at 15% off. If I ride next year, you can bet I’ll use this coupon.

So, to recap, their offers included something to do quickly on Sunday to keep them at the resort, a long list of other things to do once they were there, and an offer to bring them back: a solid triple threat. I thought that Jackson Hole was missing the boat. I was wrong. They were just taking a different route and taking advantage of the cards they were dealt. Well played, JHMR, well played.

Slice 2-6: The Race
The rest of my humble pie was served in the form of a head cold, a head wind, four missing bolts that forced my only riding partner that made it into the race out at mile 35, hot afternoon temps, and [shoot me an email for the complete, detailed excuse list]. After 125 miles of work, my body said no more and I called it quits.

At least I got a blog post out of it. Right?

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.