The other evening my wife and I were deeply pondering the origin of, “the proof is in the pudding.” I, for one, have never had any major truths revealed whilst enjoying tapioca, but that’s not to say it’s untrue. I would, however, like to rephrase that saying today to be, “the proof is in these videos.” Not as appetizing sounding, but let me explain. For a while now I’ve been beating around the idea that resort videos are missing the boat by simply showing 5 minutes of GoPro footage, park rats jibbing your latest features, or even deep, endless powder turns.

The missing ingredient, in my opinion, is narrative.

Stories can take a series of powder turns that would get old after 15 seconds and make them exciting for multiple minutes in an ADD world. The proof that this trend is catching on (successfully) is in these videos:

Exhibit A: The Triple Cork Fiasco
Triple corks are all the rage. So how do you make a video that features one single trick exciting? You tell the story behind it. That’s what Mark McMorris did. Same with Torstein Horgmo. And Sebastian Toutant.

Exhibit B: Beaver Mountain
The Beav’ is my home mountain. I love it. This video is simple and anything but flashy, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t feel some sort of connection to Beaver Mountain after watching. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-STFo66jdE

Exhibit C: Raised Jay
I would love to see more resorts let the people who have grown up with the mountain tell their story like the video above. One of the best I’ve seen so far is what Jay Peak did with their “Raised Jay” series.

I’ll keep this short so you can enjoy being ridiculously engaged with the videos above, but the broken record / long-story short version is: tell a story, engage your audience.

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.