I’ve shared a few “marketing that made me act” retrospectives lately, and this one is another. This time, it all started with the image you see above of Red River Ski Area in New Mexico.

Before we go any further, let’s give some context with two key things about me.

First, I love smaller ski areas.
Second, I love wide shots.

Let me dig into that second one a bit more, because if there’s one type of photo I love the most. If there’s one type of photo that has consistently influenced my behavior. It’s photos like that. Evening light, nice and wide, aerial perspective perhaps, with the entire mountain visible.

Like this photo of Ragged on SkiNH that I absolutely love.

Visual Tagline
To me, they’re like a visual tagline for the entire resort brand. Or like Brandon von Guenthner would say, “place branding.”

Views like this capture all the reason people hike to the top of mountains to get a broad, expansive view of the earth. They capture the daydreamy wandering you can do through a printed trail map imagining the possibilities of every slope and turn. And they very often capture the crescendo of anticipation travelers feel when they finally see the resort through their windshield after a long day of travel and the adventure officially begins.

Let me be clear, I was not thinking about any of this as I browsed their site and explored a town a had never really heard of. But suddenly I found myself with this on my screen.

Required Shot
If there’s one photo I believe every resort needs to have in their arsenal, it’s a wide shot of their mountain glowing softly in the evening light.

A book or article needs a title to set the tone for the rest of the content, and I believe all the other visuals your resort shares needs a headline photo to set the tone for all the other pieces can fit into. A single, beautiful visual that tells the whole story.

Red River did that. And while it’s rarely that simple, I can’t ignore the fact that the other tab I have open right now shows driving directions to Red River.

—

UPDATE
Eric Weinberger found another great example of this.

@slopefillers @WFG_DEN This is the best ski marketing I've seen on Twitter. So simple. And you (they) can do it every day of the week. https://t.co/yv2yjLPwwa

— Eric Weinberger (@eric_weinberger) December 20, 2021

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.