A while back I was talking to a friend who was applying for a new job. This person is incredibly talented, but they lacked the confidence in themselves we all struggle with from time to time. As I pictured them in the interview, responding to questions about projects and skills and strengths, I had a funny realization:
The best person to tell this person’s story isn’t him, it’s one of his friends. If I were in that interview, they’d hear the best version of his story.
The closer you get to a thing, the more you understand all the messy stuff under the surface. Being so aware of the imperfections can sometimes make it harder to be proud of the strengths. And then there’s just the perception of patting yourself too hard on the back that can rub humans the wrong way.
This idea is true of ourselves as employees, but it’s also true of the companies we market.
While I don’t thing this explains all of it, I’ve often noticed that sometimes my favorite resort marketing campaigns aren’t actually created by the resort. They’re created by a “friend” of the resort who isn’t shackled by those imperfections, who doesn’t have the same bias implied in their words, and who has a more customer-relevant relationship with the mountain.
One example of this is when LL Bean told the story of Whaleback. Another example is this new video about Shames told by Mammut and filmmaker Zeppelin Zeerip.
Yes, the voices we hear are those who are close to the mountain. Yes, those people may know all the messiness behind the scenes. But because this is Mammut’s story to tell, they get to tell it their way. They get to highlight all the stuff they love without being held back by that nagging feeling of “if people only knew…”, the perception of them showing off, or the bias of your audience knowing your job is to sell.
The result is an underdog story that is beautifully told, but one that, if the resort were to deliver on their own, might not carry the same weight.
That idea – that other’s sometimes tell better stories about the things we’re trying to market than we can – is fascinating to me. If we can avoid feeling like it’s an indictment of our own skills, it can open some really interesting doors of opportunity.
For example, once upon a time I wrote a glowing review of some new resort marketing technology. That combination of telling their story through my excited lens and the lack of bias that came along with it was so effective that my post became some of the best marketing they had. They had the counter-intuitive, but brilliant realization that if they sent traffic to my post instead of their website they might make more sales. So they tried it and…it worked.
Aside from being inspired by this specific story, that’s the idea I want to leave with; That sometimes other’s versions of our stories can be more powerful than our own.
If you have stories like this that exist, take some time to talk about this internally and see if it’s worth shifting resources away from elevating your version of the resort’s story to further elevate theirs. It can take some humility to go that direction, but it may be worth some brainstorming during your team’s next strategy meeting.
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.
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