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Capitalizing on Tebow-Mania: Ski Resorts Find Mixed Results

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GREGG
BLANCHARD
   

Love him or hate him, Tim Tebow’s name is in the air. After a string of 4th quarter miracles, Tebow’s celebratory praying position quickly became a cultural trend known as Tebowing. Now, I feel like I’d be insulting your intelligence by telling you what Tebowing is, but if you have any questions just keep reading, you’ll figure it out pretty quick. It wasn’t long before the trend spread to the mountains, where “skibowing” began to appear at resorts across the country.

With stuff like this, marketers have always tried to capitalize. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Here are a few examples.

Loveland Ski Area – Colorado
Concept: Invited skiers to don Broncos gear before the big game for a day on the slopes. Included was a nice shot of the group Tebowing.
Result: Loveland, one of the smallest brands along the I-70 corridor (others include Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, and Keystone), got a shoutout and airtime during the middle of the Broncos game on national TV. They had the footage to show thanks to a nice video Loveland put together of the event (love the choice of music, Dustin). On a side note, I love how just putting a football jersey on makes it look like every one of those skiers should be in the terrain park waiting to hit rails.

Bigrock Ski Area – Maine
Concept: Get skiers on the mountain to #tebow_for_snow in the hopes that Ullr is a football fan.
Result: Some good community involvement, no backlash, just a simple idea to create some fun content. Skiers enjoyed participating and getting involved. Not necessarily a home run, but a clever idea.


Breckenridge Resort – Colorado
Concept: Combine two trends on the mountain – flash mobs and Tebowing.
Result: Not so good. When the resort announced this on their Facebook wall, 50+ comments followed, most of them less than excited about the idea. A lot of people participated, but it wasn’t the most popular on-mountain activity. Perhaps the combination of a worn out “flash mob” trend with the Tebow phenomenon was a little bit too much.


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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