Let’s talk about a video.

An 18 second long video shot on a phone.

This 18 second long video shot on a phone.

You may only see the view count above, so let me spell it out for you as I write this four days after it was shared.

• Likes: 1,634
• Shares: 191
• Comments: 90
• Views: 31,852

Now, let’s compare that to the average rates of the three previous videos posted to Stowe’s page:

• Avg Likes: 283
• Avg Shares: 59
• Avg Comments: 14
• Avg Views: 6,729

For those of you doing the math at home, that 5.7x as many likes, 3.2x as many shares, 6.4x as many comments, and 4.7x as many views.

So, again, let’s talk about this.

Funny What Happens
Is there a place for pro-level, inspirational marketing at resorts? Absolutely. But I hope this serves as a “funny what happens when we ditch the ski porn for a minute” moment of pause.

Especially when you look at some of the comments:

“Griffin Jeffrey, hopefully that will be Fiona soon!”

“My daughter did her 1st run at Stowe. The best ski school! She is now 9yo and skiing double black diamonds!”

“No fear…sheer confidence… How wonderful that must feel!”

“I remember the first time my son Robert Tomenchok was on skis…”

“I’m almost 58 and it still feels like this !!”

“Can hardly wait until Holden takes to the slopes and shows Mom and Dad a thing or two. It is a great time of the year.”

“I remember that feeling, come to think of it I have never lost it, there is nothing like skiing.”

“I remember my very first run.”

“Nick Corrado, this will be you!!!”

These aren’t your typical big mountain skiers or dub-flipping millennials, these are…wait for it…families.

Families that are new excited about getting to the point where they can take these now-refreshed memories of first days and first runs and pass them on as soon as possible to their next generation.

Powerful stuff.

Balance
I love what pro skiers to do inspire the masses and motivate a subset of the skiing population to progress.

But I am also regularly reminded that we need to bring up the volume of “normal people” content as well to create a stronger balance. Some of that can absolutely from pro skiers telling more of their stories, but some of it needs to come from people like you and me and Elam Kaufman (the skier in the vid and Alex Kaufman‘s son).

The skiing population is a diverse bunch, let’s make sure we’re talking to all of them. Great work Elam (and Alex) and Stowe.

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.