No sooner had closing dates coming to view did resorts start to push season pass sales for next season. The strategies varied – ski free for the rest of the season, lock in the lowest price, extra benefits – but Vail Resorts tried a different approach: piggyback on a style of content that was already popular to promote the reasons to buy an Epic Pass now rather than later.

The style they chose came from none other than Some-E-Cards. Here are a few examples:

Pretty simple formula: a plain background (usually a pastel-ish color), a line drawing of someone / thing, a witty saying. Following that same recipe, Vail Resorts came up with these to promote the buddy tickets that come with your early pass purchase:

Did They Work?
Each of these were shared on the Snow.com Facebook page which, as social media is so talented at doing, gave a quick glimpse into the how skiers liked or disliked the attempt.

The first version snagged 27 likes and a negative comment. The second was liked 20 times, had one share and a handful of comments. The last image was liked 41 times, shared 12 times, and also garnered a list of comments.

Overall, the reception wasn’t super friendly but I think the pessimism was aimed mainly at the buddy tickets or pass prices, not the format.

Piggybacking
Piggybacking on a format like Some-E-Cards has the potential to look a little bit like a social media / meme version of bait-and-switch (you click expecting to see a funny card from a specific site but get an ad instead from you instead), but the tone was casual enough that I doubt people got that impression.

A clever move that did fairly well in the social media arena. With a different selling point it might have done even better.

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.