So, yeah, that’s not an actual award.

But it should be.

And if it were, the winner (at least based on the judging from this committee of one) would be the one, the only, Deer Valley.

Here’s the Thing
There are a ton of really smart Valentine’s Day promotions and messages that run each winter or just this winter. Among the 2020 list are things like:

• Free season pass when you book a wedding (Arizona Snowbowl)
• Mountain-top wedding ceremonies (Loveland)
• Stories of folks who met on the mountain (Seven Springs)

I love each of these for so many reasons. And if the category for this arbitrary not-actually-an-award were revenue or storytelling or traditions then, yeah, they’d be in the running.

But the theme I was looking for was that perfect combination of creativity and content. And living at that intersection was this series of images from Deer Valley.

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A post shared by Deer Valley Resort (@deervalleyresort) on Feb 14, 2020 at 9:42am PST

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A post shared by Deer Valley Resort (@deervalleyresort) on Feb 14, 2020 at 2:32pm PST

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A post shared by Deer Valley Resort (@deervalleyresort) on Feb 14, 2020 at 6:03pm PST

So what exactly are we looking at here? This, my dear friends, is the result of infrared photography captured by Ryan Berg.

Pretty clever, no?

Awesome content, no?

You’d have to imagine that someone saw Ryan’s original series…

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by // Ryan A. Berg (@ryan.berg.a) on Sep 4, 2019 at 10:42am PDT

…and instead of just thinking that the pink trees were nifty, saw a perfect opportunity for them to work at a resort on a certain day in February.

Such a great little campaign.

Kudos to Ryan and the Deer Valley team for pulling it off.

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.