How to have a standout ski season
This article was originally published in the January 2024 issue of Ski Area Management Magazine:
How to keep or grow your brand’s position in a market of like competitors.
For all ski areas, staying ahead of trends with your mountain’s image and message is vital. Serving up the same old ideas makes a brand easy to ignore.
Clearly articulating what you offer and delivering on that promise in a design that turns heads will get your sticker on the helmet, so to speak. It takes effort to reach that point, continued effort to maintain it, and keen awareness to know when change—subtle or dramatic—is needed to keep or grow your brand’s position in the marketplace.
So, if you don’t stand out, where do you stand? How much attention should be paid to brand? Are there ways to stay current and still embrace legacy? When will you know it’s time for a change? And does it really matter?
ORDA destinations used facility improvements as a reason to update their system of logos.
Sense of Place
So, where to start? Remember that ski areas are variations on a theme. For the most part, they’re mountains with trails, uphill transport, and a lodge. Most offer lessons, host a race league, and celebrate spring with a pond skim.
That homogenized depiction might be an oversimplification to an industry insider, but to many potential guests, the question, “What makes one mountain different from another?” is a legitimate one. Properties must communicate their reason for being, or what a traveler can look forward to upon arrival.
Setting the broad brush aside, some resorts offer night skiing, some have waterparks, others trade on vertical and lean toward a no-frills approach. Still others bring the aprиs scene into sharp focus with a commitment to live music and amenities. Cultivating a brand that celebrates your unique offerings makes it easier for consumers to decide where to spend their time and treasure.
So, how do you represent your place? What conversation are you starting with newcomers? How are you celebrating a sense of place with regulars?
Get to the Point
It takes just seconds (seven, actually) for a consumer to decide: “Is this for me? Does this ski area match my vibe?” Therefore, decisions about design—including color choices, typography selection, and overall look-and-feel—need to be carefully considered. It can be challenging to visually encapsulate the essence of a destination. But when those elements have been established, the identity should be used authoritatively.
Short attention spans dictate that the communication must be brief, simple, and declarative. Branded elements that define a place, set expectations, and are easy to remember set the stage for consistent communication and repeat impressions. A well-crafted brand should attract guests and inspire employees with the same turn of phrase.
Rebrand vs. Redesign vs. Update
There comes a time when change is needed, but how deep does the change need to go?
A rebrand will often involve a complete change in style and execution of typography, iconography, voice, and color palette—extending past design updates into communication pillars. Maybe the resort is targeting a new demographic or is making sustainability a priority in outbound messaging. A rebrand can serve to systemize that strategy from media blitz to phone scripts.
A redesign addresses the graphic components of communication, putting a new face on the place. The changes are largely visual in nature, or maybe at the campaign level. Underlying strategy, communication pillars, and messaging goals might remain unchanged.
An update usually involves changes to a lesser degree, and is often undertaken because design elements look dated, which translates to a bland consumer experience. An update might keep certain elements of a design, while tweaking other components (color, for example). These days, it’s common to update a brand identity to be responsive to digital spaces.
If your design is so timeless that it can be classified in the evergreen category, congrats. You’ve been around for a while, because nothing new has that level of appeal, and people who frequent your resort are in search of nostalgia.
When to Rebrand
Change can be tough. And a brand overhaul is a big commitment for everyone involved: ownership, management, employees, and guests (who are sometimes left out, but shouldn’t be). The process is time consuming, and the resulting change can be expensive to implement—with brand impressions on property, from cloth napkins to pickup trucks and signage, plus digital channels.
Public reaction can be difficult to predict as well. Will a rebrand be well-received? Or will there be blowback?
There’s a lot to think about, but here are a few reasons for a ski area to consider an evolution:
The name or branding reflects poorly on the destination, or an expansion changes the offering.
The logo looks outdated. The brand elements are complicated to use. The design is not responsive to the digital space.
Public engagement is low. Event attendance, social interactions, and merch sales can all point to a boring interaction for consumers.
A leadership change or merger resulted in a shift in personality or philosophy.
Poor public opinion. Sometimes a change in communication helps to reframe negative perceptions about the current brand.
Market share and attention. If earned media opportunities have fallen off, it could pay off to make some noise, stand out, and be different.
Examples of recent ski industry rebrands, all of which included changes to an established brand’s name, iconography, typography, and color palette.
Time to Redesign or Update?
Redesign: Brand representation in outbound marketing tends to include the most recent iteration of identity. On-property, however, things like signage, guest communications, and even small impressions like vehicle graphics, can stretch over several years of implementation, and small adjustments in delivery can dilute brand consistency. If your mountain is starting to look like a time capsule, a fresh redesign might be a wise investment.
Also, pay attention to competitors, equipment manufacturers, and gear and fashion retailers: How does your logo look next to the brands that often surround it? If it stands out for the wrong reasons, consider a redesign.
Significant upgrades, expansions, or new amenities can also call for a redesign—or an extension of the current identity.
Update: Fonts, colors, and design styles all fall out of fashion, not unlike ski jackets. Sometimes an update can simply be a new approach to messaging, a new positioning statement, or a new stoke-generating turn of phrase. An update might mean a revision to certain parts of your identity: same iconography but a new color, or different typeface with the same icon.
It is also a good way to trial a future brand evolution. Public commentary can help inform your next steps. Just remember that some guests will resist change, and you can’t please everyone, regardless of how kickass your update is.
Big Snow in Michigan’s UP became Snowriver Mountain Resort as part of a strategy put in place by new ownership.
Tap Your Fans
Creative direction is equal parts data and gut. How do you know you’re saying the right thing? Analytics can tell part of the story, but if you want the straight dope about your brand, ask the people who matter. Stakeholders and passionate supporters are usually happy to share what they think about the places they love, and that’s valuable, useful feedback.
This was the case last season at Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe in Nevada, where leadership surveyed guests and employees about recent brand updates, and the efficacy of the mountain’s outbound marketing efforts.
General manager Greg Gavrilets says participants were asked questions like: “Who are you?” “What does Mt. Rose mean to you?” and “Why do you come here?” In addition, stakeholders and 10 managers ranging in age and gender, selected by Gavrilets, were also interviewed. The 1,600 responses provided a community snapshot that will inform future marketing.
“A lot of brands don’t involve stakeholders and employees and community, so you get a mismatched message of who they are and who they think they are,” says Gavrilets.
Gavrilets says the exercise did more than just help to inform a clear and concise marketing strategy: it helped define the resort’s mission and personality. Through the branding exercise, Mt. Rose was able to establish values, pillars, and messaging, as well as a new mission statement that reflects what the resort learned.
With data in hand—likes and dislikes, hopes and wishes, compliments and complaints—it can be easier to craft a look and message that will matter. It’s important to leave any cognitive bias out of the process, and involve different perspectives, genders, races, and ability levels in the development of your brand.
Asking stakeholders, or regulars, to weigh in on direction or priorities is not the same as crowdsourcing, design by committee, or testing a strategy. It reveals what’s important, but then you still have to distill the info and enact the changes.
Research, versioning, and concepts—many unused—listen out in the writer’s room during a name storming session.
A Good Reason
The Lake Placid, N.Y.-based Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) oversees Gore, Whiteface, and Belleayre ski areas as well as Mt. Van Hoevenberg Nordic center, the Olympic Center, and the Olympic Jumping Complex. When ORDA made huge investments to modernize and upgrade the facilities in recent years, it decided—for the first time ever—to create distinct logos to individually represent each of its Olympic Legacy Sites: the Olympic Center, the Olympic Jumping Complex, Mt. Van Hoevenberg, and Whiteface. Previously, they’d all fallen under the same logo used by ORDA depicting a single mountain and an Olympic flame.
These competitive venues had been on the world’s stage since they played host to the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympic Games, so their identities were well-known and loved. All changes had to be carefully considered to create a sense of place.
Detailed depictions of the thought process behind the new logos can be found on ORDA’s website. The point to make here is that ORDA piggybacked major changes to how its sites are branded onto major physical changes to those sites. It leveraged the opportunity to introduce new looks that represent the new life and energy injected into the sites.
Defined Through Brand
Your brand should extend from the top of the ticket-sales funnel to on-property installations, from website to billboard, and from season pass to recycling can. Social media interactions, merchandise and staff conversations should all work to forward your ski area’s particular feel.
Brand defines the experience and creates a distinction between competitors. It serves as an identifier, and a conversation starter. Your mark and your message should be every bit as big as your mountain.