Marketing Park City Skiing
Photography: Mark Maziarz
Guess what? By definition, every ski resort is going to have a mountain covered in snow, chairlifts to get you up, runs to get you down, and snowmakers to fill in the thin spots. That’s what ski resorts do, and telling a reader that’s what they’ll get at XYZ Mountain isn’t telling them anything. And those powder shots? Park City resort marketers laugh. If it snows after the groomers have headed to the barn and too much snow piles up on top of the corduroy, many out-of-state skiers complain about the lack of grooming while groaning at the thought of dealing with powder.
Over time, those in charge of marketing The Canyons, Park City Mountain and Deer Valley resorts have changed the message. “We’re not trying to market our attributes — that we have this many lifts and this many acres,” Deer Valley Director of Marketing Coleen Reardon explains. “We’re trying to market the emotional takeaway.”
At neighboring Park City Mountain Resort, Reardon’s counterpart, Krista Parry agrees. “You used to tout how much snowmaking you had and how many high-speed lifts you had, but these days if you don’t have those, you’re out of business.”
The Canyons Vice President of Brand Management Todd Burnette has found the same thing. “Our research shows us people in the East and the West think the skiing is great anywhere in the Rocky Mountains. They think the skiing’s great in Vail, and they think the skiing’s great in Park City. You’ve got to figure out the other triggers that are going to make them come stay with you.”
So what are Park City’s triggers? All three resorts do independent market research and tailor their advertising to what the research shows. Each works independently, not knowing what the other resort will come up with. And what did each discover this year?
It turns out each resort’s marketing promotes the same basic theme. At the center of each mountain’s marketing effort are kids and families. Park City Mountain Resort’s ads show families on pages that look like they’re from a scrapbook. The Canyons’ ads show kids in tree houses, at birthday parties, and jumping their bikes off homemade ramps. Deer Valley’s marquee print ad this season is about the only one that actually even shows a ski run, but it mostly shows a young girl, Natalie, (daughter of a Deer Valley employee) standing at the top of a run taking in the whole experience of being there.
Independently, each marketing director agrees that family experiences lie at the heart of appealing to potential visitors. “People are looking for experiences,” Parry explains. “I do focus groups with families, focus groups with moms (whom she says plan most ski vacations), and they all say it’s all about the experience. Park City is a great family destination because you have an authentic town. How many real authentic ski towns are out there? Our town was here before the resort was. It has a lot of history.”
For the second season, The Canyons is going with the tagline “The Ultimate Winter Playground.” It too promotes the family experience of skiing and snowboarding where there’s variety for everyone in the family, from powder stashes for dad to terrain parks for the kids, all with a mountainside village full of fun things to do after the ski day ends.
At Deer Valley, marketers evoke family feelings with lines like, “Remember the first time you caught snowflakes on your tongue?” And this one: “Here you can have a conversation with your teenager that doesn’t involve grades.”
“We try to get to the emotion of what the vacation means to them when they get home,” Reardon says. “We’re saying Deer Valley is warm and friendly: it’s an easy ski vacation as ski vacations go.”
Along those lines, all three strongly emphasize the ease of vacationing in Park City, which is so accessible to a major airport. This has been a staple of Utah ski advertising in general in the past, present and no doubt into the future, because as Parry says, “People are looking for vacations that are easy to get to. Where else can you get on a 7 a.m. flight on Friday morning from New York’s JFK, be here by 10 a.m., ski that entire day and then fly out on Sunday night for your three-day weekend?”
Don’t mistake, though, that all three resorts sell the exact same product. Each looks to exploit what sets them apart from the others. At Deer Valley, the obvious differentiation is the continuing ban on snowboarding. And in his 80th year now, Director of Skiing Stein Eriksen continues to be the face of Deer Valley and its image of refinement in all things related to skiing and customer service. At Park City Mountain Resort, the resort has gained fame for its snowboarding. The resort has, for the fourth year in a row, been given by a leading snowboard magazine the accolade for “Terrain Park of the Year.” And if Stein is the refined face of Deer Valley, the face of Park City is the famed “Flying Tomato,” Shaun White, the exuberant redhead who took the Torino Olympics by storm in the half pipe. Park City also touts its one-of-a-kind Town Lift, which connects the mountain to Main Street, and its Signature Five kids’ ski school program, which promises no more than five children in a ski class.
Meanwhile, at The Canyons, size matters. Marketers there continue to tout that it is the largest single lift-served resort in Utah. “Bigger isn’t always better,” Burnette admits, “but because we’re so big, it’s the variety of terrain we have.”
While Parry, Burnette and Reardon all have similar jobs in the same town, they’ve come to their work through different routes. Reardon has the most experience at the game, spending 15 years at Snowbird as a director of public relations, entertainment and special events. She’s been at Deer Valley for the past 13 years, first as communications manager and then marketing director.
Coloradoan Parry attended the University of Utah and then hooked up with a New York public relations firm that landed the job of publicizing the 2002 Olympic Torch Relay. Parry handled the torch publicity as runners carried it around the country, and soon after the Olympics left town, Park City Mountain Resort offered her a public relations position. This is now her second year in charge of marketing.
Burnette’s path is far different. Before marketing The Canyons, he worked for the NBA’s Houston Rockets, selling corporate sponsorships and ticket packages. “Selling season tickets to the Rockets is similar to selling season tickets to the ski resorts,” he laughs. “It’s really very similar — you’re fighting the battle for people’s discretionary income.” Burnette didn’t arrive a year and a half ago as a ski marketing novice, however. Before working for the Rockets, he spent six years in Park City marketing corporate sponsorships for the U.S. Ski Team.
All three marketing professionals sit on the marketing committee of the Park City Chamber/Bureau, which runs its own multi-million dollar campaign advertising “Three great resorts in one unique town.” And all three often work together at ski shows and on media trips designed to generate editorial copy. “The media all say, ‘Wow, we can’t believe you guys all come in here and meet with us together,’” Parry says. “We work really well together,” Reardon adds. “When we’re on media calls, we’ll do them together. It is really unique in the industry. We hear comments about it from media and tour operators.”
It’s the old rising tide theory. The rising tide of marketing and media publicity raises all three resorts. When a vacationer tries Park City for the first time, he’s likely to sample more than one resort. “We’re all looking for the same result,” Parry echoes. “We want more people to sample Park City as a town because we know if we get people here, they’re going to come back.”
“We’re not about taking shots at the other resorts,” Burnette adds. “It’s about why [customers] should come check us out. If we can get [visitors] to Park City, they’re going to try all three resorts.”
Which is not to say Reardon, Parry and Burnette want to share those visitors equally.
“If they’re here for a week, I’d rather have them ski five days at The Canyons, one at Deer Valley and one at Park City,” Burnette laughs. His counterparts would like to see the same pattern, but be the ones selling the five-day pass themselves!
Park City-based writer and television reporter Larry Warren has fallen for all of the marketing pitches, and has enjoyed wonderful family times at all three resorts since moving to town nearly three decades ago.
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