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Attracting more than 1.3 million visitors and tourists from November to April, the Town of Vail is widely known as one of the top winter destinations in North America. During the winter, visitors and tourists come to Vail primarily to snow ski, and also to experience the multitude of activities the resort offers from other winter sports, like snow shoeing, to other popular activities, such as massage, to some of the best boutique shopping anywhere. During this time, Vail thrives.
Summers in Colorado are just as incredible, if not more, than winters. Offering average temperatures in the seventies, Colorado summers present a unique variety of outdoor activities from kayaking, to mountain biking, to hiking, to so much more. However, historically, Vail attracts significantly fewer visitors and tourists because it is not as well known for its summer experience.
Business Problem
The Vail Marketing District and the Town of Vail approached Untraditional Marketing to leverage media opportunities to position Vail as a world-class summer destination. Through research, Untraditional Marketing pinpointed two distinct business problems.
First, research showed that one of Vail’s target audiences, Denver and the surrounding Front Range area, ranked Vail 8th among other mountain destinations in overall impression. Although research showed that Vail was their number one mountain travel destination and the primary mountain resort marketing them, this same target audience believed Vail was snobby, lacked activity and wasn’t fun. Secondarily, research highlighted that in destination markets, Vail did not have budgets to compete on national branding platforms.
Solution
Untraditional Marketing recommended that Vail create a very specific, focused event to reach the Denver and the surrounding Front Range area audiences. “Untraditional Marketing recommended that we create a dynamic environment to present to certain key audiences that our image was, in fact, down-to-earth, and simultaneously combat our “snobby” status by making fun of it,” said Frank Johnson, President of the Vail Chamber and Tourism Bureau. Untraditional Marketing created adult Big Wheel racing. This solution involved Colorado Front Range adults flying down the streets of Vail at over 21 mph on plastic tricycles designed for kids under 80 lbs.
For the destination market, Untraditional Marketing recommended Vail promotes summer to visiting tourists and visitors during their winter trip to Vail. This cross sell effort focused on informing Vail’s winter guest that summer is just as great as the winter product. “Untraditional Marketing created a multitude of street marketing programs to generate Vail Summer awareness to our top target market - its winter guest,” said Kelli McDonald of the Vail Marketing District. The project was labeled ‘Think Summer. Think Vail.’ and involved various aspects such as placing summer-thematic coasters in Vail bars throughout the winter season, holding fly fishing classes by lift lines, putting clinics on the ski mountain, and hosting summer activity expos and parties in the dead of winter.
Given that Dallas was one of the two primary selected media targets alongside Denver, Untraditional Marketing also approached Dallas media outlets to create unique partner promotions ultimately highlighting Vail’s summer products and direct air service to Vail.. “One of the most brilliant things that Untraditional Marketing did for Vail Summer is creatively and efficiently utilize our media dollars to craft unique partner advertising packages,” said McDonald. Untraditional Marketing designed these packages to combine with third party advertisers ultimately, to increase media buys for the media outlets and generate additional exposure in the Dallas market for Vail.
Payoff
“The ‘Think Summer. Think Vail.’ campaign is a creative solution to solve our summer business problem in a dynamic and grassroots environment with our most critical audiences. We’ve already begun to see an amazing difference.” The first year of the event proved to be an enormous successes with a complete sell-out of Big Wheel teams and over 5,000 watching the Big Wheel finals. Big Wheel was also leveraged heavily with Denver radio stations that publicized the event for weeks leading up to the race.
The second year after the Big Wheel promotion was introduced, research showed that 24% of Vail’s target market, that attended the event, changed their opinion of Vail from a negative viewpoint to a positive. Almost 1,000 customers, from this target audience, now consider Vail one of their favorite summer destinations because of Big Wheel racing. Today, research indicates the average Front Range summer customer spends $142 per day and travels to a mountain resort an average of 5.1 days a summer generating nearly $750,000 of additional potential incremental income to Vail. Further, the media-leveraging program has resulted in almost $250,000 of new media value for Vail in its prime target markets with a minimal investment. “From working with Untraditional Marketing, I’ve learned that you don’t necessarily need more money like most people think you do. You just need an efficient, creative solution. And, that’s what we’ve gotten from Untraditional Marketing.”
For additional information on Untraditional Marketing and/or its
business successes, please visit www.untraditional.com or contact
Joel Heath at 970.926.4799.
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