by Craig Gilbert | [email protected]
Marmot Basin was looking to get more people slip sliding away on their slopes, so they found a way to cut the cost in half. Sounds simple enough, right? Exactly right. The marketing team at Jasper’s ski and snowboard destination knocked it so far out of the park with their Marmot Escape Card last season it could be seen from space, or at least high enough over Alberta that their peers in the province’s tourism industry took notice. They won the top tier marketing excellence award ($50,000+) at the Alto Awards at the 17th annual Travel Alberta Industry Conference in Banff last month. Brian Rode, Marmot’s vice president of marketing, told the Fitzhugh on the way back from the ceremony last week that his team was looking for a new program that would keep people coming to the mountains despite the rocky state of the economy. There’s a lot more to it than simply offering half price lift tickets to skiers and snowboarders who shell out $75 for an Escape Card membership, but the key to its success was the simplicity presented to the client. It’s easy sometimes to make things complex, but it’s fairly complex sometimes to make things simple,” Rode said. “Just offer half price lift tickets, no blackouts, valid every single day all season long. That’s really easy to understand.” Marmot partnered with local hotels who rang up decent discounts on the weekend and up to half-off mindblowers mid-week throughout the ski season, and with Edmonton’s four active ski areas who honoured the card there as well. “It was a true partnership, between Marmot Basin, the Edmonton ski areas and the Jasper hotels and that’s what really made it impactful for skiers especially in the city,” he said. “We found a number of people that bought the card used it at the Edmonton ski areas long before they made it to the mountains, so it worked for everybody.” He said the initial reaction as seen through chatter on social media included posts like ‘is this for real?’ and ‘what’s the catch?’ with their local pals or other friends responding, ‘I checked it out, it’s legit.’ They got the word out with a robust multi-pronged marketing program, including everything from billboards to newspapers, television and radio. Rode heaped credit on April Callow, the ski hill’s former longtime graphic designer for shaping what the whole program looked like, and on the company’s president, Dave Gibson, for taking the idea to the stakeholders and selling it - after keeping Rode on tenterhooks for about 60 silent seconds in his office while he processed the pitch, of course. “They took a risk on this,” Rode said. “This is their money we’re dealing with, and they supported it. We wouldn’t have been able to go ahead with it without their support. It took the whole team to take this idea and implement and execute it well and service the customers when they come. It was a lot of work.” Subhead: Powering down Tourism Jasper may not be visible from space, but the team members there, including general manager James Jackson and veteran marketing manager Myriam Bolduc, are more concerned with the vice versa. They were in Banff, too, to receive the Tourism Event or Festival award for the Dark Sky Festival, which just wrapped up its seventh.
