Skipedia

Anecdotal evidence from UK ski tour operators is that this season has at last seen a halt in the decline in ski holidays sold. According to Crystal Holidays, the size of the UK market decreased by 25% from 1.2m holiday makers in 2007/08 to 0.9m in 2010/11. The Ski Club of Britain claimed a smaller but still significant fall from 1.3m to 1.0m. Market in modest recovery It does seem that the nadir has been reached and the market is now in a modest recovery. Based on feedback from operators, Skipedia believes the two main studies quote above will show a small increase in market size of 2-3% for the 2011/12 season. We should be mindful that this growth was principally driven by excellent early snow conditions, and not an economic recovery, which is evidently still to arrive. ‘Ski Holiday’ searches increase This graph below created by Google Insights For Search backs up a modest recovery.  It shows how the number of searches for ‘ski holidays’ in the UK has decreased steadily since 2007/08, but (although you have to look closely to see it) has increased slightly for the first time in four years. Austria gains on France Interestingly, as [...]

Visitors to San Francisco’s Montgomery Street Station have recently been treated to a unique viewing of one of Utah’s scenic icons, Delicate Arch. It’s all part of the Utah Office of Tourism‘s USD2.2m ‘Utah Life Elevated‘ advertising campaign. Utah Tourism’s advertising agency, Salt Lake City-based Struck, unveiled a one-of-a-kind outdoor advertising effort that focuses on bringing San Franciscans to Arches National Park. This great video shows how effective it was at engaging pedestrians, who stopped to take photos, scan QR codes and simple marvel at what they had just seen.

It wasn’t so long ago that Sunshine Village were the villains. After their epic social media fail in January 2011, there was a large amount of negativity attached to the brand. That certainly hasn’t all gone.  The Support Ski Patrol wronged by Sunshine Village Facebook page is still active and has almost 8000 fans. However, where once Sunshine Village simply took their Facebook page down to prevent their fans ‘engaging’, now they are celebrating them. Almost every day since March, they have been changing their Timeline Cover Photo to include the ‘Sunshiner of the Day’ – a great way to keep your fans engaged and feeling connected to the brand.

In our current social media led world, brands need to be continually monitoring what is being said about them online. Toy manufacturer, Mattel, recently did wonders for their own brand loyalty by responding to a parent-inspired Facebook page called ‘Beautiful and Bald Barbie!  Let’s see if we can get this made‘ for children who have lost their hair through illness or cancer. The page launched on 20 December 2011 and went viral.  Within days it had 2000 fans.  Now it has almost 160,000. In March 2012, Mattel announced that they would produce a bald version of the fashion doll.  It will not be sold in stores, but will be distributed to children’s hospitals next year. Mattel said that it made the “decision not to sell these dolls at retail stores and profit from them, but rather more directly and immediately get these into the hands of children who can most benefit from a play experience with these dolls.” By listening to what their customers have been saying about them, and – most importantly – responding, Mattel have generated a tremendous amount of brand loyalty.

At Skipedia we are always looking out for great practice on Facebook. STA Facebook app is one of the best This great competition app currently running on the STA Travel Facebook page is one of the best we’ve seen.   Developed in partnership with Tourism Australia, the campaign has been designed to increase youth travel to Australia. The app is nicely presented on their Facebook page, with a strong call to action on the app image, but it’s once you click through the fun starts, as you are welcomed by their ‘careers advisor’ Ned. Ned delivers great engagement It would be lovely if we could all invest in a design heavy campaign like this, but we’ve seen plenty of attempts that have cost enough, but failed completely. This works because it is incredibly ‘sticky’ (to use a phrase from the Noughties). The design is clear and the calls to action are obvious.  Ned is so engaging that you keep watching and ultimately you are almost compelled to ‘like’ the page. You never know, if we’re lucky, we might just win a working holiday to Oz…

Last week we highlighted some companies  breaking the official Facebook Cover Photo guidelines for Pages. With Facebook Timeline for Pages still only a few weeks old, it increasingly seems that their guidelines are unenforceable. We noticed two more dubious Cover Photos this week, from the ski areas of Sun Peaks and the Portes du Soleil: Does it actually matter? With an estimated 42 million Facebook pages already in place, of which 4 million are businesses (the others are public figures, movies, sports teams etc), how likely is it that a Cover Photo with a special offer or a call to action on it is likely to be spotted? Surely Facebook is too busy trying to get companies to do business on their website, rather than discourage them? Should you join in? It’s certainly advantageous to include your website address, or special offer on your Facebook Cover Photo. Timeline already makes a Facebook brand page more of a destination, so brand owners will want to make most of any visit to that page. We believe it’s inevitable that the Cover Photo will become a key – active – marketing tool.  However, for now, our advice would be to take the following [...]

‘Please Feed The Bra Tree’ That’s an attention grabbing line, isn’t it?  The bra tree in question sat beside a chair lift in Mount Norquay this winter and was part of a campaign by ‘Axe’ deodorants (more well known as the Lynx brand in the UK). The campaign also included cheeky chairlift safety bars and posters by chair lifts. Peter Machalek, Adbloc’s senior partner, commented “AXE loved that their target audience would spend over 7m minutes captive on a chairlift with the AXE message unavoidably in their faces.”  

Less than a month ago that Timeline became the standard format for brand pages on Facebook. When the new style was announced, we pointed out the key Timeline features. Last month we looked at a early adopters who had already converted to Timeline. We also looked at the UK’s largest ski company, Crystal Holidays, when they launched on Timeline. It’s still very early days for Timeline. And some companies are already pushing the boundaries by breaking Facebook’s guidelines for what the Timeline Cover photo can and cannot include: Cover images may not contain: Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website” Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends” Neilson Holidays This Cover Photo from Neilson Holidays went live today (27 April 2012) and contravenes the price information guideline. Mark Warner Holidays This offer went live a week ago.  It probably breaks guidelines on three counts, by including a percent discount, a price figure and you could also argue that [...]

Using hashtags on Twitter for promotions is still a new area that we have written about before.  So this recent Tweet Treat campaign by Domino’s Pizza impressed us. On offer was a great reason for followers to take part: cheaper pizza! The promotion, which ran from 0900 to 1100 on 5th March 2012, reduced the price of a Pepperoni Passion Pizza by one pence every time someone tweeted the hashtag #letsdolunch. The price dropped from £15.99 to £7.74, and Domino’s kept it at that price for four hours that day. A similar campaign also took place in Ireland the same day with the hashtag #pizzalunch.  This led to a drop in the price to €13.24 from the original €20.

Another campaign Skipedia liked from last season was from Thyon in Switzerland’s Quatre Vallees. Possibly inspired by Whistler’s Embedded campaign, Thyon took a more light-hearted approach to employ their own esquimau to live for 14 days in his own igloo on the mountain. The candidate was chosen by interview from a shortlist of 40 candidates. Once on the mountain, Pierre – the successful Eskimo – uploaded videos to YouTube and Facebook, pulling in tens of thousands of impressions.   He was also visited by skiers and snowboarders in his igloo every day, to see what was going on, and to enjoy the free ice-creams he handed out. Crucially, the Eskimo story was picked up by the television station TSR, earning a huge exposure for a relatively low cost campaign:  

Nude skiing isn’t something you see very often, so we at Skipedia liked this innovative campaign by the (Swiss) Portes du Soleil. The campaign was run via YouTube and a dedicated site - http://ski-nu.ch/. Once the video finished, users were invited to ‘participate’, taking them to the Portes du Soleil Facebook page. On arrival on the Facebook page, visitors had the chance to win prizes such as a private torchlit descent for 9 friends (see video below), equipment for four people and other unique or high value prizes.

So every time we produce one of these lists, it seems someone shows us up for lack of research. It’s true – we had never heard of Bukovel in Ukraine until a couple of weeks ago.  And to be honest, we didn’t even notice that Tirol has almost 100,000 Facebook fans. Then again, Tirol isn’t a ski resort.  You could even argue that it would be pushing it to describe it as a ski area, given that it’s not much smaller than the entire country of Switzerland.  It’s certainly not a ski region in the same way that the Portes du Soleil is. But heck, the only rules are the ones we are making up as we go along, so here’s the new chart… The Top 10 European Ski Areas on Facebook 1. Tirol, Austria – 92825 fans 2. Megeve, France - 79312 3. Portes du Soleil, France - 53705 4. Grand Valira, Andorra – 49810 5. Saalbach Hinterglemm, Austria - 49256 6. Der Dachstein (Schladming/Planai/Dachstein), Austria – 42456 7. Vallnord, Andorra – 37601 8. Are, Sweden – 37208 9. Ischgl, Austria – 35179 10. Bukovel, Ukraine – 34342 And for good measure (although I feel a can of worms opening)… The Top 10 European Ski Resorts on Facebook 1. Megeve, France - 79312 fans 2. Saalbach Hinterglemm, Austria - 49256 [...]

Going through our emails on the weekend , we came across a great piece of marketing from Neilson. The email outlined a special Easter Egg hunt competition – find the five Easter Eggs hidden on their website and win a £100 off voucher, plus 20 runners up prizes of Easter eggs. Why we liked this… 1. It was sent over the Easter weekend, when users were likely to have the time to take part 2. The structure of the competition forces users to have a look around the website, clicking on pages they might not have visited otherwise.  While there is a certain randomness to this, it does mean Neilson have more opportunity to present their product to visitors. 3. Everyone likes an Easter Egg hunt (and adults don’t get the chance to join in very often) 4.  Mmmm…chocolate!

When 1st April comes along we’re always looking out for good April Fools jokes in the media.  This year saw some that were more obvious than others (for example, not everyone realised this post was intended as a joke!) Sean Ryder being called in by the Tories to advise on class seemed so plausible…for a couple of seconds.   The Daily Mail also got into the spirit with their champagne tax. Another nice Fool was Google Street Roo – a chance to see Australia from a kangaroo’s point of view. In fact, Google are almost experts at this.  How about Chrome Multitask Mode – which gives you access to two mice at the same time? As for Google’s ‘Click-To-Teleport‘ extension for Chrome, allowing you to instantaneously teleport to an advertiser’s location, sadly that’s still in the future. Summer Skiing in Meribel? And I guess that’s the point.  We kind of want these stories to be true.  Which is why Merinet’s April Fool about summer skiing in Meribel was so convincing. Following ‘this winter’s heavy snowfall, Meribel has secured a sufficient snowpack that will allow summer skiing’.  The use of ‘reflective sheets‘ made it seem so plausible, even we had to think [...]

Following our recent article on Facebook Timelines already introduced by British tour operators, we were interested to see that the UK’s largest tour operator introduced their own Timeline yesterday. Crystal Holidays have been confident users of social media and have invested resources to ensure they have a strong social media presence.  So it was no surprise to see that they have spent a considerable amount of time curating their Timeline. The new Crystal Timeline The colourful Cover Image neatly connects their Profile Image to the snow using receding squares, plus there is another logo in the top right, making use of the valuable real estate available. In some respects, the additional logo is necessary, as the stylised Profile Image is not recognisable as the Crystal Ski logo on its own.  It also reminded me of something (*see bottom of page). Great use of Timeline Where Crystal’s Timeline succeeds is how well they have populated it with the history of the company. Since the company was founded in 1981, there are updates over 14 different years, including brochure covers and awards won. It gives a great feeling for the longevity, history and reliability of the brand. That Profile Image reminds me of something… [...]

After our post about the ski companies of 1984, we ran this item about Swans’ ski brochure from 1979/80. Of course we knew there were older brochures, and now thanks to John Ward at Erna Low, we think we’ve found the oldest – this marvelous example from 1948.   And of course, if you can beat this, then please mail us the evidence…

After our looks at the Top Ten Ski Resorts in France, Austria, Italy, Switzerland (and Scotland), we thought it might be interesting to see how they compare across counties: The Top 10 European Ski Resorts on Facebook 1. Megeve, France - 79312 fans 2. Portes du Soleil, France - 53705 3. Grand Valira, Andorra – 49810 4. Saalbach Hinterglemm, Austria - 49256 5. Der Dachstein (Schladming/Planai/Dachstein), Austria – 42456 6. Vallnord, Andorra – 37601 7. Are, Sweden – 37208 8. Ischgl, Austria – 35179 9. Bukovel, Ukraine – 34342 10. La Molina, Spain – 33597 How about those Pyrenean resorts? Clearly the Spanish/Andorran/Catalan skiers and boarders are into Facebook.  You probably wouldn’t consider La Molina,  Grand Valira and Vallnord as big resorts, but all three of these resorts in the Pyrenees come in the top ten. Bubbling under… Just outside the top ten sit Sierra Nevada, Val Thorens, Solden, Les Arcs, Tignes, Chamonix, Kitzbuhel and Switzerland’s top representative, Davos.  The top Italian resort, Madonna di Campiglio is in 21st position.

With the Facebook Timeline deadline for brand Pages coming up on 30 March 2012, we’ve taken a look at how twelve of the UK’s leading ski tour operators are using Timeline so far. The companies are not necessarily the twelve largest. Indeed the UK’s largest ski company - Crystal Ski - has still to make the switch to Timeline.  Also still to change are Mark Warner, Powder Byrne, Scott Dunn, Ski Beat, YSE and Zenith Holidays. Inghams Inghams‘ Cover Photo is not the most striking, but the date makes it clear that it’s recent (it was updated today – Mon 26 March).  It suggests that their plan may be to update the Cover Photo on a regular basis. Supertravel Supertravel have gone for an inoffensive, brochure-type shot of the Matterhorn.  Although they have converted to Timeline, the unused ‘About’ section (just below the Profile Image) is a wasted opportunity. Ski Total Ski Total‘s choice of Cover Photo ties in nicely with their logo and branding in the Profile Image. Esprit Holidays As one of the UK’s leading family ski companies, this image of children makes sense. We actually prefer their first Cover Photo, simply because you can see five clear versions of their logo [...]

With Facebook’s IPO coming up fast, the company is working hard to add on new revenue streams. Almost unnoticed during last month’s announcement that brand Pages would be converting to Timeline was Facebook’s new ‘Premium Offers’ for brands. Mike Hoefflinger, Director of Global Business Marketing of Facebook described Premium Offers as ‘the best way to get your stories in front of more people, more often’. Well, to paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Reach Generator If you have looked at your Facebook Insights, you’ll be aware that very few of your individual posts ‘reach’ all of your fans.  This may be to do with the time of your post, your Edgerank, or simply that your ‘fans’ have hidden your posts (how dare they?!). Facebook’s new ‘Reach Generator’ is a new product that guarantees that 75% of your fans will see your brand’s content.  According to Hoefflinger, during testing Ben & Jerry’s was able to double its total engagement. Log out ads While extra updates appearing in News Feeds are unlikely to be noticed by users, one innovation certainly will be.   From April in the US, when users log out, they will be presented with an ad as they leave. [...]

It all started with Old Spice.  They saw their sales double thanks to their infamous and innovative YouTube campaign in 2010. Surely you must have seen it?  Still, it’s always worth watching again… This campaign included creating individually tailored video answers to comments made online… Despite its incredible success, Old Spice raised the bar again when they introduced a new strapline ‘Smell is Power’, and a new style of ad, which was again at the cutting edge of innovation. This entertaining ad starts off for another brand entirely (Bounce is real brand, also owned by P&G), before Old Spice comes crashing in: With the bar raised this high, viral videos will never be the same again.  Innovation and out-of-the-box thinking is essential now to break through the clutter of material available. This clever advert is a massive step on from the standard style they previously used.  In just two weeks, it already has over 3.6 million views.  Take a look and see why: What is the secret of a viral video?  Sadly, that’s still a question that no one can answer with 100% certainty. But companies like Old Spice and the Dollar Shave Club are showing that when you do find [...]