Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Feature - Marketing Togther

Strength through numbers

In a post-Sept. 11 world Tourism Whistler and Whistler-Blackcomb have found new efficiencies through working together

Take your basic big mountain skier from, say, Vancouver. Add an against-the-grain boarder from California, a Seattle family on a winter vacation, a couple from Toronto looking to spend a weekend at a spa, and a group of once-a-year skiers from England. It’s a diverse spectrum of people, but somehow they all find what they are looking for in Whistler.

To those who live here or have visited previously, that may not be surprising. But getting the word out to people in California, England, Toronto and Seattle that they can all have the type of vacation they are seeking in Whistler is a more daunting challenge. It involves messaging, partnerships, strategic plans, leveraging dollars – marketing-speak for convincing people around the world that Whistler is where they should spend their time and money.

In the period since Sept. 11, 2001 that challenge has increased. The airline industry has contracted and the economy has slowed. The response, locally, has been a new level of partnership between Whistler’s main marketing forces, Tourism Whistler and Whistler-Blackcomb.

"Last year after 9/11, that was a real turning point in terms of co-operation," says Stuart Rempel, vice president of marketing and sales for Whistler-Blackcomb. "We all realized very quickly we needed to work very closely together, and at the end of the year we ended up having a year that turned out to be quite a success in spite of the situation. We definitely gained market share last year as a resort, and everyone in the resort – the properties, restaurants, stores – all benefited."

"Our regional business was banner," adds Barrett Fisher, vice president marketing strategy and business development for Tourism Whistler.

While a rapid response, co-operative effort between September and the start of the ski season turned what many feared was going to be a dismal winter into a very good season last year, a cynic might ask what Tourism Whistler and Whistler-Blackcomb were doing prior to Sept. 11.

"I think we’ve always had a level of co-operation," says Fisher. "What we’ve tried to do is elevate that, recognizing as the marketplace becomes more and more competitive, recognizing all the different conditions going on in the marketplace – short-term bookings, the millennium, Sept. 11 – all the periodic challenges, we have to be much more focused, much more creative with our resources, ensuring that we’re leveraging every opportunity that we can, not only within the resort but also externally."

The approach to marketing is similar to what businesses, the municipality, Whistler-Blackcomb and Tourism Whistler have done with the One Whistler group: get together to present a seamless experience for the visitor.

"The focus should be that it’s one resort, it’s one site, it’s one sound," says Fisher. "And rather than having Whistler-Blackcomb out with one message here and Tourism Whistler with another message here, and potentially the accommodation sector (with another message), all of the different partners in the resort are coming together."

After the post-Sept. 11 marketing plans were in place, Tourism Whistler – whose members include nearly all the hotel and accommodation properties as well as all the retail stores in the village – and Whistler-Blackcomb began holding day-long strategy sessions. Marketing teams, public relations teams, conference sales teams all began comparing initiatives and looking at how they could complement each other and pool their dollars to go further. They also found areas where it made sense to go after different markets, but in a planned, co-ordinated way that would complement each other’s efforts and benefit the resort.

"For example, Tourism Whistler undertook some really comprehensive summer positioning and winter positioning research where we were looking at our target segment and looking at who’s coming to Whistler now, what’s the messaging we’re looking at, how does that fit in with our whole branding, our positioning our competitive set," says Fisher.

"Simultaneously, Whistler-Blackcomb was doing some in-depth research with their customer database and what we did was we shared our information, our messaging. And the good thing is we have really consistent messaging."

"I think the key point is the research and an understanding of what our brand is and what people think of the brand and then trying to align our objectives," says Rempel. "And we did find our objectives were quite aligned. The resort has a strategic advantage against a lot of other tourism destinations in that we have the strength of Tourism Whistler and its members."

"We’re different but we try to leverage the similarities," Fisher says slipping into marketing-speak. "So you might see a Whistler-Blackcomb advertisement in a publication like Freeze magazine that has a more youthful approach. You might see a Tourism Whistler message in Ski or Ski Canada magazine that maybe has a mid-market approach. We might be going after slightly different demographics with slightly different messaging but we believe that when we come back to the overall resort brand that our core messaging is consistent and that we’re ensuring that we’re hitting home with key points."

"It’s leveraged to a huge extent, more than we could ever do on our own," Rempel adds as the terminology begins to pick up. "What’s great about the co-operation is that instead of the leveraging being fragmented, we take more of a special interest market – we do a lot in the regional market, and we also do the special interest publications like Transworld, Freeze. We work with the filmmakers like Warren Miller, Matchstick, and a lot of very special interests amongst the core aficionado skiers and snowboarders. Whereas Tourism Whistler, their message is a similar message but it’s broader and more horizontal media – Ski, Skiing, Ski Canada, and also some of the leisure magazines…"

"We’ll go into a slightly broader reach with Travel & Leisure or Condé Nast or Outside magazines," Fisher says of Tourism Whistler, "just to ensure that we’re looking at sports enthusiasts, we’re looking at active travellers, and that we’re expanding the awareness level, because part of our role, our responsibility is to grow the brand. So the research that we did in understanding that branding for the resort, we’ll continue to grow that branding but, as we said with our core messages, it’s important that the leveraging of that is consistent and there’s no point in fragmenting it."

So, the dollars are leveraged, the core message is consistent, the branding is in place, the message is getting out there… but what’s the message? What image does Whistler present to the world?

"There’s no doubt that the two-mountains, pedestrian-village-at-their-base visual is the core essence of our winter and summer positioning," says Fisher.

Within that core message additional themes can be built, such as the big mountain experience, the terrain parks, and even the luxury provided by spas, hotels and restaurants in the village.

Both Tourism Whistler and Whistler-Blackcomb use Wasserman and Partners as their advertising agency, which brings continuity to their messaging, although teams within Wasserman work independently on campaigns for Tourism Whistler and Whistler-Blackcomb. Ad campaigns for Whistler-Blackcomb generally focus more on the mountain experience and less on the village or overall resort, but Wasserman understands the needs of both clients, as well as understanding the resort.

So besides Ski and Transworld Snowboarding and Condé Nast, how do Tourism Whistler and Whistler-Blackcomb get their message out? Depends on who they are trying to reach.

"On the image side, Warren Miller Films are distributed in the U.K. through a company called Black Diamond," says Rempel. "We buy ads in their magazine that goes with the films and Tourism Whistler distributes DVDs about all the Whistler segments in the films through Black Diamond. It’s a two-pronged effort."

"We’ve got a variety of different strategies, partnerships between the mountains and ourselves," Fisher says. "The greatest growth for overseas markets is through tour operator partners. We target key operators in each targeted market and use co-op funds (with the Canadian Tourism Commission and Tourism B.C.) to create consumer-direct programs."

In the U.K., for example, there are close to one million skiers and boarders, but they all have to travel somewhere to practise their sport. Ad campaigns in the Daily Mail and the Good Ski Guide and a presence at the London Ski Show are effective ways to reach the skiers and boarders directly. A consortium of Whistler people, including hotel representatives, Tourism Whistler representatives and Whistler-Blackcomb staff, have been travelling to ski and tourism shows around the world for years. The impact for the resort is much greater than if individual properties or businesses went to shows representing only themselves.

But once the skiers’ and boarders’ interests are piqued there has to be a system in place to get them to Whistler. That’s where the tour operators come in. Educating tour operators about Whistler and building relationships with them are critical. Receptions for tour operators, as well as travel media, are a big part of the equation.

"It keeps coming back that, ‘wow, those Whistler people really care’," Fisher said. "At the end of the day, the marketing is important, but in overseas markets if you have the loyalties of some of these distribution channels and show that you care and have got relationships built – even when our co-op dollars sometimes aren’t at the level of our competitors – we’ve built that opportunity where they’re saying ‘absolutely, Whistler’s important to us.’"

After last season, when visits from the U.K. were flat and Australian numbers were down, early season trends are for significant increases from both those countries this winter.

"From an overseas perspective, we’re gaining share over our U.S. competitors," says Fisher. "We believe that it was showing that continuity in the marketplace, not pulling out when the going got tough (last year), showing the relationships we are still there and continuing to nurture the opportunities so that when that pent up demand is needing to be expressed Whistler sees that first opportunity. I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing of Australia right now."

There are other areas Tourism Whistler and Whistler-Blackcomb have combined efforts – often with other partners – to generate business, including through corporate partnerships or sponsors, building conference business and organizing special events, the latter of which will be aided by the formation of a Whistler Events Bureau. But it all comes back to the realization that as strong as one organization is on its own, they can do more together.

"My business analogy is that when you start out in business usually you’re an entrepreneur, and what I call dependent – you don’t have any resources in place," says Fisher. "And then you go to that next step where you’re a full organization and you’re independent, and that’s often where people stop.

"But it’s then going to that next step, what I would call interdependent, and that’s having the confidence to know that you’re independent but your interdependence is actually going to make you even stronger. So you’re not taking a step back to that dependent stage but interdependence recognizes that while you’re strong you can gain on the strength of others.

"So I think as a resort that’s why we’re coming into our own, recognizing that as we mature as a resort externally to the world we also have matured internally in our relationships and how we actually grow the business and work together and co-operate."

And that’s why the California boarder, the Seattle family, the Toronto couple, the English ski group and all the others keep coming to Whistler.



Comments