Colorado Ski Country USA (CSCUSA) is the not-for-profit trade association representing over 20 ski & snowboard resorts in the state. It is the global voice of Colorado’s ski industry and the association’s primary functions are concentrated on marketing, public policy and public relations.
Scope
- We’ve represented CSCUSA since 2006 after being appointed to increase and broaden the type of coverage achieved for the ski areas to add lifestyle over and above just ski media.
- Our initial strategy involved carrying out a thorough media audit with 15 press to gauge perceptions about skiing in Colorado, understand how they like to engage and what resorts should focus on. This was a helpful stake in the ground to then build from.
- Our scope of engagement was to create a CSC-UK Information office – a one stop shop for handling media enquiries – along with providing ski show support, the set-up of press briefings, organisation and attendance of Colorado visits. Over the years, we have organised media dinners, reader competitions, worked at ski/adventure film festivals, organised sponsored supplements and so on.
Results
- For the first few seasons, we targeted lifestyle press working on angles to appeal to them and inviting writers on press trips. Arena, Conde Nast Traveller, Horse & Hound, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Health, Stuff and T3 all attended.
- We worked closely with GQ to generate coverage. We created a bespoke tour for them, organised GQ’s winter fashion to be shot in Telluride along with a travel advertorial.
- Today, we continue to focus on lifestyle media broadening our scope to include women’s lifestyles magazines as well as targeting family focused magazines. We invested in creating a 38 page supplement with Family Traveller. Click here to read it.
- All national newspapers and mainstream ski titles have visited. This has been a mix of individually created trips and group press visits which typically have a fun, topical and interesting theme such as:
- Things to do before you die in a ski resort;
- Tour of all eight Colorado gems – smaller ski slopes which don’t have lodging but offer fabulous queue-free skiing;
- Off the beaten track tour of resorts most Brits don’t know about like Telluride, Silverton and Crested Butte;
- We’ve even rented a 27ft RV and spent a week living in it with three journalists from The Times, Fall Line and White Lines driving them to various more remote Colorado resorts and “camping” in the vehicle.
The Grand Tour
- We approached the producers of the Grand Tour, WH Chump & Sons, and invited Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond to come to Telluride. This happened in April 2017 after the resort agreed to allow the crew full mountain access after the slopes had closed. The segment in Colorado screened in 2018. Click here to watch it. To date, this clip alone has had 633,000 views with the show a huge international success with an estimated 350 million viewers.
- To see highlights of coverage generated per resort click on the links below: