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« Previous Story | The Industry Report Home Page | Next Story » The Young And The Restless: Larsen Represents 'New Guard' Of MarketersBy Craig Altschul  Brad Larsen is a 27-year-old Gen-Xer from Wisconsin who couldn't get a job pushing a lift uphill a year ago. Now, just 12 months later, he's the poster child for The Young and The Restless after the NSAA convention in the Arizona desert last month. He picked up top awards in customer service and marketing innovation on behalf of a small, venerable ski hill in Minnesota, Welch Village. He's a ski and snowboard brat, having nurtured his turns growing up in Wisconsin and heading to Colorado for ski vacations ("I didn't even know they skied in the East."). He's a graduate of the University of Wisconsin with a major in finance. Yet, it took three years of job rejections and working around the industry's periphery to finally land. "I picked up and moved to Lake Tahoe in 2002 and I applied for jobs at Squaw Valley, Alpine Meadows, Homewood, twice at Northstar, and the best I could ever get was making snow part-time at Diamond Peak," he told The Industry Report. He survived by working as a sales manager with some marketing responsibilities at the Best Western in Truckee. He finally tossed in the snow shovel and came back to the heartland last year. Had things changed? "No, not at all. I applied at all the urban ski areas around the Twin Cities like Highland Hills, Buck Hill, Sugar, Alpine. I really wanted to work in marketing, but I'd have taken anything." Finally, someone listened: Leigh Nelson, the pioneering ski area operator at Welch Village. "I don't know what Leigh saw, but I suspect it was that I was determined to get into the industry. Maybe it was the stick-to-itiveness of a door-to-door salesman or maybe just stupidity. But, he hired me as his marketing director." Actually, it was all of that and more. "Brad had done his homework when he came and saw me," Nelson told The Industry Report. "He'd gone to the SIA Show to learn about that end of the business and even got himself on Lake Tahoe's Olympic Committee that was preparing a bid for the future while he was working for a local lodge. He'd gone to our competition, but they all told him they weren't hiring until fall. I told him if he didn't mind doing some concrete work for a month or so, I'd start him right away. He's young, enthusiastic, and has very good Internet technical skills. I'm very pleased." Fast forward to the Scottsdale Princess in Arizona where Welch Village received NSAA's first-ever Customer Service Award for a simple, but effective, incentive rewards program. Dubbed Welch Referrals, all ski area employees were given referral cards to be handed out to guests. Nelson created the concept several years ago and Larsen push it hard. Each card offered a $5 discount on lift tickets, rentals, or lessons. Targets were beginners, those who had left the sport, and infrequent visitors. "It works because our employees began to feel they were ambassadors for the resort," Larsen said. "It also cut down on comp ticket abuse for friends and others since employees just gave out the discount card. After all, even friends could be important. It didn't cost us anything and more than 500 cards were redeemed." Welch also picked up one of eight national NSAA awards to ski areas that used innovative programs to promote safety during the trade association's National Safety Week. Welch won for the best terrain park safety program. The bottom line - the one that counts most for all ski area marketers who want to keep their jobs - showed that Welch Village was up 6 percent in skier visits during a not-so-great snow year, and had the best revenue figures in its long history. Welch's Midwest competitors apparently didn't fare as well. How did Larsen and Welch Village do it? "We just did simple things. Skiers and snowboarders in an urban area are a fairly close-knit group. They know what's going on. We tried some new and different things. Marketing is extremely challenging when there is just a small budget behind it." Advertising? "Nope, that's dead. It just doesn't work anymore. There's just not enough money to get above the noise out there. Welch had been advertising and our competitors do it, but we stopped this year." Larsen's mantra is "new and different." He is convinced "people really only notice new concepts and ideas." One of the "simple things" Larsen tried at Welch was a program called Passpoints. "It's really simple. Every time you ski, you get a point. Skiers or snowboarders can track their progress online. The person that won this year had 89 passpoints and picked up some good prizes. The ski area was open 120 days. "It's different in an urban resort. Most of our market is either in school or working during the week, so we normally just get them on weekends," Larsen said. He introduced the Night Club Pass for $99 to encourage weeknight business. Welch is about a 40-minute drive from Minneapolis or Rochester, so some encouragement was needed. The result was a 50 percent increase in pass sales from 3,000 the year before to 4,500 this year. Larsen replaced traditional advertising by making the Web site (www.welchvillage.com) come alive, e-mailing ski and snowboard shops, and using other non-traditional ways of getting the word out. "Look, the Millenniums are the largest demographic ever and we've got to reach them with messages that challenge the adventure-seeker in them. They see the X Games on TV and want to do that." He thinks too many marketing messages are about "price and newly paved parking lots. They want to see the cliff jumpers and postcard powder. They're addicted to adventure. "I'd like to think a changing of the marketing guard is coming," he said. "Young people have to be our focus. A 50-year-old marketing person just can't talk to a 12-year-old. The young marketers are raising the bar. Look at Mountain High in Southern California where John McColly has pushed the limit by marketing one giant terrain park. Several Midwest areas have young marketers. Look at Mt. Bohemia where the lure is extreme skiing." He says he has the highest respect for those industry pioneers, like Welch's Nelson. "We owe everything to those people. My owner cut the trails with his own chain saw. But, now it's up to our generation." Larsen doesn't have much use for marketing to the boomers, either. "The last boomer is going to buy a second home in 2013 and that market will just collapse from there." He's not alone in his thinking. Tom Taylor, editor of Inside Radio, told the Associated Press last week after New York radio station WCBS-FM - the original home of doo wop - abandoned the "oldies" format after 33 years: "Youth must be served...older Americans aren't important unless you're selling Craftmatic beds." Larsen has a dream of operating his own ski resort some day. Meanwhile, he's savoring the NSAA awards. For a guy nobody would hire, he tags it just right: "It was sweet revenge." « Previous Story | The Industry Report Home Page | Next Story » |
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