Multi-channel Sales Campaign

This project was the first multi-channel advertising campaign the company had ever done. The purpose was to generate annual ski pass sales and bring awareness to the new sales strategy, in particular to the 50+ target group. It was released in the summer of 2021 after a year in production.

Project Background

The ski lift company conducts a sale of their annual ski passes 4 times a year, the main one being in September, as this one’s period of validity starts in early December for 1 year, in time for the winter season.

In 2019, the company introduced a unique feature of this sale process: the sale price would increase as the demand increased (dynamic pricing strategy). The sale started at midnight at a fairly low price and would increase over time as more people bought the pass.

The company struggled to get people online at midnight to buy the lower-tier priced pass, meaning the price would plateau for too long and revenues would stagnate until the next sale.

Two months into the start of my new role as Marketing Director, in September 2020, I pitched the board of directors an advertising campaign for the September sale of 2021.

Once the concept and the budget were signed off, I prepared a creative concept with my team, a media plan and a budget, along with a list of KPIs to measure the campaign’s success, which is detailed below.

Project Results

CHF 800,000 of revenue within the first 24 hours of release, and CHF 2 Mio in one month

Over 35,000 views on Facebook (the highest number ever achieved), 200 comments and 1,500 likes
Over 15,000 views on Instagram
Over 2,500 website visits in 24 hours
8 mentions on various national news platforms

Creative process

To solve this awareness issue, we had to make sure that the advertisement’s story and messaging were impactful. The process went as follows:

We started out with the creative concept, during which we identified that product awareness & understanding of the sales tactic was lacking in the customer age range of 50+. Since the 70s are considered the ski resort’s “golden era”, we decided to incorporate that into our concept. However, it was important to include the evolution that occurred since that time period, as it is reflected in the products we sell.

Once that idea was signed off, we proceeded to the pre-production phase, which included storyboarding, casting, fittings, camera tests, copywriting & media space booking. To make the experience as authentic as possible, we used a 16mm film camera that could only be found in a specific region in Switzerland. You can see the making-of video by clicking on the image on the right, and more imagery below.

Production happened in January 2021 in two days for budget and weather-related reasons.

The final product was sent out to various media platforms, including national television, and local partners & posted on social media. Most of the paid social media budget was dedicated to Facebook as it is the platform that is most used by our targeted age group.

See the full TV advertisement below.