The NSAA Marketing Awards are presented annually to ski resorts across the country for their successful sales & marketing programs that help grow the sports of skiing and snowboarding.  These awards are designed to benefit the entire industry by raising overall marketing standards and promoting sustained growth of the industry. The awards recognize the best in ski area marketing campaigns.

Congratulations to the 2020 Marketing Award Winners

Best Social Media Campaign
Mountain Creek Resort, New Jersey
Mountain Creek deployed an impressive mix of discipline and creativity across its social media campaign featuring a series of timely pop culture references, memes and videos that tied back to the brand and set of well-defined guidelines. The ski area has set themselves up to learn and lead with this social media game plan, with overall metrics that include 1.3 million reach and 120k engagements per month on Facebook; 145k reach and 520k impressions per week on Instagram.

Best Use of Video
Cannon Mountain, New Hampshire
Part of a larger #CannonIsMine campaign, this season’s miniseries caps off the ski area’s five-year yeti saga with a grand finale that encouraged viewers to evolve into Cannon skiers and make the mountain experience their own—reflecting the tightknit community at its core. The campaign delivered 1.33 million cross-device display retargeting impressions, 95% over-the-top video completion rate, 476k website sessions and almost 7,000 trackable visitors who were served an OTT video.

Best Lapsed Skier and Rider Campaign
Boreal Mountain Resort, California
Boreal’s commitment to this four-year Feel Good Fridays program is impressive for many reasons: the charity component, analytics and strategic approach, partner amplification, and its ability to return lapsed skiers and riders to the sport. In the process, the ski area managed to add more than 18,000 new skier profiles to its CRM.

Most Unique Campaign
Jay Peak Resort, Vermont
Jay Peak’s authenticity and ingenuity landed it a double win in the marketing department this year. Tied into its Gratitude Marketing Campaign (awarded Best Overall Marketing Campaign in the under 500k visits category), Jay Peak launched a Recruitment Campaign targeting employees. Through print, TV and radio creative, the ski area focused on employee recruitment, engagement, recognition and retention with key elements important to ski area personnel: competitive wages, benefits, staff housing and culture.

Best Overall Marketing Campaign (under 500k visits)
Jay Peak Resort, Vermont
Jay Peak gave thanks to its guests, community and employees through a thoughtful and well-executed Gratitude Marketing Campaign under the tagline “We’re us because you’re you.” Multiple facets—ranging from portraiture and an art exhibit, to TV and print placements, and even giveaways and events—radiate on-brand authenticity, and the results agree: 15% increase in lift ticket revenue, 12% increase in ski school revenue, 8% increase in total revenue.

Best Overall Marketing Campaign (over 500k visits)
Snowbird, Utah
Snowbird continues to strike the perfect balance between clever and edgy with its Assume The Risk campaign, showcasing actual warnings and disclaimers found around the mountain. Its various placements generated a 6% year-over-year increase in Google display traffic, double the average CTR on Facebook, a 17x average return on social ad spend for lift tickets and season passes Dec.–Feb., and the second highest newsletter header CTR of the year, all of which led to marked engagement improvements on the website.

The Marketing Awards are graciously sponsored by: