March 29, 2024

Advertising: In Ads for Sun Valley Resort, the Softest of Sells

The films are in the form of online video clips that are part of the trend known as branded entertainment: content with a sponsored point of view, in this instance encouraging visits to the Sun Valley Resort in Idaho, which was the setting of the movie “Sun Valley Serenade” in 1941.

The videos are the centerpiece of a campaign that the upscale resort, now owned by R. Earl Holding, and its ally, the Sun Valley Marketing Alliance, began last week. The campaign, with a budget estimated at $500,000, is being created by an agency in San Francisco named Eleven.

Computer users will be able to watch the video clips in several places, among them on the resort’s Web site, sunvalley.com; the Web site of the marketing alliance, at visitsunvalley.com; and the Sun Valley fan page on Facebook, at facebook.com/sunvalley.

Shorter versions of the videos will run as commercials in movie theaters in markets like Los Angeles, Seattle and Boise, Idaho.

The campaign also includes video ad banners, video and flash ad banners on Web sites like weather.com and travelocity.com as well as ads in newspapers and magazines — all directing consumers to the videos.

Each video, which runs around a minute and a half to two-and-a-half minutes, features employees of the resort and residents of Sun Valley. They include a member of the ski patrol, the coach of the local snowboard team and members of the Sun Valley Suns, a club hockey team.

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The videos are low-key paeans to Sun Valley, offering the softest of soft sells. They shine a spotlight on the attractions of the resort, but are also focused on a quality that is increasingly being celebrated in campaigns for products and services with a past: authenticity. That is underlined by the theme of the campaign, which declares Sun Valley to be “the original mountain town.”

The idea behind appeals centered on authenticity is that in unsettled times, consumers value what seems genuine rather than the calculated result of marketing hyperbole. Brands as disparate as Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Levi’s jeans and Tiffany are playing up authenticity in their pitches.

It is a tricky task because authenticity is like modesty: It loses its charm if talked about too much.

“The good news and the bad news is that it’s a very special place,” said Tim Silva, the general manager of Sun Valley Resort who is also a member of the board of the marketing alliance.

“To keep that specialness yet still make it relevant to another generation, is the challenge,” he added.

Mr. Silva praised the resort’s “unique beauty,” but also acknowledged that it was “not for everyone” and “somewhat remote.”

“Once you get there, it’s wonderful,” he said, adding, “You need to want to be there.”

The videos are meant to “reveal something about the community,” Mr. Silva said, by providing “an insight into the nature of the area, this authenticity.”

“We still very much try and curate” the history of Sun Valley, he added, which includes “Sun Valley Serenade,” with a cast that featured the skater Sonja Henie and the Glenn Miller big band.

At the same time, Mr. Silva said, “we try to not have” the history “be the only thing relevant about the resort.”

“The art of it,” he added, is “to make it part of the overall heritage.”

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For instance, in the video about the member of the ski patrol, Ashley Brown, Ms. Brown calls Sun Valley “one of the only ski resorts still attached to a small town.”

In the video about the snowboard coach, Andy Gilbert, Mr. Gilbert talks about how people might say of Sun Valley, “Oh, I went on vacation with my parents there once.”

Mr. Gilbert says he responds that “it’s still a pretty amazing place to be, and it’s not like anywhere else in the U.S., as far as I’m concerned.”

Eleven was familiar to Mr. Silva because he worked with the agency at his previous job before Sun Valley, when he was the general manager of a Lake Tahoe resort.

“I find Sun Valley to be one of the more difficult marketing challenges I’ve faced,” said Courtney Buechert, chief executive at Eleven.

“The place needs to be introduced to a new generation of people, but it is such a distinctive experience,” he added. “If you invite the wrong people, they won’t have a good time, and they’ll change it, and they’ll ruin it.”

The answer, Mr. Buechert said, is to “introduce people to Sun Valley on the appropriate terms,” with “the least amount of marketing artifice around it.” So there were no scripts for the videos, he added, nor were those appearing in them briefed.

The online films are meant to elicit a response like “Oh, wow, sweet,” Mr. Buechert said, and those who say that are told, “Take a step forward.”

Those who react to the videos by saying, “It sounds a little poky; where’s the action at?” he added, are told: “You know what? You should go to Vail, you should go to Whistler.”

Plans call for the campaign to continue with additional videos on subjects like Sun Valley in the summertime.

Backbone Media in Carbondale, Colo., is also working on the campaign, handling media duties, social media and public relations.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=274e3eabf9733accb8cd8272b5f0fb2d