American Skiing Company Uses Viral to Build Offline Database

To insure skiers and boarders hit the slopes in droves this winter, American Skiing Company, parent to Killington, Sunday River, Sugarloaf and others, has launched Skier Intervention, a viral site with characters that dish out tough love in hopes people will get off their butts, head North, buy a season pass, make American Skiing Company rich and...oh yea...get people to take up the winter's best sporting and leisure activity. After all, skiing's not just about sliding down snow-covered hills but enjoying warm fires, cozy condos, beer and cheese fondue.

Unfortunately, there's a big problem with this viral. It can't be sent unless senders enter name, address, city, state, zip code and email. That's a lot to ask of someone just to pass along fun little viral. The site explains the information is needed to send various prizes, earned based on referrals to friends, such as season pass discounts, accommodations drawings and free lift tickets. While we can't fault a marketer for collecting leads, there's really no need to collect that information until after a person has actually won. To make matters worse, deep inside the privacy policy, which no one ever reads, it says the collected information may be used for offline direct mailings from ASC or "trusted partner companies." Just what we need - more crap in our mailbox. It seems this online viral is just a disguised direct marketing database-building mechanism for future offline marketing efforts.

So that we're not accused of simply crapping on every marketing effort that crosses our path, we suggest an alternative approach might have been to reach out to popular bloggers (yes, we know this is so cliche now but it does work) who ski and who have large, loyal audiences, offer them a free pass and, perhaps, some kind of incentive to offer readers and hope they write wonderful things about American Skiing Company resorts. Just a thought.