Case Studies

Killington

Client Overview

The Challenge

Killington Resort, an American Skiing Company resort located in Vermont, headed into the 2006 Winter Ski season looking for a way to stay top of mind and encourage skiers to commit to ski vacations early and visit often. The leading East Coast ski resort also wanted to find a way to communicate multiple layers of timely and relevant information including special deals and weather and snow conditions on the slopes.

The Solution

To help drive traffic to the landing page for more Resort information and generate online ticket and lodging sales, Creative Agency Grove Marketing and Media Firm Fulgent Media Group, recommended rich media banner ads. With research from MarketNorms:Dynamic Logic, the agency teams knew that using rich media would help to generate significant lift in the top 5 online marketing metrics including brand awareness, online ad awareness, message association, brand favorability and purchase intent.

Executing on the creative concept included using expandable drop down banner ads enabled with Oddcast VHost talking character technology, as well as a dynamic content application, which enables Killington's marketing manager to change information within the banner directly from his desktop. The resulting online ads are now dynamically delivering up-to-the minute ski conditions, event news, Resort specials and podcasts to the tech savvy Killington audience.

How It All Works

Banner ads greet site visitors with a static Killington representative urging them to roll over for news about deals, ski conditions, events and more. A simple rollover expands the ad and brings the character to life with a clear message and call to action. The banners link to a landing page where the VHost provides more information and users have the ability to book vacations and download podcasts.

"We've received two feet of snow in the past two weeks. The world renowned Young Blood Forum begins February 4th. Click below to hear this week's buzz."

Using the technology to its fullest, Killington can easily change the speech portion of the banner by uploading recorded voice into the VHost's back-end system. The system immediately updates the banner with Oddcast's innovative lip-synching technology. The voiceover is provided by Killington's local legend, "Anna on the Mountain" - a fun, hip and quirky, personality that provides Killingtonians with mountain stories, interviews, event coverage and in-the-know anecdotes that inspire weekly followings. Fulgent and Grove have leveraged this personality across Killington's site that include unique podcasts (event, music and snow reports), newsletters, and banners, which result in a cohesive cross-channel communications program.

The Results

Click-Throughs and Impressions
Since the campaign began, the banner has been opened, on average, 3% of the time, resulting in strong panel viewings and rich branding impressions. Of users expanding units, an extremely high percent are clicking through to "The Buzz" landing page, 1300x more than historically received for Killington's standard .gif banners.

ROI and Revenue
Within the first 4 weeks of the campaign, "The Buzz" units have helped raise awareness and delivered a 3 to 1 ROI for the overall campaign. The increase in awareness has resulted in additional business transactions through the website for not only lift tickets, but also ski packages and lodging. The reports also show that over 70% of revenue is being generated through the retargeting of ads to prospects that have previously visited a tagged Killington Web page.

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