The Ribbon of Death (and you)
With soft snow turns being made before Thanksgiving, it’s safe to say that early season stoke is high.
Yet as fun as it is to strap on the board(s) in lieu of a the traditional family football game (“the Hammy Bowl”), it’s equally depressing to hear the morose and ubiquitous term for a limited single-trail ski area opening: the Ribbon of Death.
It’s a reference to a crowded, white highway of skiers and snowboarders that’s both morose and ubiquitous, winking grimly at the ongoing and unfortunate deaths that occur on ski hills around the world every winter, every year.
In hopes that this negative trend can be slowed, or better yet stopped, a group of students at Fort Lewis College in Colorado this week launched “Slide with Respect,” a program that hopes to better understand the mentality that's leading to these accidents, and then figure out how to change that mindset through a coordinated marketing and messaging effort. The number one tool in the Slide with Respect program is an easy and painless research survey, which hopes to get a baseline read on the mindset of skiers and snowboarders around the country. (Take the survey here).
Tomasz Miaskiewicz, associate professor of marketing at Fort Lewis College, is leading this effort and took a few moments to let us know what "Slide with Respect” is all about.
Why this survey? Why now?
The industry has conducted several market segmentation studies to understand purchase behavior at ski areas. However, there has been a more limited effort to segment safer snowsliding behavior. We suspect that the person in the park needs to be messaged to very differently than the family that travels to a ski area for a one-week vacation. The survey will provide us with the underlying data that is needed to craft tailored messaging for each of the segments that we identify. Several conversations with individuals and mentors from the ski industry were the catalyst for us tackling the project this academic year.The fatal collision involving Ron LeMaster, a ski instructor and race coach for more than 30 years, was one of the key calls-to-action.
Is there any previous work in this area that you’re trying to build on? Do you have any links/reading that you suggest people read?
We spent the first few weeks of the semester reviewing the work done by specific organizations like the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA), outlets like Ski Area Management (SAM), popular press, academic research, etc. This secondary research helped us to develop the research questions that became the focus of our project
How would you describe the “snow sliding” personality of the average student in this project? Are they lifelong skiers?
This semester, there are students in the class that are avid skiers and snowboarders, as well as beginners and students that don’t “snow slide” at all. The project is part of my Marketing Research class this semester, which is required for anyone completing the Marketing major at Fort Lewis College — I think that the diversity in terms of snow sliding experience has been very beneficial when crafting the survey and other components of the project. Next semester, I will have a much larger group of students working on the messaging/campaign that is driven by this semester’s research.
What’s the best possible outcome from this survey project? Where is this all headed?
During the Spring semester, another class that I will be teaching will use the research with the goal of developing targeted messaging/content for the segments that we identify. We will provide this “toolkit" for everyone’s use, free of charge. At the end of the day, we would love for our messaging to have an impact in terms of individuals “sliding with respect.”
Do you have a personal connection to this work, other than helping lead a class of students through the process?
I am an avid snowboarder and have friends that have worked in various roles (e.g., instructors) at ski areas. Also, the issue of on-slope safety certainly became amplified for me once I started teaching my son how to ski. While the topic is certainly of interest to me, my primary objective is to provide my students with an engaging, experiential learning experience and conduct rigorous research that hopefully has a positive impact in the long-run.