Vail buys Stowe and what it teaches us about defining clear brand roles

People who’ve worked with me know that of the things that I get excited about, snow and brand portfolio architecture elicit an unhealthy amount of giddiness. Today, I combine the two.

First, the snow: Last week, Vail Resorts, Inc., owner and operator of 13 destination-worthy ski resorts upped that number to 14 by purchasing Vermont’s Stowe Mountain Resort.

Now the brand portfolio part: Unlike hotel operators, technology giants and a host of other companies that make acquisitions, Vail Resorts will not being changing Stowe’s name to Stowe Mountain Resort, a Vail Resorts Destination.  Nor will it be Vail Resorts at Stowe Mountain. Mind blown, right?

Vail Resorts will not being changing Stowe’s name to Stowe Mountain Resort, a Vail Resorts Destination.

It makes sense that most companies gravitate to the idea of bringing their brands together, making sure that 1+1=3, synergies are achieved, goodwill is realized, or whatever it is they want to have happen. But, sometimes the best way to bring things together isn’t the clunky, obvious one. In the case of Vail Resorts, the tool that is employed is not a tagline, a corporate logo endorsement or crazy-long, hybridized name. It’s a product.

Specifically, it is a season pass known as the Epic Pass.  When Vail introduced the Epic Pass a few years ago, the intent was to get more people to choose a Vail Resorts season pass, and therefore visit a Vail Resorts mountain, in what was becoming a very competitive market. (Season pass prices were plummeting as the industry wrestled with the fallout of the financial crisis.) The Epic Pass has been an unqualified hit, with the company expecting to sell 650,000 Epic Passes for the 2016/2017 season. That works out to something like 7% of all the skiers in the US for a company that owns about 3% of the ski mountains.

Epic Pass allows Vail to focus each of its resort brands on doing what resort brands need to do.

What the Epic Pass allows Vail to do is focus each of its resort brands on doing what resort brands need to do: build up a distinct destination brand that sets it apart from its peer set, both locally and from the larger list of resorts people head to for their snowy vacations. There’s no need to muddle the roles and responsibilities, no need to ask the resorts to build a solid lines of brand attribution back to Vail. Epic Pass does that for them. By establishing a tiered brand portfolio model, Vail Resorts gets the connectivity benefit of a masterbrand while maintaining the increased relevance of a house of brands.

Vail Resorts' portfolio assigns different roles to different types of brands

For those of us who don’t get an Epic Pass by virtue of where we work, there’s a broader lesson: when you focus on how your brands should work for both your company and your customers, more efficient, more flexible and more elegant solutions can be found.

And who knows? Maybe you, too, will find a category changing, behavior shifting idea of your own.

View fullsize