The Chamonix leg of the AUDI FIS Ski World cup will be held this weekend on the Verte piste in Les Houches. It’ a free event to watch and easy to access, although public transport to and from Les Houches is recommended due to limited parking.

Chamonix Mont-Blanc and the Verte piste in Les Houches welcomes the 18th Kandahar Event

This legendary race has become the main sporting event in Chamonix and is one of the reasons for the valley’s celebrated skiing reputation. Today it is among the greatest downhill courses alongside Wengen and Kitzbuhel. Since 2004, the Chamonix Mont-Blanc event on the Verte piste in Les Houches has taken place on an annual basis. In 2009 the Alpine Skiing World Championships and in 2010 the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver did not leave room for the event to take place. In 2011 and this year’s edition of the Kandahar s finally reunite with its public!

The downhill events, which are on the World Cup circuit, will be held on Friday 3d, Saturday February 4 and the Super Combined (downhill and slalom) on Sunday February 5, 2012.

Being equipped with the only men’s Downhill World Cup approved piste in the region, Chamonix and Les Houches have a unique and precious privilege.

A rendez-vous amongst the world’s elite skiers the Kandahar is a major event thanks to the cooperation of all the local participants.

If you’d like your own sick video, then have a look at Charlie’s new ‘You Are The Pro‘ photography product.

FAMILY/SMALL GROUP PACKAGE

Half Day : 175 € Groups of up to 6 people.

Inclusive of 3 1⁄2 hours filming, professional editing, Compact disk containing 150 HD still photographs, 5 min HD film accompanied by music of your choice. Enlarged canvas prints available on request at extra cost.

Full Day: 350€ Groups of up to 6 people

Includes full day of filming, professional editing, Compact disk containing 300 HD still photographs, 8 min HD film accompanied by music of your choice. Enlarged canvas prints available on request at extra cost.

YOU ARE THE PRO – DIRECTORS CUT
Full day: 60€ pp. *Minimum 2 people. Groups of up to 6 people.

CUSTOMISED CORPORATE PACKAGES

For larger groups, Charlie and his photography assistant are available for hire on both a half day of fully day basis.

]]> http://chamonix-green-white.com/2012/01/26/you-are-the-pro-with-charlie-davies-photography/feed/ 0 http://chamonix-green-white.com/2012/01/17/only-ten-days-til-the-freeride-world-tour-comes-to-chamonix/ http://chamonix-green-white.com/2012/01/17/only-ten-days-til-the-freeride-world-tour-comes-to-chamonix/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:42:19 +0000 admin http://chamonix-green-white.com/?p=3471

Freeride World Tour, Chamonix

21st-27th January 2012

As home to the stunning Mont Blanc, Chamonix is arguably the world’s most renowned alpine resort. Host of the first ever official Winter Olympics in 1924, skiers and snowboarders come from all over the world to take on its vast range of steep “couloirs.”

When it comes to Freeride locations, Chamonix Mont Blanc has few rivals, so it’s no surprise that the Freeride World Tour is back for a third year in 2012. Chamonix Mont Blanc will host the season‘s first stop where local favourite and current world champion Aurelien Ducroz will be looking to repeat his win in 2012.

Samedi 14 janvier 2012… Face sud des Courtes dans le massif du Mont-Blanc après une petite montée par la face nord dans la voie des Suisses… Beau temps chaud depuis une semaine et bonne neige en montagne… Merci à Chamonix.net, Alexandre Marchesseau, Florent Gex et Luc Mongellaz…
http://www.tvmountain.com

A two footed platform

Aim to push both skis into the snow when intitiating your turns, this will provide you with a two footed platform of pressure through your turns.  It’s important to change your edges similtaneously and not sequentialy.

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Make smooth shaped turns

Go for smooth, fluid movements, this will encourage smooth shaped turns.  Any abrupt movements or turns will have an abrupt effect on your balance. Smooth turns and a good rhythm are essential for a fluid powder skiing run.

Push the heels downwards

Not to be confused with learning back!  In deep snow we should push the heels downwards a little to keep the ski tips up.  This will stop the feeling of the ski tips wanting to dive deep into the snow which is oftern proceded with the classic forward face plant.

Remember to pole plant

Smooth co-ordinated pole plants are very important.  This will help you to build fluidity and rhythm into your run.  The pole plant also helps for commiting to the turn and helps move your body forwards and in the direction of the turn.

Hope you enjoy the ski tips and all that great powder!

Mark Gear Head Coach All Mountain Performance

3 janvier 2012… Vallée de Chamonix Aiguille du Midi Petit Envers du Plan… Merci à Michel Bordet Romain Aubrun Chamonix.net et Cilao…

http://www.tvmountain.com

25 décembre 2011… Glacier de Toule, une bonne neige de Noël… Merci à Michel Pellé Aventure en Tête à Chamonix.net à Camille et à Zoé…

http://www.tvmountain.com

Vendredi 23 décembre 2011… Aiguille du Midi, Vallée Blanche, Petit Envers du Plan… Itineraire ouverts la veille par les guides de haute montagne Michel Bordet et Yan Raulet… Ca passe plutôt bien… Merci à Jacques Larrière, Bistrot des Sports…

Mardi 13 décembre 2011. Les Grands Montets vallée de Chamonix Mont-Blanc. Les acteurs: Antoine Bletton, Lambert Galli, Remi Peschier, Flo Tomei, Romain Aubrun, Alex Marchesseau… Merci à chamonix.net et à Te-Crew. Musique Olivier Rouquier…

http://www.tvmountain.com

A Big Air Bag at the bottom of the Stade drag-lift in Brevent. Do jumps and tricks with the safety of an air mattress landing and professional park instructors.

A new reservoir on the Flegere side of mountainis at capacity and ready to provide a free water source for the snow canons, meaning improved snow coverage on the Evettes piste and guaranteeing the connection between Brevent and Flegere.

The Crochus and Remuaz pistes are wideneds.

A new Savoyard restaurant, the Ardet is the new Flegere restaurant for 2012. Also just outside the cable car will be Tendance Foën serving hot & cold takeaway food.

Domaine de Balme

A boarder cross will be run, situated in the place of the old half-pipe. The banked slalom course is open to everyone.

Grands Montets

A 750 m2 protective sheet was installed on the top of the Argentiere glacier which saved 2 metres of snow depth from melting over the summer, this in turn means the opening of the Point de Vue piste will be sooner.

Freestylepark.fr will install a series of HD cameras in the snow park. Riders will be able to see themselves on a big screen and the bottom of the park and get their videos posted online.

As far as we know this is the only time a UK show has been promoted via television (please feel free to correct us), so it’s great to see some bullish activity promoting the snowsports industry.

BTW We haven’t seen this on TV, only on YouTube, so confirmation from one of our TV-watching friends north of the border that is actually being screened would be lovely!

skipedia.co.uk

If you’ve seen any of the work of Seb Montaz, you’ll know to expect something special. This video, shot in Paris, follows on from the crew’s first efforts out in the Alps – and it’s stunning.

How do you top a 4000m highline in the Alps? With two skyscrapers in the middle of Paris. The two office towers of the Les Mercuriales are only 120 m high but the effect is still very impressive.

skipedia.co.uk

What will my profile look like?
Your profile will change from one column to two, and will become a customisable scrapbook of your entire life, searchable by date.  Have a look at the image below for an example of how a Timeline profile can look.

How it will look will depend a lot on how much time you are prepared to put in to curate it, but as ‘personal branding’ is very this decade (and now even more so), you can be sure many Facebook users will be working hard to make sure their look is right.

The new Facebook ‘Timeline’ profile

What about Company/Brand Pages?
As yet Facebook has not confirmed how company pages might change.  It seems likely that they will change in due course as well, although there are no clues as to whether landing pages will still exist.

Certainly there would be the opportunity to lay out the brand’s history, allowing much more opportunity to deliver a marketing message than at present.

Mashable recently asked several agencies how they thought brands might adopt to the new format.   Here are some we liked:

Red Bull by Ryan Kennedy (http://alrightfantastic.com)

Burberry by NYC agency Skinny (www.skinnynyc.com)

Skipedia will keep you up to date
Whatever changes do occur, you can count on Skipedia to keep you up to date and offer the best marketing advice possible.

skipedia.co.uk

‘Discounting tarnishes the ski industry as a brand’
It’s recognised that one of the key challenges the industry faces is persuading consumers to book in advance, rather than wait for discounted holidays.

Roy Barker of Spike Marketing recently told ABTOF that ‘discounting tarnishes the ski industry as a brand’.

Discounts have become so pervasive in recent years that consumers have learned that, outside of high-season weeks, it can be worth waiting until nearer the time to book.

Growth in passengers based on the paper-thin margins left after discounting will not help our industry – we need to re-educate the consumer that there is value in booking in advance.

Discounts are prevalent elsewhere
The challenge is that discounting is now so prevalent in the mind of the consumer that few people expect to pay the full price for anything.   If it’s not Groupon, a quick search will give you a ‘2 for 1’ voucher at any chain restaurant.  Retail sales no longer have seasons (‘Spring Sale’ – how quaint does that sound?), but last all year.   It’s going to be hard to turn this mentality around.

So can selling ski holidays via Groupon help, or will it just reinforce the belief that everything is available at a discount, including ski holidays?  Surely a planned approach to marketing and branding would be more effective.

Ski holidays are already being sold on Groupon
One operator has already tried it out. I noticed this campaign on Groupon on 15 September 2011:

The message here is clear.  Book now and save 50%.   Evidently there were 95 sales, and I can think of many tour operators who would be happy to sell that in a week in mid-September, let alone the 24-hour selling window that typically applies to Groupon.

Is this good business?
But is this good business? How can you give a 50% discount in September and make a profit over the season.

I had a look at their website.  It turned out the same deal was available on their website (minus ‘a hamper of wine, cheese and bread on arrival’), albeit only for the four weeks at the very start and end of the season:

Can you make money out of Groupon discounting?
I wondered what sort of discount this represented.  Could they really be selling holidays at a 50% discount already?

Typically Groupon charge in the region of 50% for their cut of any sale.  This would suggest net revenues of £248 (2 person share), £198 (4 person share) and £149 (6 person share).

[The Groupon deal also included three days’ equipment hire, a day trip to Les 2 Alpes and the aforementioned hamper.  That probably adds £100 or so of value, but might only cost the operator say £10, as the equipment is their own stock and the bus will be running to L2A anyway.]

The Groupon dates are highlighted in red in the price panel below.  This suggests a typical net discount of £100 (going up to £150) from these prices.   NB – the week commencing 25 March is fully booked and the prices are not shown either online or in their brochure.  The the net discount for this week is likely to be much higher.  We asked the operator if they could advise the original prices, but we have not heard back from them.

The Fine Print
Incidentally, if you’re wondering how a 50% discount can be claimed, take a look at the Groupon ‘Fine Print’, shown below.  Note the highlighted section: ‘Original prices based on hotel rack rates’ i.e. not our brochure prices.

Is Groupon a beneficial new form of distribution?
So has this operator spotted a new form of distribution that the rest of the market is missing?

I can’t answer that.  I don’t know how much Groupon’s share of each sale was and what sort of margins this operator works on.   However, it’s hard to believe that any holidays sold on this deal for shoulder season weeks will be profitable.

Set against that, the company has 95 guaranteed customers, who have paid their entire holiday in advance.  They may be able to improve the margin with in-resort sales and many of those customers may come back.  Every customer has an acquisition cost and this could be considered an alternative to advertising.

In my view however, to paraphrase Roy Barker, quoted in my opening statement above: ‘Selling on Groupon devalues the ski industry as a brand.’

——————–

Please feel free to add your own comments below.  I’m interested to know what others in the industry think.

skipedia.co.uk

This fusion of classical music and breakdancing is that far outside the usual stereotype of adrenalin-fired events,that it stands a great chance of breaking through the ‘action sports’ clutter:

skipedia.co.uk

White will appeal to younger chewers
‘Whitemint’, produced by Kraft Foods is unusual in that it is named after the star, rather than just endorsed by him.

Maurice Herrera, senior director of United States gum brands for Kraft, said that White will appeal to younger ‘chewers’.

He told the New York Times, “A lot of 10- to 12-year-olds hold Shaun in high esteem.”

Ad campaign hits hard
I wonder what those impressionable young kids will think of this first ad then, as a distracted White looks up from his iPhone to ask a yeti pal to punch a man in the stomach.

Charming.  Still, I guess it pays the bills, Shaun?

This guy likes it, at least.

skipedia.co.uk

There are so many great tools out there for monitoring Twitter (we use both Tweetdeck and Hootsuite) that there is really no excuse for not doing it.  To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, there’s only one thing worse than being talked about on Twitter and that’s not knowing you’re being talked about on Twitter.

Monitor the conversation
When we act as Community Manager for clients, we monitor the conversation about a client’s brand and key phrases and participate in it on a regular basis.

Confidentiality prevents us sharing some of our own examples, but our recent Tweet about the use of QR codes prompted a reply from Inghams’ Marketing Manager, Louise Newton (who is launching QR codes as an integral part of their advertising).

What I found interesting was how that (public) conversation was monitored on Twitter:

It's easy to track mentions…

First to follow up on the original Tweet was @Meticul, which monitors Tweets with the hashtag #QRcode and then aggregates them into a daily digest, tagging the original contributors.  (You may have noticed a similar ski digest by @SkiPad).

This was followed by was @TheWineBot, which apparently searches for mentions of ‘wine’.  They Retweeted Louise’s reply, with the cute addition ‘Enjoy your wine’.  No sales pitch, just nice engagement.

Within three hours of Louise’s follow up reply, @LondonFoodBuzz had noted the mention of ‘Pizza Express’ and Retweeted again.

There’s no strict commercial advantage to any of these Tweets, although the Meticul example demonstrates how good use of hashtags in Twitter can increase your reach, and the WineBot does lead you to @TheWineGuide.

What is does show is how simple it is to monitor mentions on Twitter.  So if you’re not doing this for your brand, then maybe it’s time to start…

skipedia.co.uk

Who is the Community Manager?
The Community Manager is an individual who works alongside the marketing team, and who connects with customers on a personal level. They are often the public voice of the company.

According to social media guru, Tamar Weinberg, in her excellent book ‘The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web’:

‘The community manager should be an enthusiastic team player who can develop a sense of awareness about your particular brand within the industry and related social circles.  

‘These efforts will align with the community’s interests without commercial overtones:  it is a communications role that is about fostering solid relationships.  The community manager has the key responsibility of humanising the company.

‘Community managers use social media very frequently for monitoring and maintaining relationships and thus ideally they should be regular bloggers.  They should maintain a presence on a variety of social media sites. 

‘Their role is multi-faceted; the ideal community manager should be able to communicate both in person and online, should be someone who loves working with people, is personable, approachable, and has a sense of humour. 

Community Manager tasks:

-         Maintain your social media profiles across a variety of networks, maintaining accounts that have real value.
-         Create new and relevant items for your own blog, and comment on other blogs and forums.
-         Monitor the conversation about your brand and participate in it on a regular basis.
-         Convey the feelings of the customer back to the company.
-         Act as a proactive voice of the company at all times, responding to substantial concerns immediately.
-         Subscribe to alerts about your brand for a variety of key phrases.
-         Read relevant blogs and news outlets daily.
-         Follow related individuals in the space (including prospective and current brand evangelists).
-         Identify advocates of the brand: those who talk about the company in the most positive light.
-         Suggest ways to convert those individuals into brand evangelists.
-         Use feedback to analyse trends that may be of interest or concern to you, and report regularly on these.

Participation is Marketing
Our approach at Skipedia combines this with new media marketer Chris Heuer’s concept ‘Participation is Marketing’.  Heuer wrote in 2007 that the best marketeers are those who participate in the communities they service and don’t just aim to sell products directly to the people.

Pitching products and services is an outdated tactic rarely well received by individuals tired of the same old marketing messages and accustomed to social media engagement.

Today, trust is not easily bought.  Establishing relationships is critical.   Having a Community Manager will help you achieve this.

skipedia.co.uk