Most people who live in the Sun Valley area can easily name several attributes that set this resort community apart from the rest. The key to drawing more visitors here is to market those unique qualities to a wider audience.
Arlene Schieven, the Sun Valley Marketing Alliance's new president and chief marketing officer, sees plenty of opportunity, saying the area is a great product in need of greater promotion.
"There are so many things happening here, it's just a matter of getting the word out," she said. "It's a really great product that you have."
Though resort towns have to work hard to keep tourists and their dollars coming, Schieven said the right message targeted to the right audience can keep Sun Valley a destination in demand.
"Everyone has their different strengths," she said. "That's a big task—really diving in and understanding what are Sun Valley's unique strengths that it can own over other areas, and then that's what you really focus on."
Schieven was selected for the job in part because of her strategic planning abilities, and she's already thinking about long-term plans.
"(We are) looking at all the strategic priorities that are coming up in the next year, and formulating that into a media plan, in terms of which markets we're targeting, how we're going to do that, and getting it all set up," she said.
She said she hopes an initial plan will come together by Oct. 15, the target date for a relaunched visitsunvalley.com.
"So there will be a lot to do prior to that Oct. 15 date," she said.
Jake Peters, the alliance's board president, said Schieven understands how to put together pieces of the puzzle to get a good marketing plan.
"(She has) profound amounts of experience with management that will come into play," he said.
But, he added, "What did it for me was that strategic view."
Getting to know the valley
Given her own recreational interests, Schieven herself is an example of someone who should have been, but never was, exposed to Sun Valley's marketing efforts. Before being considered for the job, she he had never been to the area.
Her first visit was "exploratory," during which she met with the Marketing Alliance to learn about the Wood River Valley and what the marketing organization was trying to achieve.
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"It was a really interesting opportunity in terms of where the community is right now and where they want to be," she said. "There was a real sense of optimism amongst all the people I met that even though times are challenging right now, there's some good optimism for the future. And then the community had a lot of things that on a personal level were important to me."
The recreational aspects that piqued her interest were ones that locals are well familiar with, such as cross-country skiing and trail running, but that are not as well known to outsiders.
"Cross-country skiing is my main winter passion, and when I saw that this is Nordic Town USA, all my friends were joking. 'Well, how could you not go?'" she said.
Accentuate the positive
As a marketer, Schieven is accustomed to finding and highlighting the positives of a place—then finding potential visitors and selling them on those aspects.
Visitors to Whistler usually fly into Vancouver's airport and make a two-hour drive to the resort town. Rather than a problem, Whistler's marketers reframed that into an attribute.
"It's a beautiful drive, so part of the way we would sell the experience is that you have these two great destinations and a beautiful journey in between," she said. "So that was a selling feature."
To boost visitor numbers to Sun Valley, Schieven said she'll look to markets that can get here fairly easily, then identify what the valley has to match that market's interests. A narrower but strategic focus helps keep marketing within budget restraints, she said.
"You never want to spread your money too thin," she said. "You want to make sure you have an impact where you go."
Though Whistler's budget is far bigger than Sun Valley's, Schieven said the approach is the same, just on a smaller scale.
"No matter what your budget is, you never have enough money," she said. "I think from a marketing perspective, what's important is knowing how to prioritize the funding, knowing how to maximize your funding, making sure you're leveraging with partners and making the most impact that you can."
Despite the smaller budget and some bigger challenges, Schieven said she is up for the task.
"What's exciting about it is just the opportunity to absolutely understand what the community is looking for, and asking, 'What does success mean to the community?' and then putting those measurements in place and showing some achievement," she said.
"That's what's most exciting, to look at where the dial is now and see where you can move it to. Ultimately, to start with some small successes and then build from there."
Rebecca Meany: rmeany@mtexpress.com
Arlene Schieven
