At Boreal Mountain Ski Resort in Northern California, the absence of natural snowfall during an unusually storm-free winter isn’t keeping the company from attracting Ski Resort customers.
Ski resorts like Boreal Mountain are depending on commercial snow-making machinery this year to keep skiers happy, reports the Auburn Journal. “We’ve blown a little over 35 million gallons of water to make snow,” said Boreal Mountain’s marketing director Jon Slaughter.
The unique ability to turn barren hillsides into snow-packed trails provides companies that depend on Mother Nature with a hi-tech solution to help generate more business.
While this unconventional method is an eye-opener from a technological perspective, it also proves to be a “cool” lesson in what it means to think out-of-the-box for companies of all sizes, industries – and in all types of weather.
Or to semi-paraphrase the famous saying: “When life hands you lemons, make snow!”
Here are a few Ptex Practical Pointers that can be used to help you construct out-of-the-box solutions for the next business challenge you encounter.
- Be Brainstorming Buddies: Take an hour to sit down with somebody whose opinion you value, and begin exchanging ideas with that person. No thought is too silly, crazy or impossible. Write down every single brainstorm mentioned in the meeting and review the list when completed – there are bound to be a few clever solutions in there.
- Be Someone Else: View a particular problem from somebody else’s perspective. Imagine that you were General Dwight Eisenhower – what steps would he take with his precise, military-minded outlook to resolve the issue?
- Be All Write: For a defined period of time, simply sit alone at your desk and begin writing whatever comes to your mind. The subliminal messages that your brain constantly creates may very well make its way onto the paper and provide you with the answers you need.
So whether you want to talk, think or write, keep in mind that every problem has an out-of-the-box solution…which can even arrive in the hefty shape of commercial snow-making machinery.
Of course, some ski resorts have decided to attract customers with more unconventional methods. Park City Mountain Resort in Utah brought members from the Northern Ute Indian Tribe to perform a special snow dance to help bring a snowstorm.
While the snow dance results may not have worked very well, the marketing behind it most certainly did – hundreds of customers paid to gather at the resort site and watch the full-day snow dance ceremony live.
Now that’s something worth dancing about!
