Эксперт по брендингу критикует новый слоган горнолыжного курорта Park City за отсутствие искренности

For my birthday last February, I’d invited my ski crew to meet me at Silver Lode for a group photo at the “This Is Your Mountain” sign up top before we all did a lap together. On the day, all but three friends canceled at the last minute. I was a kind of disappointed at the small turnout, but happy that at least Larry, Chris and Jake had shown up. At the top of the lift, the guys pulled a bottle of Veuve Clicquot out of a backpack and started unfurling a white sheet onto which they’d spray-painted something. They draped the sheet over the sign so it now read “This Is KATE’S Mountain.” As they snapped pics and toasted my birthday, a couple skied up. The woman said, “My name is Kate, too. Mind if we grab a pic?” The other day, I saw that Park City Mountain had just unveiled its new tagline: “Larger Than Life.” Hmm, OK. I’ve spent my career working in advertising and branding, so naturally I have opinions — lots and lots of opinions. I will concede that Park City Mountain is large. It is, after all, the biggest ski resort in the United States. But skiing isn’t some pissing match about who’s bigger. Or is it? Deer Valley has about tripled their ski terrain, so maybe it is one of those ours-is-bigger-than-yours moments. But the best branding doesn’t just tell you what the brand is. It gives you a way to understand how you fit into it. “Just Do It” doesn’t say a word about shoes. Apple’s “Think Different” says nothing about revolutionary computers. Even Alta’s “Come For The Skiing, Stay For The Skiing” creates an immediate connection with the skier. It says: We know you and we understand exactly why you’re here. “Larger Than Life,” by contrast, feels like Park City Mountain is a loud-talker standing on top of Jupiter Peak humble-bragging about itself to anyone who’ll listen. It just ends up feeling like some kind of abstract boast. “This Is Your Mountain” took something enormous and made it intimate. “Larger Than Life” takes something enormous and makes it enormous-er. But why? Here’s the thing. Brands don’t live inside a tagline. They’re brought to life by the people who experience them. That’s us, the passholders. And this tagline is especially triggering given the past few seasons at Park City Mountain: the larger-than-life lift lines, prices, parking problems, patrol disputes — not to mention the smaller-than-life snowfall. You can call it Park City bitching and complaining, but the gap between the intention and the actual experience is real. And that’s why the jokes practically write themselves. I can imagine the creative rationale. I can see what they’re trying to do. Along with the mountain, they’re trying to supersize the experience itself. The funny thing is, the moments that have made skiing feel grand to me have almost always been intimate. Skiing brings me back into my body. It makes larger-than-life problems — climate change, war, data centers — fall away. It’s been one of the few constants in my life since I was 6, outlasting my father’s own passion for the sport, my marriage, injuries, all the younger versions of myself. And suddenly there I am, standing on my skis, all alone in a grove of pine trees, the stillness surrounding me like an embrace. In the moment, I become small enough to notice everything. The light through the trees, the untouched snow before me, my breath, silence. When the farmer-poet Wendell Berry passed away the other day, I began to see his poems everywhere. “The Peace of Wild Things” took me back to those moments of skiing, those trees and the power of words themselves: I feel above me the day blind stars, waiting with their light. For a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. I don’t need to become larger than life to meet a vast landscape. I find my own proportion within it. The natural world is amplified enough. I don’t need it to make me feel bigger. I only need to find my place within it, to feel like I belong. In that moment, the mountain is all mine.