North Tahoe’s Latest Ski Campaign Will Either Insult or Amuse Silicon Valley

Will Bay Area locals love or hate North Lake Tahoe‘s playful attempt at content marketing?

The tourism board released an e-book in early February targeting skiers in San Francisco, which is located a three-hour drive away from the area’s 12 major ski resorts.

The Après Ski e-book is a guide to navigating North Tahoe’s after-ski social scene and was designed like a white paper as play off the documents that many employees read every day.

The guide outlines what to wear, say, and drink and then goes one step further in targeting that advice to individual Silicon Valley cliches.

For example, it recommends that skiers whose tech company’s IPO made them a multi-millionaire “don’t rub it in” by sticking to Patagonia.

And it tells skiers who “work for Google” to buy the round of drinks.

“Don’t be the aloof rich tech guy from Palo Alto with a superiority complex. Buy some drinks. Make some friends. You can’t take that tech money into the afterlife,” the Après Ski guide reads.

The e-book also offers selfie pro trips and links to Urban Dictionary when using terms like “gaper,” which apparently means “a skier or snowboarder who is completely clueless.”

The guide ties into a social campaign in which the tourism board shares images with the hashtag #apreshero. It encourage visitors to do the same.

The campaign, created in partnership with The Abbi Agency, was launched in early February when the resorts’ first big snow fall arrived.

Travelers have to “Like” the tourism board’s Facebook page and submit their email in order to download the book. At least 100 e-books were downloaded within the first three days of the campaign.