EpicMix, the RFID-enabled social media sharing network for Vail Resorts, has announced a key partnership with world champion alpine racer Lindsey Vonn.
In association with Vail Resorts, EpicMix Racing will allow users of the EpicMix platform to see how their performance stacks up with the legendary alpine skier. The comparison results can then be shared with family and friends via the user’s social networks.
This is no easy feat, as Vonn is the most successful woman skier in American history.
EpicMix explains how the comparisons will be created:
Lindsey Vonn will set the pace for all of EpicMix Racing and we will have race pros from each of our resorts race against Lindsey to get their own “seconds behind Lindsey.” Then, each day at each of our resorts, one of our race pros will race each EpicMix Racing course and we adjust their time to get to Lindsey’s time for the course.
Racers at Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone in Colorado and Heavenly and Northstar in California and Nevada will all be able to participate, with gold, silver and bronze digital medals being awarded for achievement to the fastest racers.
The best of the best will be invited to the Lindsey Vonn Race Series, where all skiers and riders will be ranked based on their best 10 races of the season. Vonn herself will host the top racers from across the six resorts at a grand finale event in April 2013 on the world-famous Birds of Prey World Cup Course at Beaver Creek.
Lindsey Vonn:
“Making ski racing fun and engaging for kids and families is an exciting opportunity and a real passion of mine. Growing up racing, I always looked forward to telling the stories of my races and being able to track my progress and see how my friends were doing. The opportunity to make that happen using the latest technology in social media is absolutely the right next step for ski racing and I was thrilled to be able to work with Vail Resorts to make this happen.”
Rob Katz, Vail Resorts CEO and Chairman:
“We created EpicMix to bring together the digital and physical experience of skiing and riding and make it easy to share your story with friends and family. In its first season, we tracked your vertical feet and awarded digital pins for your special accomplishments on the mountain and in the second season, we re-imagined how we captured and delivered your vacation photos.
For our third season, we have brought amateur ski racing into the 21st century with EpicMix Racing. Working with World Champion ski racer Lindsey Vonn, we have completely redesigned how skiers can fully utilize the latest digital technology to compare themselves against the very best, seamlessly track and share all of their accomplishments and compete against racers from six world-class resorts.”
Vail Resorts will also be donating 1% of revenues to create scholarships at the Ski & Snowboard Club Vail for aspiring young ski racers.
EpicMix provides a seamless way for active skiers and snowboarders to track and share each day’s performance on the slopes. We wrote about their use of RFID tags earlier this year, which is how the platform tracks each user’s movement across the mountain. A quick swipe when getting on and off slopes, and the system calculates speed, distance covered, altitude reached, etc. The data is then displayed on a dashboard for social sharing.
In the 2010-11 season, nearly 100,000 guests activated their EpicMix accounts, delivering a 15-percent adoption rate and more than two million photos shared on social networks.
These statistics alone show the value in what Vail Resorts has created. By completely rethinking their approach to marketing, they’ve created a tool of true utility for their most passionate guests which is much more powerful and authentic marketing then spending an equivalent amount of money on traditional advertising.
Ski season is coming up, and we’ll soon find out what sort of return the resort sees on this third season of EpicMix.
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About Nick Vivion
Vail Resorts and Lindsey should be ashamed at this ‘racing’ program. It is a complete rip-off of the national NASTAR recreational racing program. This Epic MIx Racing is not bringing something to the public that they have not been missing. It has existed for decades. Rather than racing against a handicap set by the fastest U.S. ski racer each year, it is now going to be watered down to racing against Lindsey. You gotta be kidding. I love Lindsey and what she represents as much as the next person, but this is a marketing rip off of the greatest magnitude. Why would racers be more drawn to seeing their results based against racers from 5 other resorts within the VR family as opposed to seeing how they rate against every racer in the nation? Absolutely shameful. There is little doubt it is more about making it easier to sneak into the wallets of customers by tying the race fee to the customer’s RF pass.