Brand Identity & Launch — Alterra Mountain Company
Alterra was launching a brand-new mega ski pass to compete head-on with Vail's Epic Pass. The brand had to be built from nothing — name, identity, anthem, campaign — and be in market for a March launch. It worked well enough that the industry gave the aftermath a name: the Pass Wars.
The ski pass market had one dominant player: Vail's Epic Pass. Alterra Mountain Company was assembling a coalition of resorts to challenge it, and the business goals were unambiguous — $185 million in gross pass revenue in year one, and migration of 59% of existing Alterra resort pass holders to the new product.
There was no name, no identity, no positioning. And the launch calendar was fixed: Outdoor Retailer, the 2018 Winter Olympics, X Games Aspen, and a March 2018 pass launch.
Every choice was positioned deliberately against Epic. The all-uppercase IKON logo created a powerful challenge to Epic's lowercase branding. And the gold-based palette broke through an industry dominated by blues — launching with gold in an Olympic year made it that much more powerful.
The identity system ran five rounds of development: logo, Ikon Gold and Ikon Blue palette, Futura typography, iconography, and the pass-tier naming architecture (Ikon Pass and Ikon Base Pass, with future tiers already mapped).
The campaign theme, "Adventure Runs Deep," was chosen with the future in mind — "adventure" was broad enough to grow as pass access evolved beyond ski and ride in year two and beyond. The line: all the best destinations. One pass. Infinite adventure.
Launch concepts leaned experiential: golden chairlifts at all 31 resorts, an Ikonomatik photo booth, replica-pass hotel key cards, a Protect Our Winters charity happy hour, X Games activations, and a "31 resorts in 31 days" influencer challenge.
Four launch segments anchored the work: Memory Makers (fun-loving families seeking the ultimate snow adventure), Experience Seekers (young, maybe single, and ready to mountain mingle), Seasoned Adventurers (over the hill, but still on the mountain at first light), and Industrious Shredders (that out-of-office message means they're at the terrain park).
After launch, we mapped the ski-pass consumer journey through machine-learning social listening. The headline finding: Ikon Pass started the Pass Wars. Ikon led competitive share of destination conversation at 1.6x the average, and a September spike showed promotion content up 382%.
The most human insight in the data: riders don't want to ride alone. One in ten brand-consideration posts asked which pass their friends were buying. The purchase decision wasn't about resorts — it was about where your people would be.
$185M
Year-one revenue target
31
Destinations at launch
1.6x
Share of destination conversation vs. competitive average
Go-to-market and campaign kick-off plan. Full brand identity system across five rounds. Brand anthem and campaign theme. Pass-tier naming architecture. Experiential launch concepts. Consumer segmentation. Post-launch consumer-journey social listening and persona development.