A Branding Problem
By John Munger
For as long as I can remember US Ski & Snowboard or – as it was previously known – USSA, has been the national governing body for cross country skiing. Now I was never really in the USSA pipeline. Growing up I never really understood what USSA was. I wasn’t a good enough skier to care I guess. Afterall, USSA only mattered for those who were fast enough to contemplate skiing overseas or in the Olympics or something.
But I always had a vague sense of unease about USSA. I could never really figure out why I had this feeling, or what it was about USSA that made me feel this way. It just did.
Many factors have come together now so that I finally feel like I can articulate the issue. I’ve been heavily involved in skiing and ski racing for forty years now. I skied in high school. I skied in college. I have skied and raced in citizen races ever since college; I’ve skied 29 Birkebeiners and in scores of other races across the Midwest. I started the Loppet Foundation and ran it as its first executive director for fifteen years. I worked with US Ski & Snowboard on SuperTours and junior national qualifiers, on the Junior Nationals itself, and on bringing a World Cup to the United States (ultimately canceled by COVID). And I’ve worked with the Birkebeiner Foundation on a myriad of issues.
All this has led me to where I am today. It is not that I dislike US Ski & Snowboard or feel like the organization does a poor job. It’s just that I’m not sure US Ski & Snowboard is the right organization to be carrying the Nordic torch.
Over the years of running the Loppet I thought a lot about what is appealing about cross country skiing. My conclusion: it is the lifestyle. It’s not the skiing itself. It’s the idea that cross country skiing is about overcoming challenges. It’s not easy. Yes, there are downhills – but there are just as many uphills – and it is the reality of cross country skiing that we spend more time on the climb than we do on the descent. It’s cold – sometimes really cold! But, again, it’s not really about the skiing or even winter. It’s about a fierce devotion to the outdoors and to the natural world. It’s about long days in the woods. Maybe running or hiking. Maybe paddling. Or biking. The reality is that us devoted cross country skiers spend a lot of time doing activities other than skiing. But what unites everything that we do is our devotion to outdoor activities and our addiction to the difficulty, the challenge, and the lifestyle.
Because we know that we derive meaning in our lives from our time spent outdoors throughout the year, and from the challenges themselves. Somehow, it is really spiritual in nature. In fact, “spiritual in nature” could be our credo.
Cross country skiers are generous. They know that they have found something special, something life changing – and they want to share it. It is, in fact, a form of evangelism.
“Come try it,” we say. “Skiing can change your life.”
We know that it is a long, difficult journey to get there. But at the end of it is a salve to the spirit. At the end of it is a meaningful life. At the end of it is a happier and healthier life.
How does all this relate to US Ski & Snowboard?
It doesn’t.
And that’s the problem.
US Ski & Snowboard is the national governing body for many sports: Alpine skiing, snowboarding, free skiing, free style skiing, ski jumping, and cross country skiing. Most of these sports take place at Alpine areas. And Alpine is the elephant in the room. The barrier to entry is low. Yes, it takes a fair amount of money. But it is not, at its core, about enduring and overcoming challenges. There are, by definition, no hills to climb.
Maybe one way to put it is that there is not a brand match between Alpine and Nordic skiing. Alpine’s brand is about beautiful people swooshing down the mountain. It’s about self-expression, the thrill of speed, the exhilaration of a jump or a trick. It’s about glamor. Of course, people work hard to become good Alpine skiers or snowboarders. But the hard work, the overcoming of challenges, the long days in the woods – those things are not core to the Alpine brand.
So what? Alpine has a better brand. It is more exciting. It is more interesting. Good for cross country – it gets to ride the coattails of its more sexy cousin.
Maybe.
Maybe years ago that was true.
Nordic was the domain of old Scandinavians. They were clearly not cool. Only a select few really understood the sport – and there was no real commercial potential in it. It was just a few crotchety old men tromping through the woods on wooden boards with bamboo poles.
But I’m not so sure that all of that is true anymore. Today’s world is much different. Obesity is rampant. The world has defined “nature deficit disorder” as a thing. Kids spend hours and hours staring at screens each day. Both kids and adults struggle to find time to get outdoors. And these problems became even worse during the COVID epidemic.
The upshot is that the Nordic lifestyle is salable in today’s world like never before. Public health officials and the medical community know that people need to be outside and active. People have never been more cognizant of mental health issues, and there is a growing understanding that people need to be out in the natural world and not staring at their devices in order to maintain their mental health. Increasingly, commercial brands want to be associated with a healthy lifestyle.
We can see this demand in real life when we look at organizations that are truly devoted to the Nordic lifestyle. The Loppet Foundation in Minneapolis and the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation in Hayward, Wisconsin are good examples here. Both organizations obviously have a huge focus on skiing, but both organizations also place a huge emphasis on the lifestyle. And both organizations have grown tremendously in the last ten to fifteen years. Interestingly, both organizations have some minor connection to Alpine (the old Mount Telemark in the case of the Birkebeiner and a tiny snowboard hill in the case of the Loppet Foundation), but their brands are unambiguously about the cross country skiing lifestyle. And, in my mind, that is why they are so successful.
Going back to US Ski & Snowboard, it is not that US Ski & Snowboard does not believe in the cross country skiing lifestyle brand. It is just that organizations can only really have one strong brand; and in the case of US Ski & Snowboard they have, probably rightfully so, chosen the Alpine brand because it has a lower barrier to entry, more fans, and it is more easily translated to a television audience.
I’m just not so sure that, at least at this point in history, cross country skiing is not better off going off on its own. That way Nordic could really establish its own distinct brand – not about the glamor of skiing generally, but about the spirituality, the nature, the challenge, and the lifestyle of our sport.
Based on what I saw while running the Loppet Foundation for all those years, I tend to think that Nordic and the Nordic brand could do pretty well finding support in the world if Nordic could really build its own independent national brand. This is not to say that Nordic would usurp the NFL or even US Ski & Snowboard in sponsorship or support. It starts out as too small of an enterprise for that. But we wouldn’t have to accomplish all of that. Instead, my sense is that we could, with a True North version of our brand, grow our support enough to achieve all of our goals and more – while helping the country become a happier, healthier place.
Here’s an example . . . Trail Kids. This is a program designed to give our youth a pathway into the cross country skiing lifestyle. Kids ski in the winter. But it is not a ski program. It is a program about the lifestyle. Kids ski, but they also mountain bike, go orienteering, and paddle in the summer. The point is to learn the skills to be active throughout their lives. This is a program that has become wildly successful in the Twin Cities; they are literally turning families away because there is such a latent demand.
This is the type of thing that we can succeed at much better if we had control of our own national brand. US Ski & Snowboard is not going to embrace a program like Trail Kids. How can they? It is more about mountain biking then it is about most of the disciplines that US Ski & Snowboard is in charge of. Again, it is a brand mismatch. Not anyone’s fault. It just is.
Now imagine a national governing body without this conflict, that could truly embrace the cross country skiing lifestyle brand. An activity like Trail Kids could become what soccer is today – an activity that parents just sign their kids up for almost automatically: “Of course I want my kids to learn the basics of outdoor activity.”
What this points to, though, is the idea that cross country skiing may be better served aligning itself with “summer” sports like mountain biking, paddling, running, and trail running than with other on-snow disciplines like Alpine skiing, snowboarding, free skiing, etc. The reality is that these “summer” sports are much more in alignment with the Nordic brand than the Alpine disciplines could ever be . . .
This may be the perfect time to embark on this endeavor. The Birkebeiner and the Loppet have grown into viable regional organizations with significant budgets and a real following. Nordic skiing has a transcendent star in Jessie Diggins. With medals in the last few Olympics, there has never been a time when more people in the United States knew something about our sport. With the almost-World-Cup in 2020, and the Loppet set to host a World Cup in 2024, the sport has a built-in platform to tell its story. And more people cross country skied during COVID than at any other time in history.
Now, I’m not writing this to denigrate US Ski & Snowboard. I’m not writing this to cause a war within our sport. I’m writing this to help start a dialogue. How can cross country skiing take advantage of this moment in time? How can we better define our national brand? My sense is that the only way to truly accomplish this is by leaving US Ski & Snowboard and the shadow of our cousins in the Alpine disciplines. But maybe someone has a better idea. At the end of the day, my main mission is to highlight the brand mismatch and the opportunities that I think we are losing because of it.
John Munger is an independent business consultant. He started the Loppet Foundation in 2002 and ran the organization as its first executive director from 2005 to 2020. The organization was within a week of running the first World Cup on US snow since 2001 when the world had to shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. These days John devotes his time to helping individuals and organizations reimagine themselves in order to reach their business goals. You can reach John at john@mungerconsultingservices.com.
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