Founder story 2008 — 2012

Midwest Ski Film Festival.

Client: Founded with Andy Paskov
Role: Co-founder · Marketing · Production

The idea

I co-founded the Midwest Ski Film Festival with my friend Andy Paskov in 2008. We were in our early twenties, freskiing was in its golden indie era, and Milwaukee — not exactly known for big mountains — had a deeper community than anyone outside it realized. We wanted to make an event for our friends, in our city, on a real stage.

MWSFF crowd at the Times Cinema, hands raised toward the stage — Times Cinema — Milwaukee, October 2010

What we built

Through scrappy social media and forum marketing — sharing the behind-the-scenes of planning, getting people invested in the story — we attracted Jiberish Clothing and Scion as headline sponsors, leveling the event up beyond our initial scope. We were deeply embedded in the scene we were marketing to, and the community knew it.

The arc

2008 — A college classroom on the UW–Milwaukee campus.
2009 — Sold out the Miramar Theatre.
2010 — Sold out the Times Cinema. Outdoor sponsor village. The whole scene showed up.
2011 — The risky move: expanded to Minneapolis.
2012 — Scaled down as digital ski-movie releases reshaped the model and the original moment passed.

Line of attendees outside the Times Cinema for MWSFF 2010 — The line outside Times Cinema — Saturday, October 16, 2010

Sponsor tents outside MWSFF 2010 — 4FRNT Skis, Bern, Laacke and Joys — Sponsor village — 4FRNT Skis, Bern, Laacke & Joys

What I took from it

The playbook I ran on MWSFF in 2008 is the same one I run today. Behind-the-scenes content. Scrappy community-first marketing. Partnerships that punch above weight because the work is real. And — most of all — being deeply embedded in the audience you're trying to reach.

I was learning the trade in real time. The trade I learned then is the trade I still practice.