Fortnight Collective has been crafting campaigns for Steamboat Ski Resort since 2022, and their latest work proves that some client relationships just keep getting better with time. The Boulder agency’s fourth year of work for the Colorado resort taps into something uniquely American—the romance of the wide-open West, complete with original songs and local musicians who know exactly how to make snow-covered mountains feel like home.
The newest installment of “The Steamboat Way” features four films with Heavy Diamond Ring, a Denver-based Americana duo whose twangy sound perfectly captures what Andy Nathan, founder and CEO of Fortnight Collective, calls “an album of what makes this place so special.”
From Cowboy Poetry to Americana Gold
When Fortnight Collective first won the Steamboat account in 2022, they built the initial “Steamboat Way” campaign around cowboy poetry—a literary tradition dating back to the 1800s that felt perfect for a resort surrounded by 400 working ranches and steeped in western heritage. The agency collaborated with cowboy poet Randy Rieman on verses that captured the parallels between winter sports and the rugged Wild West.
That first campaign launched during Steamboat’s 60th anniversary season, coinciding with “Full Steam Ahead,” the resort’s $200 million infrastructure investment that expanded terrain and added new lifts. The cowboy poetry approach worked so well that year two brought more of the same literary tradition, with Rieman returning to craft new verses about “new territory,” “family inheritance,” and western hospitality.
But by year three, Nathan and his team knew they needed to evolve while staying true to Steamboat’s authentic western roots.
Music Changes Everything
The shift to original music wasn’t just creative evolution—it was strategic positioning. Steamboat has a long history steeped in grassroots music, and the agency recognized that songs could create the emotional connection that pure advertising never quite achieves.
Enter Heavy Diamond Ring, whose “honey-sweet, wide-open-field sounds” made them perfect collaborators for capturing Steamboat’s essence. The band didn’t just perform existing songs—they worked directly with Fortnight Collective’s creative team and composers at Coupe Music to create original tracks specifically for the campaign.
The collaboration produced four distinct 30-second spots, each built around a custom song: “Ski Town, U.S.A.®” uses historical footage to put lyrics to Steamboat’s brand promise, while “When a Cowboy Rides a Mountain” showcases the iconic Cowboy Downhill where professional rodeo cowboys flock to the resort.
The Genius of Going Deeper
What makes this campaign work isn’t just the music—it’s how Fortnight Collective uses each song to explore different aspects of what makes Steamboat unique. “Git Along Little Dogies” taps into the universal experience of watching kids grow up and learn new things against the backdrop of family ski trips. “Family Trees” pays homage to the resort’s celebrated glades where generations have bonded in peaceful tree runs.
“We wanted to leverage the power of local musicians to create a genuine connection with our target audiences, wherever they live across this great big country,” said Morgan Bast, Director of Marketing at Steamboat Ski Resort.
The campaign deployed across paid social, search, display, CTV, and audio through April 2026, with a full-length 2:30 version of the hero film running on all of Steamboat’s owned channels.
Building Brand Equity, One Song at a Time
Four years into the relationship, Fortnight Collective has created something rare in agency-client partnerships: a campaign that genuinely builds on itself. Each year’s work doesn’t just replace the previous year’s creative—it adds to an growing collection of stories and songs that reinforce Steamboat’s unique position in the crowded ski resort market.
The evolution from cowboy poetry to original music shows how the best agency relationships adapt while staying true to core brand truths. Steamboat isn’t trying to compete with Aspen’s luxury or Vail’s scale. Instead, Fortnight Collective has helped the resort own something entirely different: the authentic romance of the American West, where skiing culture meets ranching heritage in ways that exist nowhere else.
Nathan’s insight about building “an album of what makes this place special” captures exactly why this work resonates. In a world of interchangeable ski resort advertising, Fortnight Collective found the one thing that makes Steamboat impossible to replicate—and they’ve spent four years teaching the rest of America to sing along.
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