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Marc Peruzzi

Home Base / Missoula, Montana, USA

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Overview

Strategy

Brand Strategist Content Strategist Integrated Marketing Strategist

Writing

Journalist Copywriter Essayist Content Strategist Editor

Biography

My background is in writing and editing, and I still create magazine-style journalism as part of my portfolio. But quality storytelling crosses over to the business world in important ways. Brand or “native” content is the obvious corollary—and I do that work. But brand positioning and content strategies have to come before the tactical stuff.

The word “essay” means “to try.” As an essayist, I’ve spent my career not just reporting and doing scribe work, but using my reporting to create themes and arguments. Those same skills carry over to brand work. You start with discovery and, after digesting that information, you think about where companies fit in the market and what their challenges might be.

That approach is key. Just as you wouldn’t launch a new creative project without a clear concept of its scope, tone, and tenor, you wouldn’t—or shouldn’t—build a content marketing package without discovery, collaboration, and much reflection.

Yes, I relish the à la carte native content work I do, but what excites me is the strategy that comes first. As my Hence colleague Fred Hammerquist likes to say, there’s nothing like “the freedom of a tightly defined strategy.”

Career Storyline

Statistics

5

Ski Resort Envisioning Books

200+

Magazines Published (Including Custom Titles).

9

Pieces of Orthopedic Titanium Inside

I’m more well known as a writer and editor in the ski and outdoor space, but I’m also a dedicated cyclist—mountain, gravel, and road. I ran Outside’s first bike test and collaborated on many more. And I wrote about bikes, riders, and (sigh) doping for Bicycling, Mountain Bike, Mountain, Men’s Journal, and Outside.

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When we were gearing up to envision the future of each original Alterra Mountain Company resort, I immediately recruited Marc Peruzzi for the extended project. His background as a writer, industry observer, and consultant was a perfect fit—as was his lifelong commitment to maintaining the integrity of the sport of skiing though his work. I couldn’t have been happier with his invaluable contributions to the envisioning sessions and beautifully articulated storylines.”

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David Perry

Ascent Mountain Advisors. Credentials: Founding President/COO Alterra Mountain Company | COO Aspen Skiing Company

My first job ski industry job was waxing skis for neighbors in middle school. (My mother was one of the first women to own a ski shop in the world.) Later, I managed ski shops through college. The ski writing and editing I did for Outside led me to the Editor-in-Chief role at Skiing magazine. In addition to my background as a consultant in the ski resort business, which resulted in the envisioning work I did for Alterra Mountain Company, my first foray into ski design delivered the best powder ski in the 2025 Outside tests. That product work was informed from 20 years of directing ski tests and writing about gear. All of which is to say that I understand the outdoor world from inside and outside of companies.

Words have meaning. Until they don’t. “Epic” used to mean suffering. Now it means luxury. If you have to say you are authentic, you aren’t, or, more to the point, your storytelling—visual or otherwise—is failing you. “Branding” only happens after you have a company, and a company is made up of people with a shared vision expressed in words, images, and film. That last bit is the critical path, which I can help with.