The most effective long-term strategy by far for skier growth is to get kids on skis. Early. That’s pretty basic stuff. Boring. Not worthy of the inventive genius of our marketing execs.
But think about it. We endlessly churn out, but pay little heed to, research telling us how incredibly valuable to the sport are the skiers who start young. The data show kids stay skiers into adulthood, that they are likely to bring their kids up as skiers, that they are most likely to keep skiing into their senior years. Not only that, but the kids we catch in school or community recreation programs are highly likely to get their non-skiing parents into the sport.
Let’s put some numbers to this: a kid who starts skiing at age six will likely have skied for 42 seasons by the age of 60. That’s allowing for 12 years of temporary dropout for reasons of cost, child rearing, barriers of time and geography.
Think of the lifetime worth of that kid to the industry—the sum total of that kid’s skier visits, plus those of the friends, family and offspring over the years — brought into the sport, all at no further marketing costs to the industry. Then contrast this with the expense of persuading an adult non-skier to go through the cycles of awareness, introduction, trial, only to have at least one-half of them drop out after one or two tries.
It isn’t that we should give up all skier growth strategies except the targeting of kids. Of course not. After all, the NSOS studies are showing that almost a third of all skiers started skiing after the age of 24, and that ain’t chopped liver.
But neither are the 26.8% who took up skiing aged 12 or under, or the 47.5% who took it up aged 17 or under. The long-term revenue generating effect of this can be seen by the fact that over 30% of skiers over the age of 35 have been skiing for 20 years or more.
Trouble is that ski marketers are all too prone to take the junior market as a given they will get anyway—to think of kids as people to be tolerated because 1) it’s the parents who make the decisions (a dangerous assumption!), and 2) it’s the parents who spend the money (another tricky assumption!).
The mindset is influenced—regrettably, we feel—by the endless search for “industry partners” (read sponsors), who want to target adults who can legally drink their booze and drive their cars.
But the understandable zeal of today’s area marketing whizzes to produce instant adult bodies who spend should be tempered by top management taking the long view of kids as the vital building blocks of tomorrow’s business.
Because, if you want to see something scary, look at the demographic projections for kids after the present echo boom cohort goes through. Like it’s an abyss.
So, let’s build now with the kids currently in the pipeline. It’s not just a message of “Kids ski free!” or some such, which is really directed at parents. No, what’s needed are messages directed to kids, programs directed at kids, that will get them into snow sports they’ll enjoy the rest of their lives.
Tobacco marketers understand this concept all too well. Why can’t we?
— A SAM editorial
