COVER STORY
The Snowsports Product Cycle: How We Promote It THE CHANGING ROLE OF MEDIA AND EVENTS BY EUGENE BUCHANAN
At the end of the line – after manufacturers, reps and retailers – comes the consumer, the person ultimately responsible for buying those goggles and snowboards, taking that lesson, booking that room, and letting all of us here at the SIA Snow Show put food on the table.
alike. According to SIA’s 2009 Snow Sports Market Intelligence Report, last year more than 14.8 million Americans participated in a snow sport. Additionally, one in 14 Americans considers themselves a skier or rider.
But in this day and age of marketing mediums outnumbering snowflakes, are we doing as good of a job as we can reaching this über-important cog in the wheel?
There’s no shortage of print titles servicing the industry. Scan a ski retailer’s rack and you’ll find Ski, Skiing, Powder, FreeSkier, The Ski Journal, Ski Press, Backcountry, Off-Piste, and a slew of regional titles. At a snowboard shop you’ll find Snowboarder, Snowboard, Transworld Snowboarding, Future Snowboarding and others. And both categories boast too many websites and blogs to even begin to mention.
Any problems certainly don’t owe themselves to a dearth of platforms. Traditional outlets such as magazines, movies, television and events are now complemented by websites, blogs, podcasts and social components, each of which adds to the avalanche of information and imagery reaching endemic and non-endemic audiences
That’s a lot of people, and fortunately snowsports has a lot of ways to reach them.
But the game is changing.
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“The dynamics of media has changed tremendously lately,” says Jeff Galbraith, publisher of The Ski Journal, a magazine modeled loosely on the editorial- and subscription-heavy format of Surfer’s Journal. “Traditional publishing has run its course. It’s not so much CPM-based newsstand circulation anymore, but more of a rifle rather than a shotgun approach; it’s less counting people and more delivering to people who count.” He says that print still carries importance – especially when it comes to consumers trusting its advertisers and athletes appeasing sponsors. So while times might be tight for endemic publications, with page counts and circulation dropping, there’s also no denying these titles’ reach. And no matter the title, one issue seems to resonate with consumers best: the annual Buyer’s Guides. “Ours is incredibly influential,” says Skiing magazine Editor Jake Bogoch. “We didn’t know it until we were alerted to it, but it definitely influences buying patterns.”
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