Issue 13, vol. 2 - September 2006

What’s the hottest new party beach town for the young twenty-something set? Here’s a hint: it’s not Tofino, Lawrencetown Beach, Muskoka or even anywhere near the Great Lakes.

How about, Red Deer, Alberta?

That’s right, smack dab in the middle of Canada’s cowboy country is a little town called Sylvan Lake just a short drive outside Red Deer. And Sylvan Lake has it going on.

The Coors Light Trauma Tour Pro Wakeboard Invitational just went down this past Labour Day weekend. This two-day festival combined music, wakeboarding, and freestyle motocross to turn this little lakeside town into a youth culture phenomenon that looked more like Ft. Lauderdale during Spring Break then a sleepy Alberta cow town.

Although this was the third year for the Coors Light Trauma Tour to make a stop in Sylvan Lake, it was the first year that the event was produced by IMG Action Sports, the same team behind other youth events including Wakefest In Kelowna and the West 49 Canadian Open in Mississauga. This year the event blew-up with the addition of the Pro Wakeboard Invitational and the Bell Concert Series featuring young Canadian reggae hot shots, Bedouin Soundclash, and hip hop heavyweights, De La Soul. With packed beer gardens, a concert stage on the beach, and the top pro athletes in wakeboarding, the Coors Light Trauma Tour Pro Wakeboard Invitational was the surprise youth event of the summer.

So what does this mean for youth marketers? We all know that action sports, and of course music, resonate with Canadian youth. But events like this continue to support the macro-trend “integration culture”, where the wide-appeal of many components of youth culture fashion, action sports, hip hop, rock, food, drinking, etc. provide a much larger appeal than any one aspect. Smart youth marketers not only have a good understanding of “integration culture” and consider how this macro-trend should affect their communication strategies, but they will seek out events like this one and apply the strategy for their own below-the-line marketing plans.

And if over 17,000 kids can make the trek to Red Deer, then the least you can do is to think twice before you execute a single-tier youth campaign.

School is back in full swing again! So how much did all the back-to-school spending put parents back this year? Tweens and teens thought that their parents would spend roughly $300 on average to get them ready for the school year. But the spending doesn’t stop there. In addition to parent spending, teens thought they would spend about the same amount from their hard earned summer job money and savings towards preparation for school. Tweens aged 9 to 13-years-old, on the other hand, expected they would be spending almost $200 of their own money. It’s no wonder with the importance of coming back with the newest and the hottest stuff that kids are willing to fork out for their clothes, footwear, accessories oh yeah, and school supplies.