To your question, that is what's happening. The Gen X and early Gen Y are individualistic. We tend to do things alone like working out and running. The idea is to get those lone thinkers. They study the demographic they target. I'm sure you've noticed the commercials with all of the new technical advances. Military members snow boarding to target extreme sporters. Tying video games to army combat. The same people who market Big Kids Happy Meals also think of ways to get people to join the Army.
I tried to find something that could explain the concept of the marketing.
But just like most Baby Boomers were not pot-smoking hippies, most generation X-ers are not "slackers." Most are decent, hard-working, pragmatic, self-reliant, creative and independent. They have a good work ethic, including a strong sense of company loyalty, as long as it’s reciprocal. They are freedom-minded and independent thinkers having spent more time alone as children, growing up fast and taking on part-time jobs to help out at home.
Action sports reinforce that sense of risk and independence for youthful generations. Athletes of extreme sports had a choice to make growing up—either football or surfing. They opted for surfing. Instead of baseball, they gravitated to skateboarding.
"Action sports events are about freedom of expression and individualism, people who don’t want to follow the rule, but want to be outside and make their own choices" says Paul Taublieb, CEO of Malibu, Calif.-based Media X International, a live event and production company specializing in action sports. The firm has produced shows domestically and worldwide, including 42 shows at Disneyland and the X Games—the action sports equivalency to the Olympics. What many people don’t recognize is these competitors made huge personal sacrifices done as individuals, not as teams or with the help of an organization. It takes years practicing and along the way taking brutal punishment falling down and breaking bones. Part of the pride participants feel and Gen-X and Y can identify with is they achieved success on their own and have managed to imprint their own style."
Bratman concurs and adds, "These athletes perform for the love of the sport as opposed to the money, and that comes across to anyone who watches. These sports events are also so visually spectacular, action-packed and fun to watch that it makes it easy to follow."
While the X crowd is regarded as ultra-individualist, the Gen-Y crowd is perceived as more group-oriented and therefore, less interested in becoming an "army of one." Gen-Y includes those born between 1980 and 1994 and makes up about 11 percent of the U.S. population, which accounts for approximately 78 million Americans.
snip<
This is from a site that tracks the "Events Industry" basically companies that want to put on events for their employees or for the public to target customers. Here's a link for the rest of the article.
http://www.event-solutions.com/articles/June04/2004-6-Genx.html
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