Finding new motorcycle riders…

It is conventional wisdom that the motorcycle industry is worried about the demographic shift of the oldest baby boomers (born in 1946) hitting the United States legal retirement age of 65. As boomers or boomies retire, their older children called Generation X (born 1965 to 1980) and younger ones called Generation Y (born 1980 to 1995) are or will take major roles in our society. So, what’s our industry is doing to tap this vast potential market? Sadly, almost nothing.Do you know of any motorcycle manufacturer, print magazine, motorcycle TV show or motorcycle rally making real efforts to adjust to these 2 new generations whose taste, language and entertainment is quite different from the one of the baby boomers. Xers and Yers have their own specificities, but both were raised front of television, playing Atari 2600 or World Of Warcraft, doing their homework on a computer and socializing through internet social networks like MySpace. In addition to have raised 2 boys belonging 1 to the Xers and 1 to the Yers, I have a lot of interactions with the new generations and I know for sure that they spend more time surfing the web than watching TV, and more time enjoying HD movies than they will ever reading paper magazines.

We cannot expect that all children born in a biker family are going to be bikers. And even if it would be the case, it will never be enough to support our industry. I have no doubt that the baby boomers children can acquire our taste and love for the sport of motorcycling. But they are not exposed to it because our industry exclusively “talks” to us, never to them, and never in a place or media where we would get a chance that they listen and fall in love with bikes like I did when I was 18. Let’s take Internet, the meeting place of these 2 new generations.

Motorcycle print magazines limit their online presence to a “giant business card” with a few titles and pictures. But in no way they are full and complete interactive online magazines. Consequently their traffic is extremely low and much lower than any improvised website whose author is a biker dude sitting in his kitchen and publishing aggregated motorcycle news copied from other websites. I am an Internet publisher and I believe in the “word of mouse” to extend my passion for motorcycles to others, I don’t understand why my friends and fellow print publishers still don’t recognize it. Major newspapers and magazines were able to have both a successful and profitable simultaneous print and online presence. Why not us?