The New Playbook for Snowsports Industry Marketing: Winning Over Gen Z Skiers and Riders with Creators

Most ski industry marketing is still built for the old core. Brands keep running the same polished, peak-season campaigns built around a single hero edit, and younger riders scroll right past them. They discover gear on short-form video and trust real people over brand ads, so the hero film you spent your budget on never lands.

The Winter Insight report shows that 16% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials plan ski or snowboard holidays, versus just 3% of Boomers. That is the audience up for grabs right now.

This guide shows you how to reach them through creator marketing.

Key takeaways

• Younger skiers and riders are the fastest-growing snow segment, and they buy on trust, not specs.
• Younger riders discover gear on short-form video across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, not in your inbox.
• Community creators and UGC amplify your athlete team and build the trust younger buyers act on. 70% of Gen Z say UGC is very helpful to buying.
• Treat creators as a network that builds and grows over time, not one-off posts
• Storefronts and always-on programs fix skiing's seasonality and prove ROI.

1. Younger riders are up for grabs

Younger riders are the fastest-growing part of the sport, and the money is following them.

Demand is climbing.  Mordor Intelligence reports under-25 participation is growing at a 5.62% CAGR through 2031. Spending is moving the same way with US snow sports contributed $20.8 billion in 2024, up 6.3% year over year, largely fueled by Millennial and Gen Z consumers.

Yet most brands are fighting for the same older generation riders.

The takeaway is where the opportunity lives:

• The youth segment is the fastest-growing part of snow.
• The spending is shifting younger and climbing.
• The marketing hasn't followed, so the audience is up for grabs.

2. Sell identity and community first, not gear specs

Younger buyers are buying identity, belonging, and a version of the mountain they can see themselves in. They gravitate to brands whose values are clear and consistent, and they reward that alignment with trust and purchases.

The brands adapting already show the shift. Talia Freeman, marketing director at Beech Mountain, told SAM: "Instead of relying on polished athlete imagery, we highlight regular people, kids, locals, and new skiers so guests can see themselves on our mountain."

The women-owned, women-led ski and snowboard apparel brand was founded around 2002 by Norwegian three-time Olympic moguls medalist Kari Traa, who took bronze in 1998, gold in 2002, and silver in 2006.

The brand leads with community and identity. It is the main sponsor of Extreme Sport Week in Voss, an annual multi-sport festival that brings women athletes and ambassadors together. It also runs HIIT & Run fitness events across markets including the US.

Kari Traa is also title sponsor of TWELVE, a women-led ski film about two friends who ski together every month for a year. The film is expected in early Winter 2027. As Global Marketing Director Karoline Hegbom put it, "It is about commitment, connection, and choosing to say yes to the things that matter."

Instead of a spec-sheet ad starring a sponsored pro, show a local rider's real day on the mountain in your gear. Let the story carry the product, not the other way around.

A few practical moves:

• Drop the elite, polished imagery and show riders who look like your actual audience.
• Lead with identity and experience, then let the gear support the story.
• Make your values visible and specific, because younger buyers reward it with trust and sales.

3. Meet younger riders where they actually are

You can have the best message and still miss, because you are running it in the wrong place. Younger riders live on short-form video, and their discovery habits have moved well past the channels ski brands lean on.

Pew Research Center's 2025 data shows that among US adults ages 18 to 29, 95% use YouTube and 80% use Instagram, with heavy TikTok use in the same group. Younger audiences also treat social as search: an Adobe Express survey reported by Search Engine Journal in 2026 found 65% of Gen Z have used TikTok to search for information. If your discovery plan starts with email, you are starting where they are not looking.

That does not mean email is dead. It still works for retention. But pro freeskier Julian Carr told SnowBrains that email marketing has "severely fatigued," so do not lead discovery with it.

Format matters as much as channel. Short, vertical, POV video is what younger riders watch and what creators want to make. According to Sprout Social's 2025 Influencer Marketing Report, creators' most-wanted formats are short-form video: 53% want 15-30 second clips and 50% want 31-60 second clips.

Instead of one expensive hero brand film, fund a steady stream of short creator clips shot in real conditions.

• Prioritize YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram for discovery.
• Build for vertical, POV, 15-60 second video.
• Keep email for retention, not first touch.

4. Bring creators in to amplify your athlete team

Your athletes are an asset, and the move is to bring community creators in to work alongside them. That gives your athletes more content, more moments, and more reach. Creators lend the peer trust younger audiences act on. It is both/and, not either/or.

Burton shows how this works. It keeps its elite pro Team Riders and Burton Ambassadors as two separate tiers. Burton describes the ambassadors as "athletes, activists, and creators who are dedicated to improving the places where they live, work, and play every day."

The ambassador tier arrived in 2020 alongside the long-running pro team. In a 2021 company Q&A, Burton explained that it picks ambassadors on authenticity and values, not follower count, choosing community leaders, content creators, and guides who are "not professional snowboarders."

Burton also builds community through grassroots events like the Burton Mystery Series. That global banked-slalom series runs more than 20 stops a season and is open to all ages and abilities. The founders of Burton also started the Chill Foundation, too.

A managed program compounds instead. Instead of one athlete post, build a roster that covers your terrain, your disciplines, and your audience, with athletes and creators working together:

• Build across resort, backcountry, and park so no part of the mountain goes uncovered.
• Span your key regions and disciplines, ski and snowboard alike, not just one marquee name.
• Pair your athletes with relatable community and micro-creators who extend their reach.

Give creators creative input early. Sprout Social found 65% of influencers want early creative or product input over a rigid brief, and it shows in the work. Treat them as collaborators through the creative process, not vendors filling a spec.

Popfly is purpose-built for outdoor and adventure brands, with a vetted adventure creator network, discovery filters, and collaboration in one hub, so you can build the roster instead of chasing it.

5. Creators worth building around

The fastest way to start is to work with proven ski and snowboard creators who already tell authentic mountain stories. Here are a few Popfly creators who could rep your brand.

• Jess Cohen: full-time creator and big mountain skier on the IFSA Qualifier Tour, telling the real story of mountain life from competition days to van parking-lot edits.
• Austin Becker: skier, podcaster, and creative director in the Colorado Rockies, known for an honest story of recovery and return to the sport.
• Jenna Henry: lifelong skier now based in Utah, known for mental-health advocacy in sport.
• Tyler Haven: multi-sport outdoor creator (ski, hike, fly fish, and climb) who built his following from the road.
• Alexander Taylor: a professional big mountain skier known for charging technical alpine lines with power, precision, and composure.

The right roster blends creators like these with your athlete team. That is exactly what Popfly helps you discover and manage.

6. Make UGC your engine

Once you have a roster, user-generated content becomes your most efficient growth engine. It outperforms polished ads with younger buyers, and the trust data is not close.

According to eMarketer, citing dcdx, 70% of Gen Z say UGC is very helpful to their buying journey, and 60% of consumers overall call UGC the most genuine form of advertising. Industry research compiled by EveryoneSocial shows 92% of consumers trust recommendations from other people over branded content, and 79% say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions. Billo, citing an EnTribe survey, adds that 84% of consumers trust brands more when they use UGC.

Outdoor gear has a natural advantage here. Roo Smith describes authentic clips of real people riding backcountry lines as a UGC "goldmine" that doubles as social proof and community showcase, pointing to the GoPro creator-challenge model as a proven engine for a steady stream of high-engagement content. Alyeska Resort runs the same play, amplifying raw, in-the-moment guest content to build trust and community.

UGC also just costs less than a studio shoot, and it works in more places.

Instead of a polished catalog shoot, run a creator and customer clip challenge, then reuse the best content across your product pages and paid ads.

• Use UGC as social proof and a community showcase at once.
• Repurpose top clips on product pages, ads, and organic feeds.
• Run recurring challenges so the content stream never goes dry.

Popfly supports UGC, sponsored, affiliate, and ambassador motions in one place, so the engine and the roster live together.

7. Turn creator content into year-round sales

Ski and snowboard seasons are short but your revenue does not have to be. Too many ski and snowboard brands go quiet in April, then scramble to restart in January, and the creator content they paid for never connects to a sale.

The demand supports an always-on approach. Mordor Intelligence reports online ski gear sales are growing at a 6.28% CAGR, and cites Deloitte forecasting that sporting goods e-commerce will reach 30% of total spending by 2027, driven by Gen Z online research and purchase habits. Younger buyers are researching and buying online, in and out of season.

Storefronts and affiliate programs are how you capture that. They turn a creator's recommendation into a trackable sale, well past peak season. Every athlete, pro, and creator you work with can run a storefront that keeps generating sales while the lifts are closed.

Instead of a January ad blitz that peaks and disappears, run always-on creator commerce that compounds year-round.

• Give creators storefronts so their content links directly to purchase.
• Use affiliate to make recommendations trackable and attributable.
• Keep evergreen creator content working through the off-season.

Popfly Storefronts and evergreen programs extend the revenue window and turn creators into a growth engine, so the content you fund in peak season keeps selling in the shoulder months.

8. Treat creators as a measurable channel

None of this holds up if you cannot prove it worked. Most creator marketing programs live in spreadsheets, DMs, and someone's memory.

Treat creators like any other channel you would report to a CMO. Define your metrics up front, before the first brief goes out:

• Reach and engagement across platforms.
• Content produced and reused.
• Attributed sales from storefronts and affiliate links.

Then centralize the work. Bring discovery, collaboration, assets, and reporting into one place so you spend less time managing and more time creating. Instead of guessing what worked and repeating it on instinct, track performance in one dashboard and reinvest in what actually converts.

This is the whole thesis in practice. Popfly's performance dashboards let you monitor content metrics and prove ROI, so a chaotic set of one-off posts becomes a managed, measurable channel you can scale with confidence.

Curious what this could look like for your brand? Take a look at how Popfly brings discovery, collaboration, and sales into one place, whenever you are ready.

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