In-Depth
Gen Z: Doug Boles
President, Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Doug Boles has found success marketing specifically to younger generations with the Snake Pit, an electronic music festival in the infield of IMS during the Indy 500 each Memorial Day weekend. It brings out about 30,000 people, mainly in the Gen Z and millennial demographics.
—As told to Adam Stern
I’ve been here for eight years, and every year it becomes more and more of a focus for us: How are we going to capture younger kids, especially 8 through 16 — that age where you can really influence them, so it’s a topic of conversation around here quite a bit.
It begins first with the artists. This is where it’s important to have millennials and Gen Z have an influence on what we do. If you were to let the 50-year-old man in me design the Snake Pit, I would have put bleachers up and the whole nine yards. And it felt really difficult for us, as someone not in that generation, that people would want to go to an event where there aren’t seats and they are sort of crammed together in this social experience. So being able to step back and put on an event that is not in my and many of our comfort zones, and do it in a way that appeals to that millennial and Gen Z folks, meant for us as leaders of the organization to rely on people who are in those age demographics to say, “Hey, guys — appreciate that you want to build seats, but this is really the experience that people want, even though you can’t understand it.” So having [younger employees] on board here who have a lot of say in what we do and how we make decisions was the first learning experience for the organization — step back and let people who are connected have influence on the products we put on the racetrack or infield.
The talent is really important, but the bigger thing is the experience. We could have easily said, “OK, this talent is important” but put on the wrong experience. So you have to be able to listen to the people who understand the experience and why it works. And even when it’s contrary to what the perfect music experience is for me, you have to be able to say, “OK, we trust these guys, they’re in that generation, they’re hired and working here because they’re good at what they do.” So the success has been the talent, but the experience as much as anything and delivering what those two generations expect when they go see electronic music.
