How to Plan, Pay for and Put on a Wildly Successful Fair
Without Losing Your Mind, Your Family or Your Friends!
Selecting the Correct Entertainment For Your Fair
What is the Correct Entertainment To Provide For Your Fair? First of all, there are many definitions for the term “entertainment”. Google Definition: What is the meaning of entertainment? 1a : amusement or diversion provided especially by performers ie hired a band to provide entertainment. b : something diverting or engaging: such as. (1) : a public performance. (2) : a usually light comic or adventure novel. Fairs provide entertainment in many ways. Carnival rides are entertaining, fair food is entertaining, retail vendors at the fairs are entertaining, and the traditional entertainer (musician, singer, magician, clown, etc)...
5 Best Security Practices For County and State Fairs
As many fairgrounds return to holding large scale events, including their annual fair, it’s time to re-evaluate your organizations fairtime security processes and policy(s). Another reason to do this - the high turnover of Fair Management and Staff due to Covid 19. Between layoffs and retirements, a large number of fairs across the United States have new leadership in their organization. Some of these individuals have prior fair experience or event management experience, and yet, many come from non-fair industry/non-event management careers. Regardless of your status, take a minute to read the following helpful information. It’s your...
5 Ways For Increasing Ticket Sales During Holidays
It’s the holiday season and that means the public is looking forward to discounts. Fairs and Fairgrounds should be taking advantage of that concept as well. There are two reasons to offer Black Friday deals - first of all you’re continuing to keep the Fair event at the top of your fans list of things to do and second, and more importantly, you’re adding revenue to your bottom line during a relatively slow revenue period. Typically the last quarter of the year has much less events on the grounds than other months. Below are 5 ideas for ways to offer discounts for Black Friday and other Holidays: #1 - Season Pass Discounts -...
Connecting With our Competitive Exhibitors During Shelter At Home Scenarios
We are in very uncharted and challenging times. Many of our fairgoers and competitive entry exhibitors have been mandated by their local government and/or health department to stay home. Some County/State Fairs, Livestock Shows and Rodeos have been cancelled for the year. Others are in limbo while their year round events have been significantly reduced for the next few weeks. For those who are moving forward with their Fair Planning activities, our team has identified a way to keep our message about the fair in front of everyone via social media. For those who know me and/or know our Fair and our Fair Team, I can share that TB (if you...
Pandemic Preparation for Your Organization or Business
The Covid 19 Coronavirus has officially been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. With that declaration countries around the world are mobilizing to secure their borders, contain the virus, protect their people and prepare for the worst case scenario. Fairgrounds and other event facilities are being told to cancel all events for 3-8 weeks - depending on the State. Some Fair’s have already been cancelled by their cities - Houston Livestock Show, Miami Dade Youth Fair, Colorado River Fair are recent examples. The Centers for Disease Control has created this great checklist for preparing and dealing with a pandemic...
Final Update On Creating New Events To Increase Attendance
It’s now 90 days after our Fair! I wasn’t able to post before we opened - so many new things going on and I just lost track of time! So here is the final update from our cultural events we created. We had a great Fair! I’ll start out with that. The weather cooperated with most days at 80 degrees and one or two days in the 90 degree level. For those who produce outdoor events you know that weather is the key to success! You can have the best programming, entertainment, and advertising …. And if your event is outdoors and it’s 100 degrees …well, there goes attendance! Fortunately, we had great weather! During the past 90 days since Fair...
Update on Creating New Events to Increase Attendance
Part 3 Creating Events To Increase Attendance We are 2 months away from opening day. Where have the days gone????? We have finalized the entertainment for the hispanic event, and we continue to work on the Asian Pacific American and the Indian American events. We are challenged working with media from these two cultural groups. It’s definitely not the same as working with Univision! We had one radio station lined up for our Indian American event and they even provided some potential entertainers. I thought “great! We are close to finalizing our entertainment and food for this one”! And then when we reached out to one of the groups the radio...
Three Steps Every New Fair Manager Needs To Do
So, you’ve been hired to be a Fair CEO! What does that mean exactly? Were you hired to “change things”, “bring agriculture back to the Fair”, “make the Fair more community focused”, or my all time favorite, “make the Fair better”? Do you really know what that means? The bottom line is that everyone who works at any fair wants to do all of the above! So, how do you do that with limited staff, budget, or community support? Sound familiar? Well, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, there is no “Fair Manual” telling us how to create and produce the “best Fair ever”. Fairs may claim to be the “biggest”, the “best”, the “largest”. So how do you...
Meeting with Media Partners for Fair Advertising and Promotion Planning
Part 2 - Creating Events for Increasing Fair Attendance One of the Fair's most valuable partners is the media who will help you spread the message about your fair, entertainment, contests, and everything else going on during the Fair. Regardless of the number of media partners in your market, they provide news and current events to their subscribers/listeners/viewers and you want to make sure your Fair is part of their regular reporting schedule. Our team meets with our media partners about 5 months before the Fair. We discuss new events and activities. We identify ways for their on-air personalities to promote the Fair. We also share what...
Using Technology for Tracking Projects
I LOVE technology! From personal use to professional use .... there are so many options ... how do decide which one to use? First figure out what you need to track and who needs access to that information? If you have any team members that work off-site - you need a cloud based program. I highly suggest you look to cloud based options - any natural disaster can wipe out locally stored files, unless you have a cloud based backup system. And in today's world, cloud based files are so inexpensive. I rely on 3 programs - all of which are free for the minimum amount of services, or for a slight fee you can use all of their services. They each...
Learn why every Fair and every Fair CEO should be actively participating in industry trade organizations and the benefits those organizations can provide to any Fair.
My upcoming book is a compilation of conversations with 10 Fair Industry professionals. From Fair CEO’s to entertainers, you will gain insight into what works and what doesn’t work. These candid conversations include discussions about entertainment, layout, finances, marketing, and more.
Enjoy these conversations! And start some of your own in your organization!