by Judy Carrico | Mar 19, 2020 | Uncategorized
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 know her you know who I mean) came up with this idea of the video series and I think it’s great! Have our exhibitors create videos of them preparing to enter their item into the fair.
The concept is to do a video series of some of our exhibitors preparing their item to enter into the Fair. Here are some of the ideas:
1 – Select an exhibitor in canning, quilting, arts/craft etc and have them do a self video of them working on their item.
2 – Find someone who can highlight what fruits/veggies/flowers they should be planting now/near future to be entered into the Fair.
3 – Do a video for ideas for parents to have their kid’s do a craft to enter for the fair.
4 – Do a video for adults to do a craft to enter into the fair
5 – Do a video about learning a new hobby that the result can be entered in the fair – this can be done at a local craft store showing what items they would need to purchase. Note: Most of these purchases can be done online.
Encourage them to take up a new hobby, learn a new skill! Even if that means it’s learned online!
While this is very turbulent times, everyone is looking and seeking for some normalcy. Your fairgrounds and your fair can provide that to our employees and patrons.
Be safe everyone!
by Judy Carrico | Mar 14, 2020 | Uncategorized
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 incident. It is called the Business Pandemic Influenza Planning Checklist. Although it was written for influenza and large businesses, any size fair organization or fair partner can benefit from reviewing and implementing activities listed. Here is the link:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pdf/businesschecklist.pdf
Communication is the most important action your organization can take. Communicate with your Board of Directors, local city/county leaders, employees, event promoters, and your public – what are you doing and what is going on with events.
Fairgrounds have a huge advantage over convention centers, theaters, meeting halls, etc. Fair Staff have been dealing with consumer protection issues for years – primarily preparing and preventing ecoli incidents, educating the public about human/animal interactions. Take all that messaging and protocols – modify for the current pandemic.
Also, reach out to your Industry organizations: Fair Associations, NICA, OABA, etc.. They are communicating with Federal, State and Local officials, politicians, and their own members. If you don’t have a PR department, your industry organizations can provide you with valuable information that you can modify for your local fair organization or business.
Remember, you are part of a large industry regardless of the size of your organization, your fair attendance or your budget. Be safe, and be prepared.
by Judy Carrico | Jan 12, 2019 | Blog, Fair Planning, Fair Programming, Target Marketing, Uncategorized
How do you increase attendance? Attract new patrons correct? And to attract new patrons, fair management needs to do some research and make some decisions. First, what demographic are you trying to reach?
How do you determine which group to focus on? We have found this information in our survey. By doing a survey at your fair to learn about the current attendees and identifying patterns. If you aren’t collecting demographic information annually or at least every other year you have no data to make good decisions. Your survey must include age (or a range), gender, zip code and ethnicity at a minimum.
We recently discovered a significant increase in our attendance by the asian population using our onsite fair survey. Further research indicated that our community demographic had changed as well. We quickly realized we needed to make some adjustments to our programming to begin the process of attracting the growing asian demographic in our community to the Fair, and, naturally, increasing attendance at our fair.
Based on our fair survey from a three year period we chose to focus on the top two growing sub-demographics: chinese americans and indian americans.
The next decision was made to create 2 new festivals during the Fair featuring chinese american and indian american entertainment, food, vendors, contests, etc.. We’ve already been doing this in the hispanic market with great success. Over the past 3 Fairs, we have been working with a team from the local Univision TV/Radio media group. The Fair purchases advertising on their TV and Radio outlets and pays for entertainment. Univision helps promote our hispanic event, Festival Latino, and arranges for the entertainment. In addition, the Fair provides marketing collateral in spanish for Univision to distribute at events they produce or events they attend. It’s been a successful process, so we decided to try the same process with these two new festivals.
We contacted our media buyers, who did research to determine which media partner would be the best partnership. Stay tuned for updates as we go through this process.
