Iowa State Fair’s 2016 “MY State Fair” Campaign focused on fairgoers’ individual experiences. (Photo by Iowa State Fair)
“This year’s theme was ‘Nothing Compares to MY State Fair’,” said Iowa State Fair CEO Gary Slater of their marketing campaign for the Des Moines event. “I really think that that plays well, especially to our tried and true fairgoers that love the Iowa State Fair. Every time I get the chance to go out and speak to civic organizations, I ask them ‘How many of you have been coming to the fair for a long, long time? How many of you had your parents bring you to the fair, and you’re bringing your kids and grandkids to the fair?’ Most of the hands go up around the room. So I tell them, ‘Everybody’s got their favorite part of the fair. Close your eyes right now and think of your favorite part of the Iowa State Fair, or favorite story that you have where you got to do something that no one else on the fairgrounds got to do, or you got to meet somebody, or you had a Grand Champion. That’s what it’s all about.’ When you talk to the history and tradition of 162 years of the Iowa State Fair, it really resonates with people, and we got a great response from that.”
The 2016 Iowa State Fair ran Aug. 11-21 and saw 1,031,278 guests. “Those are good solid numbers for us,” Slater commented, adding that attendance this year was higher than 2014 and 7.7% down from 2015’s record attendance of 1,117,398. “Whenever you can get over a million people to agree on anything, in a state that only has three million people in it…the power of the Iowa State Fair is the buy-in from all the hometown people, which is just tremendous. It’s a great place to be.”
Further east, at the Erie County Fair, Hamburg, N.Y., the theme was similar. “This year we went with ‘It’s Your Fair,’ trying to get people into ownership and trying to get them more engaged in the activities that take place here,” said Erie County Fair CEO Denny Lang. “Our marketing team has been doing different posts on Facebook: Throwback Thursdays, things that have happened at the fair, trying to continue to keep the fair in everyone’s mind. Start talking about dates for next year. ‘Did you do this at this year’s fair? It’ll be bigger and better next year.’”
“This year’s fair was good. It was safe, and we didn’t have any incidents,” Lang reflected, adding that “it was a tough year this year. Our weather was extremely, extremely hot and humid; the hottest August on record in Buffalo. We ended up with 3 rain days. The rain was greatly appreciated because it cooled things off a little bit, but as soon as it left, the humidity picked back up again. There were also two Buffalo Bills football games during the fair; the stadium’s about three miles away from our fairgrounds.”
Iowa State Fair also hit with rain
Contributing to the drop in the Iowa State Fair’s attendance were the three days of rain the fair experienced, starting opening day. “When you’re dealing with [the rain], with soft areas around concession stands, you’re trying to put down some kind of ground cover, whether it be mulch, rock or adding carpet to control the mud. Our parking suffers because we have low spots in our parking lot, so then we get a couple days where we can’t park those areas. Those kinds of things do affect us not just at that point in time, but for a couple days after.”
Despite the rain, Slater believes the fair met budget projections. “Bills keep coming in over the next three months, so we won’t know until about the third cycle exactly where we are budget-wise. Revenue numbers are solid, and we did a good job staying within the expense side of the budget; I have a great staff to do that.” The fair is allotted 87% of the $23 million annual budget, leaving just 13% to cover the 215 off-season events that run over 600 event days each year.
This year’s fair received about $1.4 million in cash sponsorship with an additional $300,000 in kind, which Slater said is “one of the best years we’ve had since 2008.”
“About half the fairgoers come through the gate and don’t want to do anything different than what they’ve done each and every year they’ve come to the fair, but then the other 50 percent of the people don’t want to see exactly what they saw last year. They want us to knock their socks off with something new,” Slater commented. “So we always try to add something new and something different.”
“This year we really emphasized our new foods contest,” Slater continued. “We had 26 new foods, and 19 of them were in our contest. We narrowed that down to six in June, and we narrowed that down to the top three. Then we had a ‘people’s choice’ during the fair of those top three. The buzz and the hype around that was a really good positive for the fair, and people enjoyed that. When I went past those stands, and actually not just the top three, but about 20 of them because they were on our ‘Food Finder’ app, they all had good lines.”
Admissions ran $12 for adults, $6 for kids 6-11, and free for 5 and under. Belle City Amusements offered an ‘Any Day Megapass’ for $30, and a ‘Weekday Supersaver Megapass’ for $25 Monday through Friday.
“We’re what we term as ‘America’s Classic Fair’,” Slater concluded. “It’s different than other state fairs. We have that bit of American flair to it that includes agriculture, food, fun, excitement and lots of free entertainment along with the grandstand shows.”
The 2017 Iowa State Fair will run Aug. 10-20.
Back in Erie County, attendance dropped 18 percent
Uncooperative weather throughout the Aug. 10-21 run of the 2016 Erie County Fair contributed to an 18% decrease in attendance from 2015, seeing 986,542 guests. Admissions were $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, and free for 12 and under. James E Strates Shows midway offered $30 wristbands (ride all rides) Monday through Friday, and for $40 on Weekends. The midway was down about 16%, parking revenue down about 10%, and concessions were down about 7%. As each of these numbers are less than the 18% drop in attendance, they indicate that although fewer people came to this year’s fair, those who did come spent more money.
“We’re finding that people have changed,” Lang commented. “They don’t want to come someplace and just be entertained. They want to be entertained, they want to be educated, they want to feel secure, and they want to be clean. People expect the park atmosphere, so we’re trying to tie our unusual property with its differing elevations into one using rock walls and landscaping. We’ve hired an outside crew to handle all of our cleaning. The crew works all night, so when we open up first thing in the morning, the grounds are spotless.”
“The thing I’m most excited about is our safety,” continued Lang. “Our liability premiums have gone down consistently the last four years. Our security department did an excellent job. The Hamburg Police Department called us on the second Thursday and said ‘Are you guys sure you’re having a fair? We’ve had nothing!’ Our security director continues to put the accelerator down. He’s very much engaged in police work and police activity. The security department has turned into more of a police department than a security department. He has been very helpful with, being a private property, if somebody comes to the fairgrounds and they’ve had too many adult beverages, they just won’t even let them in.”
Continuing to focus on safety, Lang added that, “We’ve engaged an emergency management team that works with all of our departments throughout the course of the year. We’ve put together plans for set up, teardown, moving livestock in, moving livestock out, motor events…there’s a plan. Everybody knows the plan. Everybody stays in their lane. So it’s progressively better over the last three years, and we’re in a very good place for the event and for our future planning.”
Lang added that sponsorships going into the fair this year were very close to last year’s numbers (about $446,000).
For new attractions at the 2016 fair, Lang offered that “We opened up the Heritage Center and Museum that seemed to be very popular. We received a lot of emailed compliments and comments on Facebook. We also did a horse education center. We called it Horse Headquarters, which seemed to be very popular because it tied in with our Agriculture Discovery Center.”
“We’ve been doing a lot of off-season school trips for children regarding agricultural education,” Lang added. Last year we built Little Hands on the Farm. The education and the agriculture are all tying together, and this is the location that seems to be a pretty nice niche for us. During the off-season, we see about 15,000 kids that come to the Agriculture Discovery Center and Little Hands On The Farm. It’s something that our Board of Directors got behind and continues to do so. We’ve hired a couple agriculture instructors and that’s worked out very well for us. It’s popular at the fair as well.”
The 2017 Erie County Fair will run Aug. 9-20.
Interviewed for this article: Gary Slater, (515) 262-3111; Denny Lang, (716) 649-3900