Marketing The Big E

As The Big E — the largest of New England’s agricultural fairs and the ninth largest fair in the US — opens up for another season, we thought we’d explore the marketing materials behind it and talk to their agency of record, Mascola Group in New Haven.

“The Big E is definitely one of the best clients we get to work with,” says Senior Art Director Nick Healy. “We get to create billboards about cream puffs and tv spots about roller coasters — it’s great! And the marketing department at the Big E is so easy to work with; they appreciate all the work we do and they trust the creative decisions we make without second guessing us. Plus I love the fact that The Big E always asks us to come up with a freshly-designed campaign every year. Never have they come to us and tried to re-run the same creative. They realize that tastes change and their look every year should not feel dated or done before.”

The overall concept for this year was “Anticipation,” brought to life across all media.  
“Since the Fair is something that happens as a close to the summer, we wanted to create a sense of anticipation and desire for all the things that it has to offer. In the television spot, we have a countdown ’3,2,1…’ sequence to lead into the spot. In all the billboards and print creative, we have an ‘It’s coming’ message — such as ‘The Menagerie is Coming,’ or ‘The Thrills are Coming.’ And to make use of the digital billboard medium, we’ve had a daily countdown of ‘The Screams unleash in 13 days…’”

2011 is the seventh year that Mascola has been doing work for The Big E. Each year the agency does a new campaign that is delivered through a variety of media — brochures, posters, highway billboards, in-mall advertising, online, newsprint ads, radio and television.

“Our first presentation to the client is typically with a billboard, a brochure cover and intro spread, and a radio treatment for each of the concepts we show them. We feel that this is the best way to show them how the concepts we’ve developed will translate across all the mediums to come out of the campaign. That first presentation to the client usually happens in April/May, and then it’s the whole summer developing the rest of the creative and getting it ready to go out.”

Reception to their work over the years has been exceptional.

“We have won awards for the work in the design/advertising community, from the Ad Club of Connecticut and the Connecticut Art Directors Club, but it was really cool when we were awarded top outdoor and top campaign from the IAFE — the International Association of Fairs and Exhibitions. This is a world-wide organization specializing in fairs recognizing the work we did. Kinda neat.

“The real overall success, though, would be through attendance at the fair. If you look at it that way, last year was a big success. We had three record-breaking attendance days and the overall attendance was their third highest in history — with 1,228,418 visitors during the three weeks of the fair.”

After seven years and seven campaigns, does Healy have a favorite? “I think I’d have to say 2007 — the year we did the ‘apple crate campaign’ was one of my favorites. The overall design concept was created by Eric Webb and it just totally fit the feel of classic Americana that I think The Big E represents.”