It’s Fair season and there is nothing like a state or county fair to pull out all the stops for family fun. Fair producers have learned that it’s all about engaging people — having a cut-out at multiple stations throughout the grounds, photo staging areas with a promote-the-fair background for social media, and contests galore. At the Wisconsin State Fair last year, my favorite was the grilled cheese ruler where people could measure how cheesy their sandwich was by pulling the cheese as far as they could.
While many of these events are cheesy themselves, the overall theme is a good one: get people engaged. The fair isn’t a place where you just walk around — you pet animals, play games, eat, ride, and marvel at the shows. It’s an active place to go, providing experiences that people can’t get elsewhere — which keeps them coming back year after year.
Think of how you can adapt a component of the fair to your waiting room or organization. Can you add something as simple as a jar of something to guess a count, a cut-out for photos, or even a measure-this ruler as Culver’s used to do with their french fries? The name of the game is customer participation and the fair has many lessons to teach about how to do this economically and well.
