Case Study

The DuPage County Fair, had a record year as attendance grew 16.6% and introduced a new style of music for a local county fair. GR-PR’s public relations program generated more than 52 million impressions in Chicagoland through strong strategic planning and creative positioning.

Objectives:

• Generate awareness for the DuPage County Fair and reach new publics to drive higher attendance.
• Increase youth attendance, especially in the “Tween” market segment (ages 8 to 14)
• Plan and execute a first-time contest which involves the community.
• Garner local media attention.

Strategies/Tactics:

• To reach new publics and drive youth attendance in the “Tween” market segment, we added a third night of musical entertainment with a unique style of county fair music – pop! Teen heart-throb and pop music star Jesse McCartney signed on.
• Provided free admission tickets to students through DuPage library reading programs and student achievement program at DuPage schools.
• Press materials were distributed at planned intervals before, during and after the fair to publicize all aspects of the fair.
• We created an extensive electronic press kit for media use.
• For our first-time fair event, we tied in the fair title, “Have ‘Ewe’ Heard, It’s Fair Time,” to a “Build a Sheep contest” for local organizations, camps and schools.

Results:

• Attendance (222,648) increased 16.6% from 2004.
• Print impressions reached more 52,704,810, up from 46,624,683 in 2004
• TV Nielsen audience reached 227,865 with 11:50 of total airtime. Including segments on WGN morning and noon news, WLS-ABC and WBBM-CBS coverage.
• The “Build a Sheep Contest” got new organizations actively involved with the fair and created a new attraction.