I’ve lived in North Jersey for 16 years. Every June, I start seeing billboard advertising for the State Fair Meadowlands. I have fond memories of attending county fairs in Maryland as a child, but I’ve never been able to convince my husband to give it a go. He’s probably right that it’s not worth dealing with the crowds and it will never match up with my homegrown fair memories.
Over the weekend, I noticed a billboard for this year’s fair with the tagline, “Making NJ great again”. I turned to my husband and said, “I actually respect the creative risk they took – surely they meant to be funny and aren’t really supporting Donald Trump.”
My husband said to me, “Are you sure? I don’t know anymore.” As I sat and thought about it, I became less certain. After all, we did elect Chris Christie in this largely Democratic state. So I went home and did a little digging.
As it turns out, the tagline was intended to be “timely and irreverent” and not political. A fair spokesperson explained that every year they hold a brainstorm session to come up with humorous, less predictable slogans that really catch people’s attention (like “The Boss of all Fairs” or “We put the Joy in Joisey”).
It’s working.
The fair is facing some backlash on its Facebook page, including people threatening to boycott. It’s early to say if they went too far with the Trump-inspired slogan. They won’t be able to do a real risk-reward analysis until they know how the attendance compares with previous years.
In our office, we often talk about how difficult it is for a brand to be funny. Humor is subjective and there’s arguably way more bad humor than good in the world. We once had a client who hired a former National Lampoon writer to make our news releases tongue-in-cheek. We tend to write for news, not laughs. Sometimes, it’s good to stay in your lane.
The annual state fair is a brand that’s episodic, so I wonder if enough people know to expect humor from their creative. In the end, I still applaud them for taking a chance. As the fair spokesperson points out to inquiring journalists, people are talking about it and it’s being covered as news.
What do think? Will the risk pay off?