The South Carolina State Fair
South Carolina’s Largest Event | 2019 to present
Branding, integrated communications and marketing
The South Carolina State Fair, the state’s largest event, made bold changes for its 150th anniversary in 2019, from hiring a new agency — Flock and Rally — to replacing national concerts with a free, daily circus. Challenged to combine the circus with fair nostalgia, Flock and Rally created a campaign theme, “Prize-Winning Memories,” anchored by original illustrations by Cait Maloney Creative, photography by Forrest Clonts and brand filmmaking by As Told By Agency.
A statewide integrated communications and marketing campaign was rolled out in collaboration with the client team with incredible attention to detail, including the design of a giant graphic wrap for the iconic, 75-foot-tall Rocket to transform it into a birthday candle, as well as a new, life-size mascot costume based on the State Fair’s roving ticket booth, FRED.
Not only was the discontinuation of the national grandstand concerts met positively, but the free daily circus was packed during each show for all 12 days of the fair, and advance ticket sales nearly doubled. Meanwhile, ad impressions increased by a third, and there were tens of thousands of verified visits from guests who were served a digital ad through Flock and Rally’s digital advertising inventory. Social media advertising yielded an average cost per result well below the national average at the time. Gross ride revenue on the first Saturday of the event was the second highest nationwide in history for the midway operator, and College Night (one of the campaign’s target audiences) was the largest attended in history per anecdotal evidence. Had it not have been for a bad weather event on a key “football” Saturday, the S.C. State Fair would have celebrated its highest attendance in history.
The campaign was honored with two 2020 Silver ADDY awards from the American Advertising Federation of the Midlands chapter as well as a 2019 Mercury Award of Excellence and a Silver Wing Award of Excellence from the South Carolina chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. The S.C. State Fair team was honored in 2019 by the International Association of Fairs and Expositions with four first place awards in the IAFE’s Hall of Honor Communications competition, including the overall Judges Creative Award for FRED. These first place awards also included the fair’s website, best marketing campaign and miscellaneous marketing/promotional display (for FRED) among fairs in the same attendance category.
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, Flock and Rally developed a campaign for 2020 to promote the State Fair's first-ever "Drive-Through S.C. State Fair."
