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Think the State Fair Is Just Corn Dogs and Cows? Think Again.
My mom and I recently spent the day at the Wisconsin State Fair which takes place in the roughly 2-acre Wisconsin State Fair Park in West Allis, WI. And if you’ve never been there, the place is massive. Yes, there are cows and pigs and rides and plenty of things on sticks that probably have no business being on sticks smothered in high fructose corn syrup, but YOLO, ya know.
This was the third year in a row that my mom and I made the drive up from the Chicago burbs, so we were pretty familiar with what to expect, what we liked, what we missed in previous years, etc. What's really cool about the fair is that there are open-air bars and restaurants everywhere, many with live music playing throughout the day. You could practically spend an entire day restaurant hopping without ever leaving the Fair. Barbecue, seafood, burgers, beach food, beer gardens, cocktails and don't forget the infamous cream puffs which are an attraction onto their own. All types of music on these smaller stages like country, pop, metal, folk and everything in between across the decades. Nelly was even the headliner on the big stage (don't think mom would dig that concert). Anyway, you could pick your vibe, grab a table and settle in, which is pretty much what my mom and I did.
We landed at Tropics, a beach-themed venue with sand, food, drinks and live music, and instead of doing what you’re supposed to do at a fair and walking 47 miles trying to see absolutely everything, we stayed put there for hours. We decided the first year that was our favorite venue. We love the beach vibe, the variety of music, everyone is happy and it's the closest you can get to a Florida vacation vibe or pick a beach bar in Anywhere, USA. But when you sit in the same place long enough, you start to notice things. I mean like eight hours in the same place.
The first musician, Bobby Way, played a lot of yacht-rock music along with songs from the 50s and 60s. There were families, couples, kids playing in the sand, people playing cornhole and groups of women hanging out. Then one-man show Kevin Kennedy came on playing Motown and more contemporary music, and the energy shifted. Later, King Solomon took the stage with reggae and the place changed again. Suddenly it was packed with a younger crowd, more couples, a different vibe and, let's just say, a different aroma floating through the air. And this all took place on the same sand and the same venue on the same day.
Every three hours offered a completely different experience.
I've spent much of my career talking to people, watching people and trying to figure out why they do what they do, so apparently I can't even go to the State Fair without turning it into an informal observational research project. But also being a 15-year amateur ballroom and social dancer, what really caught my attention were the people dancing.
Women in their 50s, 60s and probably 70s were out there moving and grooving in the sand. One woman in particular was older, a little hunched over and dancing completely by herself. And she did not give a one crap about what anyone thought. If I had to guess, if she sat down at a table to chat, I bet you should would have plenty of stories about her dancing days at clubs a la Studio 54. I'd bet a 20 and a high ball cocktail on it.
We've all heard the expression, "Dance like no one's watching." Not to say that no one is actually watching because I sure was watching. I wasn't judging but definitely observing. I wasn't thinking about if she ever was a trained dancer or if she ever did the hustle. But what I did notice was that she wasn't looking around to see who was watching her. She wasn't waiting for someone to ask her to dance. She wasn't wondering whether she was too old or whether she looked ridiculous or whether she belonged out there. She was having a good time. Period.
People were eating ridiculous things, drinking, dancing, singing, wearing whatever they wanted and generally letting it all hang out. Nobody seemed terribly concerned about impressing anybody. There seemed to be an unwritten social contract of this venue especially designed around a beach experience which tends to be a no-judgment zone.
And I started wondering whether that isn't one of the secrets of a great experience. Some of best experiences don't just show us something new and entertaining but they allow to participate and be ourselves while we're doing it. And then I started thinking about the Wisconsin State Fair itself and how it may have started and evolved into this giant experience today.
So here's a little history...
The first Wisconsin State Fair was held in Janesville in 1851. It was an agricultural event built around livestock, crops, farming competitions and agricultural innovation. The Fair moved around the state during its early decades before eventually establishing a permanent home at what became State Fair Park in the 1890s. That's 175 years of evolving and morphing into more, bigger and better over the years.
However, agriculture is still very much part of the Fair. Trust me I know. I smelled it and walked around with it on my shoe for a while. But you can absolutely go look at cows and pigs. You can learn about farming. You can wander through agricultural exhibits and see the traditions that created the Fair in the first place.
Over the generations, the Fair added new technology, machinery, automobiles, aviation, entertainment, rides, food traditions, commercial exhibits, music, restaurants, bars, shopping and all kinds of attractions that gave more people more reasons to come. And that may be the more interesting innovation story.
We tend to talk about transformation as though organizations have to blow everything up and become something completely different. But maybe the better question is: What do we need to preserve, and where do we have the wiggle in the brand to play with new ideas?
The Fair still has cows like the black and white ones that the dads ask the kids, "Do you think the black and white ones make chocolate milk? But the Fair organizers figured out that some of us also want reggae and a cocktail. And with that, there really isn't one Wisconsin State Fair experience anymore.
A family with young kids can spend the day on rides, eating cotton candy and puking after being on the tilt-a-whirl, and visiting cows, chickens, pigs, horses and sheep. Another attendees might come for music and shopping. There are people who probably map out what they're going to eat before they ever leave home because you really could eat your way through the Fair over two days and not eat the same thing twice. And my mom and I managed to spend a substantial portion of our day sitting at one beach bar listening to music and watching all kinds of humans go by our table while we danced and drank Bahama Mamas.
All different shapes and sizes of humanity all at the same Fair, but were not necessarily having the same experience.
That's where this gets especially interesting to me. Organizations spend enormous amounts of time designing experiences. We map customer journeys, create brand standards, build settings and vibes. We develop menus and programming, and create processes. We measure satisfaction and analyze dashboards.
And then humans show up and do human things.
They linger somewhere you thought they'd pass through. They ignore something you thought they'd love. They use something in a way nobody anticipated. They talk to strangers. They create traditions. They change the energy of a place simply by being there.
In other words, customers don't just consume an experience. They help create it for one another. We don't always build in that dynamic into the experiential equation. That woman dancing alone became part of my Wisconsin State Fair experience. So did the families who were there earlier. So did the reggae cannabis-smoking crowd that arrived later. They were just people being people. And each of those venues are very "come as you are." Why? Because they won't kick you out of their venue if you showed up with a pulled pork sandwich from Sparky's Barby Barn (I made that up. Doesn't exist. But maybe it does. LOL!) and not an item off of their menu. The Fair wants you to experience this 12,000 step day in your own way.
And that's exactly why I think organizations need to spend more time watching and observing.
We have more customer data than we've ever had. Surveys, reviews, dashboards, analytics, social listening and now AI can summarize enormous amounts of information before we've finished our first cup of coffee. Useful? Absolutely. But none of it completely replaces sitting in the back of the proverbial room and paying attention.
Where do people linger? What gets them excited? What makes them participate? Where do they struggle? What are they doing that we never anticipated? And maybe most importantly, how do they actually behave when they feel comfortable enough to stop worrying about what they're "supposed" to do?
Sometimes the story behind the numbers is sitting right in front of us. We just have to shut our key lime pieholes long enough to notice it.
I went to the Wisconsin State Fair with my mom expecting a fun day, some questionable food choices, live music and talking to strangers in a place where we all had one thing in common...to let it all hang out in a venue where there are very few (insert your fav term here) given. Trust me no one cares. The fun happened and we made some memories. And I left thinking about 175 years of reinvention, experience design, human behavior, a reggae band and one woman dancing alone in the sand like no one was watching.
And maybe there's a question in there for the rest of us:
When was the last time you sat inside the experience your organization created and simply watched what people did with it?
You might be surprised by what they're already telling you without saying a word. And then ask yourself, "What's the real behind-the-dashboard story?"
Laura M. Nozicka is a strategist, qualitative researcher, facilitator, and speaker with 30+ years spent helping organizations across healthcare, wellness, hospitality and lifestyle categories actually hear the people they serve. She is the founder of Big Idea Tango and creator of the Co-Build Method™, a hands-on informed approach to co-creating with teams and customers instead of around them. Her newsletter Voice of the Room illuminates the conversations that matter.
Talk it out. Shake it up. Make it real! laura@bigideatango.com
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