A-Team aims for younger fair crowd

JIM GEHRZ, Star Tribune

Natalie Ives, 17, greeted people as they arrived at the State Fair. She is a member of the Advisory Team. The program is part of an effort by the fair to attract a younger age group because figures indicate that only 14 percent of the crowd at the fair are between ages 18 and 24.

Teenagers on a new advisory group are giving Minnesota State Fair officials tips on how to get their peers to venture off the midway.

By SARAH LEMAGIE, Star Tribune

Last update: August 26, 2008 - 11:48 AM

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The teenagers recruited to boost the Minnesota State Fair's cool factor made a bold suggestion to fair officials this year: What if we cut a hole in the fence, so students in the know could sneak in for free?

That idea did not fly. But it's just one of many cooked up by the fair's new advisory team, or A-Team, high school and college students charged with telling the old(er) fogies who run the fair how to make it more appealing to young people.

"As a 40-year-old or 50-year-old, it's kind of hard to understand what's mod," said Natalie Ives, a senior at Roseville Area High School and an A-Team member who greeted fairgoers, passed out maps and pointed lost souls to the nearest cheese curds as part of the group's efforts to put a younger face on the fair.

It's not that teens don't show up. Lemonade-slurping, ticket-clutching fair-goers between 18 and 24 -- the youngest age group tracked by the fair -- make up 14 percent of those inside the gates. That's not bad, considering the age group makes up about 10 percent of Minnesota's population.

But fair officials say they'd like to see young people do more than spend money. "It's getting harder and harder to get youth involved in the fair," said Theresa Weinfurtner, an entertainment supervisor at the fair.

Fair officials hope that by leaning on the students for advice, they can do a better job of getting teens hooked on competitions and activities. And working with the A-Team has made it clear that just getting the word out about fun attractions other than rides and food is a major part of the battle. No one says the fair is boring, "but the awareness of everything that's out there ... is really limited," said A-Team member Laura Brown, 17.

They're also using the dozen A-Team members as ambassadors, sending them to represent the fair at such events as the Aquatennial Parade and stationing them at gates to welcome people.

The Minnesota State Fair is following the example of other fairs and amusement parks nationwide that have formed junior boards to tap the minds of the younger generation. The Mall of America, for example, has a 75-member teen board of students who give staff members input about trends and serve as occasional models.

The A-Team is also helping the fair reach out to young people on the Internet, through such social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. The fair had a presence on some sites, including Facebook, before it formed the A-Team, but the teens are pushing the envelope.

"They talk in Facebook speech about sending this and posting this, and we're kind of like, 'What?'" said Weinfurtner.

Today, A-Team members are conducting a guerrilla marketing experiment to find out how many people they can get to the fair using only Facebook to advertise a special event to their friends and friends-of-friends. Details are secret (unless they succeed in reaching you online), but the event is an "organized sneak-in" involving a special do-at-home craft project that participants can bring to the fair in exchange for a prize.

It's the closest the teens could get to the hole-in-the-fence concept, an idea that came -- oddly enough, generationally speaking -- from A-Team member Kat Klima's grandmother.

"Her favorite memory of the fair was that she used to sneak in through the fence," said Klima, 17, who will be a senior at Apple Valley's Eastview High School.

Sarah Lemagie • 952-882-9016

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