Jennie Jones remembers going to the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto every summer in the late ’70s, strolling through the midway with her dad, gaping at carnies and eating Tiny Tim doughnuts. “The free food kept us coming back,” says the 37-year-old Toronto resident. While she looks back with Wonder Years nostalgia, Jones hasn’t been to the fair in years, making her exactly the kind of person the CNE hopes to reach in a new campaign that emphasizes family fun.
“For many people who grew up (in the Greater Toronto Area), they have memories of the Ex that span decades,” says Karen Lynch, the CNE’s marketing manager. “So we’re competing with their memory of what the Ex was. Those who didn’t grow up here might wonder, ‘Is it kind of a ticky-tacky place where you eat cotton candy?’ ” Speaking to both those consumer groups is one marketing challenge for the CNE, which takes place Aug. 18 to Sept. 4.
Another is the fair’s three-ring-circus atmosphere. “There are a thousand different programs on,” Lynch says. Previous campaigns tried to give people a sense of everything that was going on, and the message became muddled. For example, ads featured various photos around the treatment “Let’s Go to the Ex.” One was of a goat, another showed a clown, and so on.
This year’s message focuses on five distinct themes: fun, family, friends, food and shopping. The central tag line is still “Let’s go to the Ex,” but ads now also say “The Ex marks the spot.” One visual, for instance, shows a boy and his grandfather on a roller coaster, with the words “The Ex marks the spot for fun.” The work is the first for the CNE’s new agency, Field Day, which won the account in a formal review, replacing the exhibition’s agency of nine years, Stubbs Chapman.
Field Day co-pitched for the business with Gaggi Media, which recommended a media buy that will result in the CNE doing no TV advertising for the first time in some 30 years. Instead, outdoor and online were increased significantly and radio was bumped up as well (albeit using fewer stations). TV spots used to feature the jingle “Let’s go to the Ex” (to the tune of the 1950s doo-wop hit “At the Hop”), but Lynch says exit surveys done at the 2005 fair showed poor awareness of TV ads. She also pointed out television viewership tends to decline in mid-summer, when the CNE spots normally run.
The CNE isn’t the only summer fair to change ad agencies recently. The Pacific National Exhibition, which runs Aug. 19 to Sept. 4 in Vancouver, hired Rethink, but that agency is only tweaking a campaign put together a year ago by Wasserman & Partners. “We had success with this campaign and we want to build a little momentum and familiarity with (it),” says Shelley Frost, the PNE’s vice-president of marketing.
The PNE’s campaign, which includes print, transit, outdoor, TV and radio, shows all the different things people will experience at the fair. “There’s such a range of entertainment, (the aim) was to be very broad and speak to a very wide demographic,” Frost says.
The CNE also attracts a diverse audience but “you can’t necessarily talk to all of them the same way,” says Andrew Arntfield, president of Field Day. For example, one radio spot tries humor to attract young adults. It uses the voice of a grandfather remembering the CNE of yesteryear, complete with rides made out of “cardboard and string and spit.””The Ex has been around for a hundred-odd years and (a younger audience) may see it as something that’s in tune with their parents’ generation,” says Arntfield.
