Fairs have been a part of Rick Frenette's life since he was a youngster, growing up in Chippewa Falls.
His father was a part-owner of the Northern Wisconsin State Fair, an event at which he cut his teeth before taking a job with the Minnesota State Fair in 1986. Later, he went on to Ohio and, in 2004, the Utah State Fair.
Now, Frenette turns his attention to his home state, where he was named executive director of Wisconsin State Fair Park.
But Frenette isn't returning to his home state because he's had a hankering for cream puffs; he's got his work cut out for him. While the fair itself remains a popular -- and profitable -- event, other aspects of the State Fair Park, namely the Milwaukee Mile and Wisconsin Exposition Center, have created financial burdens that impact the annual, 11-day fair's operation.
The Fair Park recently took control of the Expo Center's operations after the facility struggled to attract events during its first eight years of operation. The Milwaukee Mile will be without major circuit racing this year after the board failed to come to agreement with a promoter.
Fortunately, Frenette has been in this position before. Both the Ohio and Utah State Fairs where experiencing financial trouble when he arrived. At both venues, he helped turn things around.
"I enjoy the challenge and putting all my knowledge of the fair industry -- growing up in the industry, I've been exposed to all aspects of it -- and taking that and taking care of the challenges here," Frenette says. "Wisconsin has some strong challenges that aren't necessarily the decisions made by the current staff, but there carry through. I'm looking forward to working with the board and the staff to continue to move the Fair forward to a positive point."
His impact is especially evident in Utah. Upon taking the job, Frenette set out to tweak the event in an effort to make it friendly to all demographics, but especially the younger end of the spectrum, which traditionally stops going to Fairs.
"After my first year, we did a survey and found that people just weren't staying," says Frenette. "The average stay was under two hours, there wasn't enough going on to keep them on the grounds. We needed to address that and get people moving around the grounds and have things to do all day."
Three new stages were added, and the fair stopped charging admission to main stage shows.
Looking to create a buzz for the fair's 150th anniversary in 2005, Frenette and his staff went outside the box and commissioned a series of commercials featuring Jon Heder, who attended Brigham Young University in Utah, and Efren Ramirez, reprising their lead roles as Napoleon and Pedro, respectively, from the hit movie "Napoleon Dynamite."
The ad campaign drew a lot of attention, both in Utah and nationally.
"It really went beyond our expectations," he says. "It showed that we were new and different and keeping up with the times, and showing that even though we were still a traditional place, we wanted to keep up with modern trends."
The 30-second spots were funny, memorable and most importantly, appealed to a younger demographic that wouldn't normally consider the state fair among the hot events of summer. But it worked; attendance in 2005 increased nearly six percent from the year before with 310,069 people attending the event.
The upgrades in programming and marketing contributed to average stays of between six and eight hours, according to a more recent survey.
Attendance at the 2009 Wisconsin State Fair was healthy, considering the economy (833,285), but Frenette has no intention to let the 158-year old event sit on its laurels.
"Part of my management philosophy is we have to continue to look at new things," he says. "We can't stay stagnant; we have to move forward. Fairs are great because we can have our traditions, but there are so many new things out there like technology and bio-technologies and how that's going to affect people."
Though he didn't grow up on a farm, he did grow up close to a rural community in northwest Wisconsin and is sensitive to the needs and concerns of the state's agricultural community. He's worked closely with breed associations and producers groups in his previous stops and plans to foster a good relationship here, as well.
"It's a big part of the job," Frenette says. "You have to have their support."
Frenette is still in Utah, preparing for his move and expects to get to work here next month. Much of the planning for the 2010 Fair is already underway, so he doesn't yet have a list of priority items to tackle, but plans to get to work right away.
"I'll get involved immediately," Frenette says. "But I'll watch the first fair happen, offer my insight and then I'll sit down with the staff to discuss goals and adjustments." Napoleon Dynamite promotes the Utah State Fair:
