Goose Fair 2012 Customer Experience Without The Relationship?

The first week of October sees the arrival of the oldest traveling fair in the world to Nottingham. The Goose Fair is probably one of the amusement and entertainment industry’s biggest brands and yet it has formed over the years without the need for centralised brand management and the policing of style guides.

It is a confederacy of family sub-brands that coalesce at a particular time and a particular place to become a brand experience that thousands of people look forward to every year. Come Sunday the tangible evidence of the brand will dissolve as the showmen’s families and their rides go to the next place.

The relationship the visitors have with Goose Fair is interesting. The brand of Goose Fair lives on in the memories and imagination long after the fair has gone and long before is arrives again the following year.

No loyalty cards, no discounts no gimmicks, no effort devoted to forming lasting personal relationships between customer and ride owner. The only relationship that is formed is with the brand experience. A full sensory experience of sights sounds, smells and excitement that the showmen know works time and time again.

So does Goose Fair invite us to think differently about the way brands are portrayed in management text books? Would a style obsessed creative director enforce changes to the ‘look’ of the ride and kiosk artwork, would a zealous brand manager seek to homogenise the offer so that it fits with an over arching corporate ideal? And if they did then what?

The brand of Goose Fair has survived because of its loose configuration and a the delivery of very clear idea. Excitement and Fun. That if you like is the mission and the individual show people choose how to address that mission the way they feel is best. Maybe corporate entities could learn something from a brand that has survived for hundreds of years?

In the final analysis Goose Fair delivers. It doesn’t make vacuous promises about making you happy, fulfilling your dreams, promising you magic. Every year simply turns up and does it. People remember it and that’s why they keep coming back, and telling their friends and family.