Last February, I received an unexpected and unexplained envelope in the mail:
It was addressed to me at my company, and I’ll be honest, I don’t get a lot of work mail. I also don’t get a lot of mail with the words “Kids Fun Fair Barnyard Petting Zoo” on it. In a word, I was intrigued.
When I opened it up, I found no letter of explanation. The only thing the envelope contained was a stack of exactly 30 slips of paper, each of which proclaimed “Free Ticket (Value $8)”. Their design was something of unholy mess:
This is quite overwhelming, but I made note of a wide variety of things.
Though the top says “Free Ticket”, it requires the purchase of a paid adult entry. That makes this more of a coupon, as it is not enough for entry on its own.
It’s not clear just how much a standard adult ticket costs, but the first 100 adults (each day?) pay just $9.99. That means if you get there early enough, you and two kids can get full access to this fun fair for just ten bucks. You should probably line up the night before.
“Come Hungry!” is an absolutely amazing instruction. They are surely not providing free food, so you should also make sure your wallet comes full, and be prepared for it to leave empty.
Despite the envelope’s Connecticut return address, the event lists “Wilmington” and the Aleppo Shriner’s Aud. That’s actually in Massachusetts, about half an hour north of Boston.
The event is listed as “Feb 15 & 16 & 17”, but “Rain or Shine Two Days Only”. Whoops. Also, in February in Massachusetts, snow is much more likely than rain.
On the first day, the fair runs from 10 AM to 7 PM. The second and third days, it goes from 10 AM to 6 PM. Whenever I see hours like this, I can’t help but feel it would be preferable to just have symmetry in the hours for all the days. At the very least, it’d save some ink.
Finally, there’s a domain listed, kidsfunfair.com. That site could charitably be called “serviceable”.
I ultimately chucked the whole thing in the recycling bin and moved on with my life. That is until I received an identical envelope this year. Inside it, I once again found exactly 30 slips of paper, provided without explanation:
Hey, they fixed that “two days only” error. Good for them.
As these envelopes have included the name of my business, I imagine the hope is that I’ll distribute them to my customers. If so, it would be good to include a letter with an explicit request. It would also be good to know that my company is entirely virtual, with no customers coming to my home office. Oh, and it’s an audio software company that has no relation whatsoever to children, that’s worthwhile information too.
Still, maybe this bizarre marketing is working, because I’m almost tempted to go myself.1 Even if I do, though, my lack of children means I can’t take advantage of this offer. Perhaps you’d like to? If you want free entry for your two children to this weekend’s Kids Fun Fair Barnyard Petting Zoo, just let me know.3 Inexplicably, I’ve got 30 vouchers to get you just that.
Footnotes:
It’s unlikely I actually will attend, but at least I found a 20+ minute video offering a great view of last year’s event.2 Check out that surely unlicensed SpongeBob SquarePants fun house! ↩︎
I’ve archived a very tiny (240p) version of this video here. ↩︎
The paper says “children up to 13”, the website says “children 12 and under”, and I say if you’ve got a 13-year-old interested to do this, you should just lie and claim they’re 12. ↩︎
