A few months after the musician Prince died, in 2016, Monique Linder hadn’t seen as strong a local tribute as she believed the artist deserved, she recalled.
Linder, a longtime radio executive and talent agent who’d worked with Prince on media and marketing in the mid-2000s, thought the State Fair would be the perfect place to celebrate an iconic Minnesotan. She didn’t know anyone at the Fair, but no matter: She cold-called the Fairgrounds one day, from the car, and hung up the phone with an appointment with Fair leaders scheduled for the next day.
The result was Unite in Purple — a full day of Prince music curated by his resident DJ, purple lights on Fair buildings and rides, themed Fair merch giveaways and a shoutout from Grandstand performers Charlie Wilson and Fantasia.
After the Fair ended, marketing leaders asked her to attend what she thought was a recap meeting.
“They went, ‘So, what are we going to do next year?’” said Linder, who runs a company called OMG Media Solutions and a recording studio at Vandalia Tower in St. Paul. “Talk about a challenge!”
Linder and Fair leaders developed a marketing and promotional partnership called Celebrating Culture and Community, which is now in its eighth year of highlighting a diverse lineup of Fair musicians.
Throughout the year, Linder works with Nate Dungan, who’s in charge of booking the Fair’s free stages, and Renee Alexander, who oversees the Grandstand and is also now the Fair’s CEO, to identify potential musicians for that year’s Fair. Once the entertainment schedule is finalized, Linder and the marketing team meet to determine which artists will be featured under the Celebrating Culture and Community brand and receive additional promotional support from Linder and OMG Media’s outreach team.
State Fair crews set up the Leinie Lodge Bandshell Stage for duo The War and Treaty on Aug. 26, 2024. The Grammy-nominated band is one of about 30 artists that media agent Monique Linder has helped book and promote during the 2024 Minnesota State Fair. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
At the 2024 State Fair, the Celebrating Culture and Community concerts included Ludacris and T-Pain’s sold-out Grandstand show, Grammy-nominated duo The War and Treaty’s free concert at the Leinie Lodge Bandshell Stage and nearly 30 other acts. Previous Grandstand headliners included under the brand include Usher; Earth, Wind & Fire and Diana Ross.
“What’s guiding all this — we’re known as the Great Minnesota Get-Together,” State Fair marketing director Christine Noonan said. “And from a marketing perspective, that’s a great advertising slogan, but those are also words we try and act on. We really take the idea of accessibility and inclusivity and embracing our community in as wide of a circle as we can.”
Linder is one of several community partners that help the State Fair reach out to and serve groups who haven’t been as able to connect with the Fair previously, Noonan said.
La Raza, a local Spanish radio station, and its owner Maya Santamaria also identify and promote musicians on the Fair’s free stages and help coordinate Pan-Latino Day at Dan Patch Park, Noonan said. Hmong Minnesota Day, another themed day at Dan Patch Park with stage shows and cultural programming, came about through community partnerships, as have the significant expansion in disability and accessibility options at the Fair in recent years.
Dancers with the Blue Sapphire group practice their form before going onstage during Hmong Minnesota Day at the Minnesota State Fair, Monday, Sept. 6, 2021. The 12-14 year-old dancers perform Hmong, Thai and Chinese dances. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)
“We’re really trying to be that place where Minnesota comes to celebrate itself and celebrate each other — and what does that look like?” Noonan said. “We try and develop relationships that are mutually beneficial. I think it’s important that the Fair doesn’t just use these partnerships to benefit what we do, but ask what the Fair can do for these partners.”
To that end, the Fair pays musicians who perform on free stages and gives stipends to the community partners who help promote them, Noonan said. Buying ads on Spanish radio stations like La Raza, for example, doesn’t only benefit the Fair but also represents dollars flowing back into the Latino community, she said.
And in and of itself, booking up-and-coming local artists of color on high-profile State Fair stages is huge, Linder said — both for the artists’ own careers and for bringing people through the Fair gates who might not otherwise show up.
As part of their promotional efforts, Linder and her team give out flyers and free State Fair tickets, and she calls on Celebrating Culture and Community artists to meet with youth participants in the Innovation Lab, housed at OMG Studios.
This year, Chance the Rapper, who performed at the Grandstand, met with Innovation Lab youth, as have The War and Treaty and local big-band The Men of Motown.
From each of their perspectives, both Linder and Noonan expressed that the relationships between the State Fair and community partner organizations help the Fair better live up to its potential as, frankly, a fairly powerful cultural institution.
“These are partnerships that have come from individuals contacting us and saying, how about this? Or, I’d love to come to the Fair, but there’s this issue,” Noonan said. “We hear, every day, stories from people who say, ‘I’m so glad to be here because I hadn’t been able to come to the Fair before.’”
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