Elgin Fine Arts & Ribs Festival

The Elgin Fine Arts Festival is considering a new name.

The juried art show, which closed Sunday in downtown Elgin, hopes a new name will help draw more people to the event.

The name, said volunteer Jeanne Hebeisen, "should have universal appeal." (Elgin Courier 8/7/06)

Universal appeal? How about Elgin Rib Fest. Oh darn, Naperville got there first....

Actually it's a good idea for them to rename and rebrand it. But asking people to come up with a new name is probably not the best way to go about it. It's a major marketing problem. The question really is what the positioning for the festival should be, and that depends on a decent study of what's out there now and where there's a gap. Naperville's got the ribs, so Elgin has to come up with something else...but it has to be similarly universal in appeal and very specific so that something tantalizing immediately pops into mind.

This is one reason Brewfest has such great potential to be a much larger festival. But the way that it's currently organized keeps it small. The Rock makes money by holding the monopoly on food sales, but they would probably do even better if they rented out stalls to other restaurants and vendors. Brewfest wants to get big and they should let it grow.

But we were talking about the Fine Arts Festival...