State fairs are the hot new pop-up spot for brands like E.l.f. and Levi’s

Experiential Marketing // September 3, 2026 State fairs are the hot new pop-up spot for brands like E. l. f. and Levi’s By Anna Hensel Andrew Dobin/Northstar Imagery Patrick O’Keefe, chief integrated marketing officer at E. l. f. Beauty, is constantly on the hunt for “places and spaces” where other beauty brands aren’t showing up.

A couple of years ago, one of the company’s agency partners, eGen, pitched E. l. f. on a “beauty desert” that it believed was worth paying attention to: state fairs, specifically the Minnesota State Fair and the State Fair of Texas. “It became kind of our obsession over the last six to eight months” to figure out how to show up at state fairs, O’Keefe said.

This culminated in a “real dill”- themed pop-up held from Aug. 27-30 at the Minnesota State Fair, which showcased three pickle-inspired flavors from E. l. f.’ s Glow Reviver Melting Lip Balm collection. Nearly 64,000 attendees passed through E. l. f.’ s pop-up over four days, with an average dwell time of eight minutes.

It was the first time in at least 20 years that a beauty brand had shown up at the Minnesota State Fair, according to organizers. Next up, E. l. f.

will be a sponsor at the State Fair of Texas, where it will join other brands like Coca-Cola and Lucchese; Levi’s, another sponsor, will make a custom set of jean s this year for “Big Tex,” a 55-foot-tall cowboy statue and the official mascot of the State Fair of Texas.

View this post on Instagram O’Keefe, who attended the pop-up, said he was “blown away” by the number of people who attended the Minnesota State Fair. “I’ve never, ever seen crowds like this,” he told Modern Retail in a Zoom interview.

In an age where branded pop-ups are now a given at most major cultural events, state fairs are getting a closer look from companies like E. l. f. that want to show up in places that their competitors haven’t yet tapped. State Fairs got their start in the 19th century as a way for states to promote their agricultural industries.

They hosted livestock competitions and showed off new equipment and techniques to farmers. So, in that sense, there’s a long tradition of different entities using state fairs to promote something to a captive audience.

But the idea of national retail chains hosting Instagram-worthy pop-ups at state fairs, between the corn roasts and corn dog stands, is a newer concept. Large corporations do often sponsor the fairs of the states where they are based.

Wegmans, for example, has sponsored the butter sculpture at the Great New York State Fair since 2017, and has been involved with the fair in other ways, like hosting a demonstration kitchen. But a beauty brand showing up with influencers in tow to promote a dill-pickle-flavored lip balm? That’s most certainly a phenomenon unique to the 2020s.

Jennifer Schuder, the senior vice president of customer engagement for the State Fair of Texas, likes to point out that “the fairs have always been a gathering place for the community.” Her team oversees all of the brand partnerships and activations for the State Fair of Texas.

When she spoke with Modern Retail on Wednesday morning, she was at a fitting for the jeans Levi’s is preparing for Big Tex. Compared with other events national retail brands are now expected to show up at — national music festivals, college football game days — state fairs attract far more attendees. “Each year, we have between 2. 3 [million] and 2.

5 million visitors that come through the grounds. If you average that out over 24 days, you can kind of think about it as a Super Bowl a day,” Schuder said. There isn’t a unilateral uptick in corporate sponsorships across all state fairs.

The Minnesota State Fair and the State Fair of Texas attract the most interest as the two most visited state fairs in the country. The Minnesota State Fair attracted 1,940,869 visitors over 12 days last year. The State Fair of Texas, meanwhile, runs for 24 days each fall and attracted 2,020,064 attendees in 2025.

Schuder, for her part, said the State Fair of Texas has been able to accommodate more corporate sponsors in the past “five to seven years,” largely because her team has grown and internal processes have improved. The one thing that’s certainly changed, she said, is that sponsorships have gotten more complex.

“Our sponsorships over the last few years have had to evolve from just, ‘You’re sponsoring the pig races,’ or something like that,” she said. Now, brands want to know about, say, what kind of email marketing the State Fair of Texas can do to promote their event. They have influencers they want to fly in and give tickets to.

They want to talk in-depth about the social campaign they have tied to their State Fair pop-up. “All these brands are also thinking through, ‘How do we bring our activations to life outside of just the square footage that’s on the ground?” Schuder said.