Step Right Up
Explained by one elephant & a very small town
Everybody uses these words like they mean the same thing. They don't. Here's the difference, with an elephant.
You paint a board and stick it in the ground where people drive past. It says what's happening and when. It does not chase anybody down. It just sits there, telling the truth, over and over, to whoever looks up.
Same sign. Same words. But now it's strapped to two tons of grey animal walking straight down Main Street at four in the afternoon. Nobody had to be looking. Everybody looked anyway.
Nobody planned the tulips. But the paper ran it on page one for free, and by Thursday every person in the county knew there was an elephant in town. You couldn't have bought that. You didn't.
He could have called the sheriff. Instead somebody walked him over, apologized properly, offered to replant the whole bed, and handed him front-row seats. Now he's telling the tulip story himself, at dinner, laughing.
They're through the gate. Now somebody walks them past the booths, explains what's good, answers the question they were embarrassed to ask, and makes it easy to say yes. They leave lighter in the wallet and happy about it.
And every single one of those things — the board by the road, the elephant on Main Street, the tulips, the mayor's dinner-party story, the kid working the popcorn booth — every one of them was on somebody's list before the trucks ever rolled in.
They buy the sign. They work the booth. Then they wonder why the tent is half empty. The show that sells out is the one somebody planned all six.