Hutchinson ? With an eye toward attracting a younger crowd, the Kansas State Fair will promote itself this year as an attraction so square that it’s actually hip.

A new advertising and marketing campaign unveiled this week begins running in August, six weeks ahead of the fair, scheduled for Sept. 10-19 in Hutchinson. The Wichita-based Gretemen Group came up with the new approach to marketing the fair.

“We knew to sustain the fair we needed to target a new demographic, a young market,” said creative director Sonia Greteman. “We knew we had to hip up the image of the fair. We decided to make it so square it’s hip again.”

The basic overriding theme is “It’s a wild ride, baby,” already in use on the fair’s Web site. And the commercial messages use images of animals “doing all sorts of wild things,” Greteman said.

“We have a pig in a rocket ship, we have a sheep with a Ferris wheel tiara, we have a ‘tough chick,’ a chicken in a strongman competition, with a mallet,” she said.

Radio ads talk about the fair being a place for both childhood fun and education, telling parents it will teach their children “the birds and the bees at the animal birthing center — saving yourself the embarrassment of explaining it yourself.”

Another spot describes the fair as a place to find weird, wild stuff, and there are slogans touting “cowboys, cotton candy and tough chicks” and “rides that will mess with your head.”