Getting the entertainment spot-on ensures that your event is fresh, will be talked about for ages (for the right reasons) and, most of all, impresses the right people. For Jacqui Higgins, nothing makes an event more memorable than great entertainment.
We’ve all been to events where the entertainment is, at best, dull – at worst, it’s embarrassingly awful and damaging. Providing satisfying company events and entertainment is becoming increasingly difficult with tighter budgets and a more diversified work force. Gone are the days when a small cocktail party would suffice. Today companies strive to integrate their events into their marketing plans so they contribute to overall corporate objectives.
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Events are occasions designed to communicate organisational messages and themes in entertaining ways. Once your primary objective for the event has been determined you should plan the entertainment to align with the objective and become part of your overall communication language and guest experience.
Secondary information required to achieve the objectives would be budget guidelines. When giving a brief for entertainment you should include an entertainment budget which should go hand in hand with your objective brief. This will dictate your options.
In order to create the entertainment language within the budget guidelines, the brief, or event objectives, is the number one consideration, and the budget guides you to use the right entertainment language to achieve your objectives. Event professionals are only as good as their last job and, therefore, want to achieve as much as possible within the client’s budget guidelines while meeting all their communication objectives.
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THE RIGHT FIT
When planners get the entertainment right there’ll be praise and smiles all the way. So how do you wow the crowd time and again, keeping it fresh and relevant? Here are some key elements to getting the entertainment perfectly suited to the event:
• Consider the type of event you are planning – other than budget the event category will be a large determining factor for the performance.
• Know the demographics of your audience so you can choose entertainment that will appeal to
their tastes.
• Understand the outcome you expect – do you want the entertainment to educate, inspire, reward or set a specific tone for your event?
• Depending on your budget you could mix and match different entertainers to create a variety of talent and options.
• Be specific regarding your expectations – will it be a 24 piece orchestra and 30 performers or something less extravagant?
Jacqui Higgins is the media liaison for CLA Brand and Event Engineering. She has a love for innovative technology, show-stopping entertainment and building brands in unexpected ways.
