Are you thinking about booking corporate entertainment for an upcoming event? It doesn’t sound so hard. All you need to do if find the best live entertainment for your corporate event, submit your offer to the entertainer’s management, and sign the contract. It should be a breeze and not take much time out of your day.
Wrong! In actual practice, there’s a lot more to the process for booking corporate entertainment . If you ignore these issues during your planning, you will not end up with achieving the potential of any corporate entertainment event. Good planning can mean the difference between having the perfect entertainment for your corporate event or scrambling to book a band and ending up with a big headache and failed event.
Getting the right entertainment for your corporate events starts with choosing the type of event and what you want to achieve with the live entertainment. Remember not all corporate events involving entertainment are the same and not all entertainment will work for all types of events.
For planning purposes, TSE Entertainment likes to know the following information about an event to help guide our clients through the corporate entertainment booking process for their special occasion. While the list is not meant to be exhaustive, it allows us to learn what we need to know to better serve corporate clients by finding and booking the best entertainment.
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Type of Corporate Entertainment Event
The purpose for corporate entertainment occasions may include a variety of very different reasons. Entertainment booking should reflect the reason for the event.
- Product launch or showcase
- Grand opening
- Corporate or milestone celebration
- Holiday party
- Customer or vendor appreciation event
- Trade Show
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Corporate Event Setting
Often times, the location for the event will put limitations on the vibe and the type of entertainment you can book for your event. Some examples of setting when corporate events typically take place can include:
- Outdoor locale (from a parking lot, middle of a field, to a plaza set up for it, to renting an outdoor entertainment venue)
- In-house event
- Hotel event
- Trade show floor
- Restaurant
- Theater
- Club
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The Objectives of Entertainment Booking
It’s important that what you hope to accomplish with the entertainment has a critical role in the selection process. The entertainment you select may not be the focus of the entire event, and in other cases, it may be. It’s important to know what you hope to accomplish with your corporate entertainment booking. It’s critical to booking the right live entertainment for any occasion. Examples of entertainment objectives for corporate events include:
- Draw people to it (Usually this is for a targeted audience in your marketing so entertainment must appeal to those targeted.
- Produce publicity for the event: The right entertainment for the event can be an opportunity to get local publicity for your organization or event.
- Dancing and good listening music to reward employees, vendors, stakeholders, and customers for a successful milestone.
- Background music while allowing attendees to network and engage in conversation, such as a cocktail reception.
- Stage show which allows attendees to sit and be entertained by performers.
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Corporate Event Vibe
A vibe is the mood or atmosphere of a situation that it felt by those in it. The vibe is established by the setting for the event, the theme selected, decorations, lighting, entertainment, and program. It’s important in booking entertainers for a corporate event that they fit the vibe you hope to create!
You wouldn’t want to book a rock band for a black-tie formal event any more than you would want to book a string quartet for a Halloween theme party. While these examples may be extreme, there are distinct differences among entertainers as to how they might work with a particular vibe you want to create for your guests. While it’s logical, it’s often overlooked as people to complete the corporate entertainment booking process.
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Who Is Going to Be at the Event
Understanding the people who will be attending your event is key to booking the right entertainment for it. If you want your occasion to be a success, make sure you understand the demographic of your audience. Is it composed of people from all walks of life and ages? Does it skew young or older? Consider both demographic and psychographic data. While you may not be familiar with psychographics, it’s why people have an interest in a product while demographics are the who. Psychographics deals with such things as interests, values, habits, hobbies, previous actions, and other psychological criteria of people that motivates them.
- Demographics:
- Age
- Income
- Race
- Geographic location
- Financial well being
- Psychographics:
- Music tastes
- Engagement (participation) at previous events
- Cultural issues
Basically, what type of live music or specialty entertainment will your guests most enjoy? You might love the best Metallica Tribute Band, but if your guests aren’t metal fans than you’ll be headbanging on your own.
Private parties and corporate events are easier when it comes to booking performers because you know who is likely to attend. That’s a lot easier than trying to select artists for a public corporate event where anyone may show up. Of course, even with public events, the promotion should be geared at getting a specific targeted audience to attend.
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Corporate Entertainment Budget:
Once you have digested the above points you will want to reconcile what you have learned with the entertainment booking budget for your corporate event. Before you go off and think that now I can use that budget to book an entertainer that meets these requirements, think again. You may be surprised to learn that the performance fee is just one part of the overall cost to entertainment booking. Depending on the setting and contract technical rider requirements, you could be looking at renting staging, sound equipment, lighting, and a crew to set up and operate them. You also also need to provide hotel rooms, meals, and other hospitality components that entertainers require as part of their contract hospitality rider.
Because it’s a corporate event as opposed to a concert, you need to consider the possibility that the event and its live entertainment may exceed the planned time for it. If the event runs over, you could find yourself facing overtime fees. You will want to plan ahead and have the appropriate plans in place for these kinds of snags and extra expenses that can occur during your entertainment booking event.
Everything mentioned so far is geared to the planning portion of booking corporate entertainment for your event. The actual booking process is another discussion altogether. Regardless of the size of your corporate event, the process for finding the right entertainment can be simplified by getting a corporate entertainment booking agency working on your behalf.
Armed with the information you provide from the specifying the issues detailed above, an agency like TSE Entertainment, can save you a lot of time and resources. TSE can find you the perfect live entertainment to produce the vibe you want for your event and targeted audience. TSE’s objective will be to make the corporate entertainment portion of your occasion a huge success. The goal is one in which people will keep talking about the corporate entertainment long after it has ended.
If the entertainment portion of your corporate event goes well, it should help you achieve the objectives you have in mind for the whole event. Thinks about these planning tips. Knowing the answers might just make you a hero to your coworkers and your boss.
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