entertainment

5 Tips for Corporate Entertainment Success

By on November 21, 2011 in How-To Humor

I’ve had the pleasure (and sometimes pain) of doing and seeing a wide variety of corporate entertainment events for a number of different organizations. Many of them have gone phenomenally well, others weren’t quite as lucky.

Many times, the bad shows weren’t a result of bad performance or even a bad audience, but rather misguided planning. Here are 5 Corporate Entertainment Tips to help sure you have a successful event:

1. Be Clear About Your Expectations.

As someone who (presumably) knows the audience, you can help the entertainer get crystal clear on what’s appropriate, what’s inappropriate and what will result in getting the mic turned off. Some comedians are more risqué than others, knowing the audience, and sharing it with the entertainer can help make sure everyone goes home happy.

Expectations to be clear on: start time and end time (and amount of flexibility), content rating (G, PG, PG-13, R), size of audience, AV equipment, room layout, attractiveness of audience (OK, maybe not this last one).

2. Shorter is Better.

Even if you want to go “all out” for your group, rarely does more than 60-minutes of comedy go well (particularly if it’s been an all-day event). Keep it short and keep it fun. The audience should be left wanting more, not wanting the show to end.

If you do have more than 60-minutes scheduled, consider a keynote or workshop that is fun and educational.

3. Don’t Schedule Comedy During Dinner.

While it might seem like an efficient way to schedule the agenda, eating + comedy don’t go well together. Either no one laughs because they have food in their mouth, or no has food in their mouth because they’re laughing.

The best time-slot for comedy is before dinner or right after the desserts have gone out (just make sure to tell catering not to clear plates during the show).

4. Don’t Forget About Bio Breaks.

Before the comedy happens, make sure to allow time for a bio break and announce it! Nothing interrupts a comedy show more than a mass exodus to the restrooms, or worse, someone who laughs so much they… well let’s not get into that.

5. Tailor the Comedy to Your Audience.

Finally, as an event planner it’s important to consider your audience when selecting a comedian or group. The entertainment should be appropriate for the size of the audience, setup of the venue and the energy of the event. After all, you wouldn’t book U2 for a show in a conference room.

A good corporate entertainer will help you understand all of the nuances to consider.

Have any questions or concerns? Feel free to send us an email at entertainment@humorthatworks.com. Ready to book some entertainment for your next event? Check out our Corporate Entertainment Offerings.

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Humor at Work: Stand-up Comedy at Corporate Training

By on November 11, 2011 in News

Cincinnati, OH – I attended a training last week and was surprised to find that one of the evening activities was to visit a comedy club for a social event. I was even more surprised to find out that the headlining comedian was none other than Rajiv Satyal, the Funny Indian and personal friend of mine.

Rajiv had a great set for the intimate crowd, until he decided to bring me up on stage to perform some material. I couldn’t resist the chanting of the crowd so I got on stage and performed a completely unprepared 3-minutes of old corporate material that went over surprisingly well considering I had no idea I was going to perform.

A big thanks to Rajiv for all of the laughs and for forcing me on stage. It was a great time. To learn more Rajiv and his corporate comedy ways, check out funnyindian.com. You can also check out our corporate entertainment offerings.

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Humor at Work: Improv Comedy at Organizational Offsite

By on October 28, 2011 in News

Boston, MA – A friend and I had the opportunity to perform 2-person improv as part of a celebration event at an organizational off-site last night. In front of 150 employees at a Fortune 25 company, we did a variety improv games aimed to please and impress.

The entire evening was an incredible amount of fun and a big shout-out to the audience, who was great (perhaps even funnier than we were). We had great suggestions, great volunteers and lots of great laughter. We even beat out Game 6 of the World Series for their attention.

UPDATE: I got some feedback on the show and celebration as a whole:

  • “The celebration was TERRIFIC.  Loved having the comedy.  It is so good laugh and relax.”
    – Attendee
  • “I thought you would be good, but you blew me away. Fantastic job.” – Fellow Speaker
  • “You are quite attractive on stage.” – Event Planner, married woman

To find out more about our corporate entertainment options, check out our corporate humor programs.

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Warm-up Your Audience by Conducting a Symphony

By on January 29, 2009 in How-To Humor

One of the easiest ways to get an audience engaged and energized at the beginning of a presentation is to conduct a symphony.  Simply put, you use the separate sections of the audience saying different syllables that, when combined, sound out the title of your presentation.

Here’s what you do:

Step 1: Tell the Audience What’s Up

Let the audience know the importance of staying engaged and getting involved.  Tell them you will be helping to warm them up by making them part of the presentation.

Step 2: Break Up Your Topic Into Syllables

Take your macro level topic (or the title of your presentation if it’s short), and divide it into it’s syllables.  For example, if you were training on an Adobe project, you would have the syllables “Ah”, “doh”, and “be”.

Step 3: Split the Audience in Syllables

Take the number of syllables you have, and divide your audience by that many–in our example, we would divide the audience into three sections.  You don’t have to move people, just do it in natural groupings based on where they are sitting.

Step 4: Assign the Syllables

Assign each of the divided sections a different syllable.  To not completely reveal what you are doing, try assigning the syllables in a different order than they are pronounced.  So you might say, “Group 1, when I point to you, you say ‘Be’.  Group 2, you say ‘Doh’.  Group 3, you say ‘Ah’.”

Step 5: Conduct the Audience

Now start conducting the audience by pointing to each of the different sections.  Start out by picking random orders of the syllables–”Ah” “Be” “Doh”, “Be” “Doh” “Ah”, “Doh” “Ah” “Be”.  And then as you are ready to wrap up the warm up, have them correctly shout out the topic name in the correct order a couple of times–”Ah Doh Be”, “Ah Doh Be”.

Final Thoughts

Sure this warm-up may be a little cheesy, but it gets the entire audience engaged in what you are doing and they are now behaving like one cohesive unit.  For some extra fun, you can always end your presentation coming back to this exercise.

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How to Host an Improvised Talent Show

January 22, 2009

Hosting a talent show at work is a great way to build a community, have some fun, and give individuals and teams a different kind of recognition.  But what if you don’t want to spend the time it takes to get a talent show up and running?  Or what if you have an organization-wide meeting [...]

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How to Host a Work Talent Show

January 15, 2009

One of the most impressive things about the people I work with is the talent that they have.  And I don’t just mean at the work that they do, but in what they do outside of the corporate workplace.  I’ve met with people who can sing, dance, perform magic, race cars, and build furniture out [...]

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