By Michael McGuire
What value do you place on entertainment? In order to truly answer that question, you need to dig a little deeper and determine the purpose you would like your entertainment to serve at your meeting or conference.
Entertainment is a valuable communication tool to connect people, generations, and cultures. It stimulates emotions, balances energy, and is instrumental in opening the
mind to creative thought. Entertainment furthers objectives and messages, and often sets the mood for how your attendees integrate the conference experience. In such, the ROI on entertainment is huge.
There are various ways to utilize entertainment to accomplish your meeting objectives. Greeters, such as stilt walkers or look-a-likes can serve to uplift your attendees as they
enter the venue, and also serve as people movers to get people to their seats.
A high-energy opening, combining production elements of sound, lights, and special effects, will awaken and excite your attendees for what is to come in your meeting. By customizing the entertainment (song parodies, specific talent that can interact with your attendees), you can deliver your message in a fun upbeat manner that will greatly assist in its integration, and create a natural segue to your opening speaker. Equally good is utilizing this concept as a closing to excite your attendees for your next meeting and location. Of course entertainment can be used to simply relax your guests as background music to cultivate networking at a reception, and a band or DJ for kicking up your heels after
dinner!
So how do you budget for entertainment? A good rule of thumb is asking how much you are willing to spend on it for yourself. For example, if you were to take yourself to the movies, you would spend $20 between the ticket, a soft-drink, and a small bucket of popcorn. This is just a basic guideline, and would vary from market to market, and a steal compared to what you pay per person to feed and decorate your event.
For ideas on how we provide entertainment with a purpose, please call us for options at 619-295-3522 or email us at info@bollotta.com.
