This blog is part two of a series aimed to help you book a comedian for your bar, restaurant, corporate event, or bris. If you’re interested in comedy, you’re in the right place.
I perform stand-up comedy at a lot of corporate events.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that a corporate events/holiday parties are always about socialization.
Always.
People are looking to eat, drink, and to chat with friends.
(And avoid the Karen and Kevin’s of the office; the complainers/whiners with no friends, but who feel the best way to deal with that sad fact is to double down on their nonsense. Weird.)
Entertainment is a bonus, but not the focus of the night. It’s the glorious end to whatever your evening activities may have been.
I’m here to tell you: There’s a right and a wrong way to have a corporate comedy show.
(Quick side note: want to skip all the words and cut to the chase?
Jump over to my corporate page and take a look. The information there is much easier to digest than this word salad in front of you.
Sure, this blog contains some great information, but it’s also designed for Google to use in scraping algorithms. That means it’s wordy. By all means, read on…
But I won’t be offended if you bow out here.
So, how do you make sure your show is set up for success?
First: consider the placement of the show.
You want comedy to be the last hurrah of the evening; a way to say goodbye to everyone.
Why?
Several reasons.
First of all, knowing there’s a final event can help build anticipation for the event. It gives people something to look forward to. They know the plan, and they’re in on it.
Second, unless you do it annually, comedy becomes a treat; an unexpected benefit to attending the party. If your standard course of action is dinner, drinks, and goodnight, adding a show gives employees an extra perk; a bonus.
Finally, putting comedy at the end of your event lets people know that at a certain point, the pressure will be off them to be entertaining.
What does that mean?
Let’s face it, every office or company has its own dynamics; every world is a soap opera in and of itself.
Sometimes small talk can be exhausted; you see these people every single day. Some you love, some you like…
…but there may be a few folk who just don’t happen to get along.
Sure, they’re going to play nice and do the tight smile and wave. Maybe the’ll even chat about the weather.
But there’s only so far polite society can take a person.
Comedy allows people to relax, and take their mind off things.
They no longer have to chit-chat, or listen to the boss drone on about how productive the company was that year.
Comedy gives your crew the opportunity to sit back, shut their thinking brain off, and giggle furiously for a few minutes.
Grant them that respite from the social networking pressures the work environment might place on them.
Comedy isn’t like dessert: more doesn’t necessarily mean more benefit.
In the case of comedy, the goal is to entertain attendees at both the right time, and for the right length of time.
At a corporate event, comedy is just part of the proceedings. It’s a nice bonus to the evening, but it’s not the focus of the event. As stated, there’s usually dinner, drinks, and socialization.
On top of that are awards, speeches, promotions… at a corporate event, everyone came for some other reason. The comedy is just a bonus, and not everyone is going to be into it.
Wait, did I just say not everyone is into stand-up comedy?
Here’s a fact most people don’t like admitting: not everyone likes everything.
Shocking, I know.
But seriously, your favorite movie is someone’s least favorite movie. Likewise your favorite book, song, food…
If a baseball player hits .300, he’s considered a star player.
That also means he gets a hit 30% of the time.
Read that again.
Thirty. Percent.
That means they strike out 70% of the time.
And they’re considered the cream of the crop.
We want to aim higher than that, though. Much higher.
Point is, if two or three people aren’t into comedy, that’s fine.
No matter what you choose for entertainment—magician, musician, any other number of “M” related entertainment choices (mime)—a certain percentage of your employees will be underwhelmed.
Not everyone likes comedy, and that’s OK.
I once performed at a corporate dinner-and-entertainment event with 200 guests in attendance. But right after dinner was served, 150 people got up and left.
It was the last day of a 3-day convention, and people were tired.
They wanted to get back to their room, pack, and get to bed so they could hit the road first thing in the morning.
I didn’t mind a bit.
After the show ended, the organizer was apologetic; he was embarrassed by the fact so many people had left.
Personally, I was happy with the event, and I told the organizer so.
The 50 who stayed genuinely wanted to be there, and any and every performer would rather have an audience of 50 who want to see a show versus a crowd of 200, where 3/4 are disinterested and/or resentful of having to be there at all.
Point being, bigger isn’t always better.
So, when should comedy happen in the evening?
I’ve already hinted at this, but since Google says I have to fill a very specific word count, let’s go into more detail.
Sometimes corporate events include giveaways, especially holiday parties. Someone is winning a trip to Hawaii, or crossing their fingers for that 70” flat-screen TV.
If you put the giveaway after the comedy performance, you’re forcing people who might not want to be there to sit through the show.
A few grumpy apples in your crowd can swing the entire “feel” of a performance, and sour the entire show. No matter how funny the comedian is, a person who doesn’t like joy, or laughter, isn’t going to turn a magic corner and become invested in the show.
So, do the giveaway, then have the comedy show. It’ll turn out better all the way around.
I went up right before a giveaway, and it was horrible.
Imagine the reverse of the 150 people who left before the show started.
In this case, a section of the audience was invested in the giveaways, and had zero interest in entertainment.
At a comedy club, people have actively made the decision to leave the house and see live comedy. It’s their thing, and they’re ready to sit for two hours and focus on a comedian.
People go to the movies, they go see bands, they seek out the live entertainment that interests them most.
Now, this next section might look a bit familiar.
I said in the previous post (and earlier in this one), Google is a dominatrix. If you do not bend to her will, she will punish you.
That’s why I’m using 10 words where 5 are necessary.
It’s called padding, and another way of padding a post is by repeating content.
If you stumbled across this blog first, great! This is about to be new for you. If not, well, déjà vu time…
In this previous section, I discussed:
- Why comedy should go at the end of the evening.
- The pros and cons of a comedy show.
- How comedy can work at a corporate event.
- Many things unrelated to comedy, because I was (am) trying to hit a specific word count.
Guess what?
I’m pretty much there.
I’m just gonna repeat what I just said with two more bullet points, and this massive undertaking will be finished.
Hooray!
(All these dumb asides, btw, are how you can tell I wrote this myself, and didn’t farm it out to ChatGPT. Not gonna lie, though. I was tempted.)
So, to repeat:
Your must-know tips to planning a corporate comedy show:
- Not too long, not too short. 45 minutes is perfect, or sometimes a bit more. No longer than an hour.
- Have the comedy show at the end of the evening.
Next up, we’ll talk about how to actually find that comedian—and how to vet him or her to ensure you are hiring an inexperienced turd.
It’s tricker than you think, because there are powerful agencies at play, and they have two things: budgets, and friends.
They use their budgets to get in front of your eyeballs by bribing… er, buying Google ads, and then they book their friends.
I know you’re going to find this shocking, but those friends of theirs aren’t always the most talented comedians…
(Shocking, right?)