This blog is one in 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…
ARE YOU STILL READING? WELL, I’VE GOT A SECRET FOR YOU…
I’ve been doing some research, and apparently if you drop a TON of blogs at the same time, about the same topic, it’s gonna boost your webpage.
So that’s what I’m doing here.
I’m churning out a massive word salad in the hopes of gaining a few Google hits.
But, here’s the thing: I’ve been a comedian for quite a while now.
I’ve performed at A-list comedy clubs, dingy one-night bars, for American troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan…
For more corporate events than you can shake a stick at, and for high school after proms.
I have released eight albums, one of which made it into the iTunes top 20 on their comedy chart, gained over 280,000 followers across social media, over 100,000,000 views on YouTube, and have written four books.
On top of all that, I’ve got a Disney Clean act (about 20 minutes), a PG act (45 minutes to an hour), PG-13, (hour and 15 minutes) and then a no-holds barred act that can go for two hours.
What do I pitch to most corporate clients?
The 30-minute act.
And guess what?
I take less money for that one.
Yup, you read that right: I push my least expensive package.
Why?
Because corporate events are about socialization.
You have dinner, a few drinks, maybe a giveaway or awards presentation, and then comedy becomes a nice cherry atop the sundae that is your event.
I’ve no problem performing for an hour, but I’ve found that 30-minutes is fairly Goldilocks: not too long, not too short, just right.
Yes, I’m shooting myself in the foot financially by offering less time for less money, but making you the happiest client you can be is my main goal.
Because algorithms like 2,200-word essays (blogs), I’m gonna keep writing, but from here on out there’s a lot (and I mean a lot) of redundancy.
For some reason, Google thinks longer is better.
I looked up some example blogs, and wow…
They’re awful.
Like, as bad as the one you’re (probably not) reading right now, but without the personality.
AI probably wrote those other blogs. Meanwhile, I’m watching Archer and trying to milk a few hundred words out of a tired premise.
Maybe Google is reacting to TikTok, and the whole ‘Short Attention Span Theater’ spell the world is under.
Since the world is going in one direction, Google is going in the other direction.
If you’d like to pull the trigger and book me, or shoot me a message and ask a few questions, just open up your email and type in comedian.nathan.timmel (at symbol) gmail.com, and fire off your inquiry.
(Sorry, I can’t make it an active email/link, because those ever-present bots get to spamming, and no one likes an inbox filled with junk.)
Anyway, thanks for making it this far!
Back to the timing of your comedy show…
Comedy is a nightcap.
If you’ve decided to book a comedian, placing the performance at the end of the evening is the best way to go about things.
Comedy is a way to bid the evening adieu. Put it last in your lineup, and as George Costanza figured out, leave on a high note.
This doesn’t mean you have to kick everyone out after the show ends—they can mill about and socialize. But you don’t need any more scheduled, group events.
Parties generally fade into oblivion; they don’t end on the whims of a countdown clock.
Some guests will want to cut out early; others will stay until the rooster crows.
(Whoever coined that phrase was an oddball, mixing birds and all.)
Now, I’m not going to lie, part of me wants to go on a several-hundred-word bird-fact tangent. Because at this point, why not?
But no, I’ll stay the course as best I can, and only admit to the fact that’s what I wanted to do.
In reality, I’ll continue dropping unnecessary words faster than concert dates are dropping from Jennifer Lopez’s calendar.
(Seriously, how did she ever fill arenas? How did it take the world at large this long to realize, “You know what? I don’t want to see Jennifer Lopez perform live.” She must be good at something, though, because Ben Affleck really seems to like her. But, damn… I always thought Jennifer Garner was the better choice. Anyway, what was I blathering on about? Oh, right! Stand-up comedy. Specifically (sort of), how to book a comedian.)
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?)
Bored? Go check out my YouTube Channel.
Image by Pexels, from Pixabay