How To Engage Celebrities To Make Your Event A Success

March 14, 2019Blog

Listen to the radio or visit Facebook and chances are within seconds, you’ll hear or see an ad about a Holi event happening in multiple venues with multiple bollywood artists performing. Or probably you would have heard the news of a top actor visiting a popular entertainment destination. It is an old but tried and tested strategy and so there is no reason why you shouldn’t employ it for your event. After all, you do want your event to be successful, and a large part of that is down to how many people you can put on to the seats. So let’s talk about how celebrities can have the positive impact you want on your event.

Choose your stars wisely

There are celebrities in every industry. So it’s very important to choose the theme and objective of the event. Because this will help you decide who exactly to approach in looking for endorsements. It is after all no real use, and indeed it could be downright detrimental, to have a movie star who endorses soft drinks at a healthy eating seminar or an actress to be the poster girl for your financial-sector-related seminar. Ensure that you know the exact nature of your event and make a shortlist of personalities who could possibly be engaged. And then boil it down and narrow it based on the checklist of factors. To begin with, you should be sure about your budget. Follow that up with a thorough research into how the public perceives a certain celebrity. Save yourself the trouble of controversy (unless you like the saying any PR is good PR) These are three things to look out for on what they want in a celebrity partner.

Pre Event

Since you are budgeting for a celebrity presence / performance, you might as well get your money’s worth. And start marketing it as early as possible. Make it clear what role the celebrity will play in your event… Have your partners directly participate in the publicity by sharing content on their own social media platforms as well. With a 360 degree marketing campaign and star power to provide public awareness and sales shouldn’t be a huge problem.

At The Event

There are two ways celebrities can be utilized at your actual event. The whole point of engaging celebrities is for their popularity, and what better way to attract people to come to your show / event than with the promise of hearing some of their favourite celebrities speak, sing, perform, or just receiving an award. The attraction of a person of great stature delivering a speech, or a prominent musician playing, is a very attractive proposition for people who rarely have the chance to see them in the flesh.

There is also another option of having your celebrity partners as a VIP. This frees up a lot of logistical issues, mainly if the person is a performer with a band. In so doing, you can reduce the planning and costs needed for such a performance without compromising too much on the pull factor the VIP brings.

Post Show

The end of the show doesn’t mean end of marketing. Take the post show as an opportunity to feature not just your engaged celebrities, but also those who are in attendance. Video feedback of the personalities sharing their thoughts about the event goes a long way into helping you with your PR and also as advertisements for the future. That’s It. Celebrities help draw attention to your show and by extension they will sell tickets. Plan your campaign well and reap the rewards with celebrities in tow.