How To Book Celebrity Talent For An Event
A great event requires great talent. Whether it’s a captivating musician, a hilarious comedian, or an impactful speaker, celebrity talent can be the key to a truly memorable experience. But how do you book a celebrity? How much do they cost? How do you know if they’re the right fit? We’re here to help demystify this process.
BOOKING CELEBRITY TALENT FOR CORPORATE EVENTS
Booking celebrity talent is a surefire way to make a lasting impression at any event. They will stand in the spotlight to command the room while also helping you shine a light on your business or your cause. Booking the right celebrity for your event is extremely important.
Before beginning to draft a wish list of celebrities, first consider your corporate values. This will help you find the right talent. While having someone with notoriety on stage might be impressive, booking talent that aligns with your vision and your mission will ultimately make the event more meaningful.
Your timeline is equally important. If you’re in the market for celebrity talent, remember that they often have very busy schedules and are fielding booking requests far in advance - sometimes months or even years. This isn’t to say that a short-notice booking is impossible (nothing’s impossible!) but planning as far ahead as you can may help secure your dream talent that much easier.
That level of planning should also extend to as many other advanced details you can have at the ready. Before making a booking request, be prepared with as much specific information as you can: date and time of the event, venue (confirmed or prospective), length of performance expected from the talent, etc. Your goal should be to make it as easy as possible for any performer to say ‘yes.’ Being equipped with these details from the outset will help put plans into motion a lot quicker.
HOW MUCH IS IT TO BOOK A CELEBRITY FOR AN EVENT?
One of the first things to consider when booking any celebrity talent is your budget. If you already have a price range in mind, this can help narrow down your performer shortlist. Consider also the ‘add-ons’ that go along with booking an entertainer: travel costs, accommodation, catering, etc. The performance fee is only one part that makes up a bigger price tag for bookings.
The nature of your event can also help you assess your budget and determine if there are ways to offset the costs associated with booking your talent. Are you selling tickets? How much is your target audience willing to pay to attend your event? Are there other organizations or companies you can partner with to help cover some of the booking costs? These questions can help you make an educated decision about how much you’re willing and able to spend on talent.
An agency can help walk you through some of these details while also providing expertise on an overall average price range for the caliber of celebrity you’re aiming to book.
HOW DO YOU ASK AN ARTIST TO PERFORM AT AN EVENT?
Instead of approaching a celebrity directly with your ask, your best bet is to start with key members of their team. Pretty much every celebrity will have their own team of talent that is tasked with booking their performances, managing their appearances, and assessing which gigs they should or shouldn’t take. In most cases, this will be their Booking Agent.
Agents are highly specialized professionals who keep tabs on schedules, offers, and logistics. They will typically be your first point of contact for any booking. You can often find their information on websites, social media pages, or electronic press kits linked to the talent.
But what if you can’t find their contact information or don’t feel like you’re ready to negotiate such a high-level offer?
In the same way that celebrities have specialists on hand to manage bookings, so too does the entertainment and event industry. Agencies like ours can step in to help you broker these deals.
Working with an agency to book talent on your behalf provides a number of benefits. One of the main reasons to work with an agency is to leverage their relationships with the professional teams that surround celebrities. It’s much easier to do business with someone you know.
In the case where that kind of previous relationship doesn’t exist, the agency’s professional experience, background, and resume comes into play. Booking agents generally prefer to work with people who have a track record of doing business at this level and love to work with agencies directly because they already have a clear understanding of the details that make up a successful offer or booking request such as timing, individual needs, talent priorities, preferred communication methods, etc.
That track record also includes a significant amount of knowledge about the industry, the process, and the history of your targeted talent. Before approaching your celebrity of choice, an agency can give you key pointers and recommendations based on their experience. For example, they may already know that the singer you’re trying to book doesn’t take corporate gigs or the comedian you’d like to host your event is always up for a fundraiser that benefits youth. In short, an agency can help determine what kind of offer makes sense to take to a booking agent and their clients. This kind of insight can provide a huge advantage to booking a celebrity for any event.
Hiring an agency to handle these details ultimately speeds up the booking process - a huge advantage to the celebrity and their team, but also to you.
BEST PRACTICES FOR BOOKING A VIRTUAL EVENT PERFORMER
These days, in-person events are not always possible and, in many cases, virtual events provide a practical alternative. And while nothing can match the atmosphere and experience of an in-person event, it is clear that virtual events are here to stay. The future is decidedly hybrid.
When you are booking talent for a virtual event, some of the same considerations come into play, albeit slightly tweaked. Is the talent engaging and able to hold the focus of an online-only audience? Can they deliver a memorable experience? Do they bring value to the people in your digital room?
In a virtual landscape, however, a few new questions also arise. Has the prospective talent performed an exclusively online show before? Do they have the proper equipment and technology to deliver a high-quality experience? Should they deliver an interactive component that requires them to be live, or can you make due with something taped specifically for your event?
Much like an in-person event, an online event requires a team of seasoned professionals to make the entire experience seamless. Determining which platform will host the event, finding experts to help manage the technical aspects behind the scenes, and being able to easily explain the format of the event are a few of the details you should consider before making a booking request.
It is also important to be flexible when it comes to online events. Maybe your talent has a great idea you hadn’t thought of or a taped performance that would be perfect for you that is a bit shorter than you had originally anticipated. Adapting to these details can not only help you make negotiations easier, they can also lead to a successful and unforgettable event.
TRUST YOUR TALENT BOOKING AGENCY
Whether you’re planning a virtual event or an in-person event, working with a talent booking agency provides many substantial benefits but the most valuable is trust. Celebrity talent trusts their team to help them make the best decisions for their career. In turn, these teams put their trust in agencies based on past experience, track records, and personal history to find the right bookings for their talent and make sure every small detail is covered.
Most importantly, you can feel comfortable and confident putting your trust in a talent booking agency to help you make the right choices, to ask all the important questions, to iron out all the specific details, to carefully explain anything you don’t understand, to handle negotiations with celebrity talent and their teams, and to be an effective member of your own team.
VOX Management Agency specializes in booking talent for corporate and special events. Helping clients find the best live performances for any occasion, they have booked talent for events all over the world including at Windsor Castle in England and in the Cayman Islands and have worked with renowned artists such as k.d. lang, Alan Doyle, Hasan Minhaj, Peace by Chocolate’s Tareq Hadhad, and many more.