“He said WHAT?!?!” How to avoid being embarrassed by offensive corporate entertainers.
Why Do Entertainers Say Stupid Stuff on Stage? How Can You Be Sure Your Entertainment Won’t Embarrass You, Your Company, Your Executives, or Your Guests?
Last month, Mick Jagger made a huge mistake during a show in Canada. He took a moment to address the crowd, shouting “Hello Canada… we love your Justin Trudeau!”
The audience, unfortunately, did NOT love Justin Trudeau.
Watching the video, I was shocked to see the terror in Jagger’s face as he looked into the tens of the thousands of angry Canadian faces. Like the stadium-filling pro he is, he immediately shifting to hockey and soccer, which brought the cheer he wanted and regathered the crowd.
Tenacious D’s Kyle Gass made the same mistake around the Trump assassination attempt, saying “I wish he hadn’t missed." He lost half the crowd during the show, and the whole tour the next day.
The question we should be asking is, “Why would performers say these ridiculous things in front of your audience?”
It’s simple: they want to get a reaction from the audience. Both Jagger and Gass thought they were going to get a huge cheer, and the crowd would love them for saying those things.
You can’t blame them. As humans, we naturally assume everyone else thinks like we do, and our “media bubbles” reinforce this false belief.
How do you keep it from happening?
Ironically, Donald Trump has the answer.
Before he ran for President, Trump did lots of public motivational speeches. Companies would bring him in to speak at sales meetings and company events, and he did lots of public events promoting his books and raising the visibility of the Trump brand.
Many of my friends and colleagues in the corporate events world have worked with him, and they all respect him for the questions he asked.***
Before he went on stage as a business speaker, Trump always asked three questions of the event organizer:
How is the money made in your business?
What can I say that will totally lose this crowd?
What can I say that will make them my friend for life?
With that information, he’d never have to worry about offending an audience, and he knew exactly what to say to make them love him.
This connects to a famous story from Zig Ziglar. He suggested another speaker who used a lot of foul language in his presentation, but the client wanted a “clean” act. The speaker said, “I can take that stuff out.”
The client replied, “Well, we’d really prefer a speaker that would’t put it in in the first place.” Trump’s questions made sure he never put in the wrong thing in front of the wrong audience.
If your speaker and entertainers are asking you these questions (or something similar) you’re golden.
If not, you have to ask - are they not asking because they don’t think about these things, or are they not asking because they don’t care about these things?
Finally, if they aren’t have the conversation at all - what does that tell you?
What kind of risk are you exposing your event, your company, and your executives (and maybe your career?) if you’re not having these conversations?
It just makes more sense to have a conversation about what you’ve done in the past, what works, what could be better, how you evaluate the success of the event, and what you hope to accomplish at the next one before you start making decisions about vendors, performers, venue, or anything else.
If you're open to that conversation, call me at (561) 596 3877 or set an appointment at MagicMeansBusiness.com/contact.
***BONUS INSIGHT: Typically, when they were sitting in the greenroom or riding in a limo, my colleagues got some downtime with Trump. He always asked the same question of them, and it’s a really brilliant one: “What three books are you reading right now?”