What a Professional Emcee/Entertainer Will Do for your Franchise Convention Awards Ceremony!

We are putting the finishing touches on our most recent special report on Annual Franchise Conferences Best Practices: Awards and Recognition in hopes to help you make your awards ceremony more fun and more meaningful for all attendees. Here”s one juicy section for you…

RAZZLE DAZZLE – USE A TALENTED EMCEE/ENTERTAINER TO CREATE AN AMAZING EVENING!

Using a professional Emcee/Entertainer to co-host the awards (or run the charity auction if you are doing them together) will dramatically increase the impact of the awards event. The role of a professional Emcee is to inject the event with high-energy entertainment and to keep the audience focused and engaged on their reason for being there – to recognize and praise their peers or to be recognized and be praised by their peers!

Why use a professional Emcee/Entertainer?

• There”s a craft behind keeping the energy in the room up and keeping the entire audience engaged. A professional Emcee/Entertainer specializes in keeping the flow moving with fun insights and humor. And here”s a tip – have an inside person read the names of the award winners to avoid possible mispronunciation of your winner”s names. No matter how good your pro is, names can be a challenge and it”s especially important to get it right on your recipient”s big night!
• A professional Emcee/Entertainer will manage the time and make sure that your evening runs like clockwork!
• A professional Emcee/Entertainer will customize their content to connect directly with your system culture and your event theme. So often drawn-out award ceremonies are only fun for those few franchisees who are actually getting an award. A professional Emcee will ensure that the evening is fun and entertaining for everyone!

How to use a professional Emcee/Entertainer:

• Consider using an Emcee as a warm up, when your franchisees are being seated. This may only be 10 minutes to get a groove going and then have the Emcee hand over to your more serious presenter (often the CEO) to signify respect for the awards and what they mean to the company culture. If you are spacing the awards throughout the meal, use your entertainer to settle the crowd each time you rejoin the awards process. They may bring in a few jokes, magic tricks or fun bits for 5 minutes or so and then hand-off again to the CEO to deliver more recognition. When you

  have completed the awards, your Emcee/Entertainer can do a short closing piece before the close of the evening or if you are using a band, before the party and dancing begins.

• As your recipient comes up to receive their award, your Emcee/Entertainer can talk to the images of the person flashing up on the screen and share with the audience some little know facts and personal details about your winner. This adds a very human touch and helps your entire network really get to know your winners.
• If you are also running a charity auction, it”s a proven fact that a professional Emcee will drive more engagement and thus more pledges.
• Have last year”s award winners engage with your Emcee, “Emmy Awards” style to award the current year”s winner for their specfic category. This involves more of your franchise partners in the overall event and re-enforces the recognition that last year”s winners received for their achievement. Your audience will stay more engaged as they wonder what”s going to happen next!
• Leverage the extensive experience of your Emcee/Entertainer. They likely have a bag full of great ideas of how to keep everyone engaged and help you create a fabulously fun and memorable evening for your franchisees.

For more creative ideas how to give your franchisees a memorable and fun awards ceremony, contact SPEAK! – we”d love to help! And let me know if you”d like to receive a copy of our soon to be released special report on Annual Franchise Conferences Best Practices: Awards and Recognition.

More soon!

Katrina

PS: Interested in finding the perfect Emcee/Entertainer for your next event? Our team of franchise-savvy corporate comedians, magicians and celebrity impersonators are sure to please!