Archives

There’s a specific kind of pressure that comes with booking entertainment for a black-tie gala. Get it right and you’ve elevated the entire evening. Get it wrong and the host is quietly apologizing at the bar before the main course is over. Most corporate gala entertainment NYC lands somewhere...

There’s a dinner at Cipriani Wall Street. Fifty managing directors, a few senior partners, two hedge fund principals. The firm spent serious money on the venue, the wine, the tablescapes. Now someone has to fill ninety minutes of entertainment. A comedian gets considered. A band gets considered. Someone pitches...

Walk any major trade show floor and count the booths trying to generate traffic. There’s a guy spinning a prize wheel. There’s a photo booth with props. There’s a screen playing a product video on a loop that nobody is watching. There’s an iPad stand with a raffle entry...

I’ve performed at hundreds of corporate holiday parties. Ballrooms at the Plaza. Private dining rooms in Midtown. Loft spaces in Tribeca. Open bars in Jersey City. Intimate dinners for ten partners. Standing-room-only parties for four hundred people who all want to be somewhere else. I’ve seen what works and...

People often assume that magic works best on children. That adults are too skeptical, too rational, too analytically wired to feel genuine wonder. Corporate audiences especially, they think, will just try to figure out the trick. They’re wrong. And the psychology explains why. Adults in professional settings don’t just...

Here is a number that should surprise you: most corporate entertainers are never booked by the same client twice. Not because the events went badly. Not because the client was unhappy. But because nothing happened afterward. No follow-up, no relationship maintenance, no reason for the client to think of...

You’ve booked the venue. The catering is sorted. The agenda is tight. But when it comes to corporate entertainment in NYC, most event planners either default to the same tired band or DJ: or they scramble at the last minute and settle for whatever’s available. Don’t let entertainment be...

Every year, the same thing happens. Event planners book the venue first. Then the catering. Then, usually sometime in October, they start panicking about entertainment. I’ve been the guy who gets those October calls. “We have 200 people, two weeks, and no budget left for a headliner. What can...

I’ve worked hundreds of corporate events. Galas, holiday parties, sales kickoffs, award ceremonies. And after all of them, there’s one mistake I see over and over, from companies big and small. They plan everything except how people are going to feel. The venue is locked. Catering is handled. AV...