Thinking of ways to use a celebrity to take your event to the next level?

There are plenty of ways to utilise a celebrity who you book for an event; you can ask that they act as a compere or presenter for your evening’s invitation, call on them to present awards or prizes or simply ask them to deliver a speech about their own experiences tailored to suit your audience.

One thing that can really help to boost the appeal of an event with a celebrity in attendance is to offer the opportunity of a Q&A session – people love being able to get up close and personal with one of their heroes, and a Q&A session lets them ask the questions that they’ve always wanted to.

In the same vein, ensuring that there’s ample time built into your programme of events for people to take a selfie with your star or get an autograph will help to keep your audience in good spirits. Most celebrity speakers will be more than happy to build an element of interaction into the evening, and it can help to boost the mood all around.

So why is it that we so love the opportunity to delve into the psyche of someone well known?

Some researchers theorise that it’s all to do with the uncanny effect of celebrity. Because of the daily exposure to celebrity culture which each of us is subject to via social media, tabloid papers and TV shows, we feel like we already know these people.

After all, if you know what Kim Kardashian has for breakfast, what her favourite brand of handbag is and where she’s on holiday at the moment, you probably know more details about her than most of the people in your life. It’s a level of intimacy which many of us don’t even reach with colleagues we work closely with or second cousins, but we have far more interactions with those people than we do with celebrities.

The uncanny impression that we already know everything that there is to know about a person is mitigated by the logical part of our brains, which tells us that we only know the edited truth about a celebrity; what they’ve chosen to put in the public domain, what a newspaper editor has chosen to publish or what has been retweeted on Twitter.

We acknowledge that we don’t truly know as much about our favourite celebrities as we sometimes feel we do, and it’s this acknowledgement that makes us so keen to find out more about them. Usually that takes the form of reading a gossip magazine, checking out a football blog or stalking our favourite celebrities on social media, but a Q&A session will allow your guests to find out more from the horse’s mouth.

The opportunity of a Q&A session is the perfect chance to find out more about someone who may usually be quite private, or to set the record straight on someone that you feel the press may have misrepresented. It’s also a chance to ask the kind of questions that perhaps aren’t answered by the media; a young sports fan might have questions to ask of a football player about breaking into the game, while an older tennis fan may want to ask about matches and rivalries long since forgotten by the press.

The mere suggestion of a celebrity in attendance at an event can seriously boost RSVPs and encourage people to attend; this effect is only multiplied by the inclusion of a Q&A session on the programme, which can provide a real encouragement for people who are sat on the fence to attend the event.

Whatever the age and demographic of your audience, it’s almost certain that they will share that most basic of human traits: nosiness. Pick the right celebrity speaker for your demographic, organise a Q&A and you’ll be inundated with interest.

Get in touch with one of the agents here at our London talent agency and they’ll be able to talk you through our extensive roster of clients to find the right one for you. We’ve got stars of screen, field and stage available to speak and everyone from young up-and-comers to retired grandees, so there’s sure to be someone who’s up to the job.