Welcome to Richard Style's Guide To Becoming An Emcee. Whether you are thinking of embarking on emceeing as a full time career, part time freelance or a hobby, the emceeing journey is rewarding and meaningful.
What Will You Achieve
1. Widen social circle
2. Greater self confidence
3. Better communication skills
4. Improves intellectual capacity (quick thinking, critical thinking, stress management)
5. Knowledge and exposure
6. Fame
7. Livelihood
Fame and livelihood rewards are at the bottom of the list as these outcomes are the by-product of your work hard and success over the longer term.
Chapter 1: Isn't Being An Emcee All About Just Holding The Microphone and Talking?
Most people in Singapore (and maybe other parts of Asia) would refer to emcees as the guy or lady up on the stage with the mic talking away. Colloquially speaking, a person holding the microphone crying father crying mother (kao-peh-kao-bu) on stage. Funny isn't it?
The key objective here is to try to differentiate a Singapore emcee from a speaker, auctioneer, radio DJ, newscaster or even a toastmaster. All these latter roles have specific skills set and while many of the skills may be similar and beneficial to an emcee, there are some skills that an emcee requires that are unique. I have highlighted some of these below and hopefully that will help clarify why being an emcee in Singapore is not just about holding the mic and talking away.
1. Crowd Reader
Whether using Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques, sales techniques, or understanding different personality types, the emcee has to be prolific at connecting with his audience. He assesses the audience at every moment, right from their entrance, at his opening introduction or when he goes down to the floor to interact with the audience throughout the entire event. The emcee reads the body language, energy level, voice, words or any possible visual or subtle cue of his audience while executing his emcee craft at the same time. All these information will be used to allow the emcee to better understand his audience. At the same time, an emcee is quick to react when he sense a programme segment is wearing down the audience's energy.
2. Crowd Influencer
From getting shoppers traffic at a roadshow to getting thousands of audience off their seats into a game segment, a professional emcee knows how to influence. Influencing on the surface may seem to be focusing on the emcee's choice of words, but if you dive deeper, he knows how to work the emotion aspects of his audience and their psychology. Navigating the terrain at a shopping mall roadshow, tactical promotional mechanics, gathering attention and call for buying action are some of the tools in the roadshow emcee's arsenal. For a dinner emcee, his expertise in using music, games, comedy, speaking their lingo and crowd interaction will help him find favour with the audience for the night.
3. The 3 e's in Emcee - Ensure, Execute, Entertain (or Engage)
An emcee is the CEO, well, a different CEO - Chief Event Officer. A good emcee doesn't just run the programme and keep it on time. An emcee has to ensure he balances meeting the objectives and goals set by the organiser, execute it as well as he can (despite challenges and problems of dealing with a live audience with no chance of a NG and retake) and also engage or entertain the audience. Using a simple illustration, being an emcee is like going on a road trip. You have your GPS and maps to get to your destination. But changing road conditions, traffic situations, weather and other factors will require your alertness and ability to cope without showing any expression of frantic or stress (to the audience. Well we aren't driving on stage. There's actually hundreds of pairs of eyes looking at us.)
Chapter 2: Understanding The Mindset of Your Audience
In this article, I will help aspiring emcees crack the code and better understand their audience by presenting an overview of the Singapore audience followed by tips and tricks on how to engage the audience.
1. Overview
Singapore is a melting pot of different cultures and languages as a result of our diversity. There are the 4 main races Indian, Malay, Chinese and Eurasians on one hand, and on the other, the many other races and languages of our foreign counterparts, either working or residing in Singapore. While that can be said of many western developed countries and cities like US, UK, Europe, Hong Kong and Australia, engaging the audience is never the same in Singapore. Since this article is about helping you as an emcee in Singapore to navigate your audience, we will neither be doing a deep dive of the societal differences of the East and West nor discussing human origins or genetics.
2. Understanding Your Audience As An Emcee in Singapore
In order for you to have a clearer understanding of the audience, it would be better to take an approach of focusing on the various events types and the audience at such events including community events, road shows, corporate functions (both formal and informal), family days and private functions such as weddings and birthday parties.
A. Dinner and Dance
Many young emcees whom I had spoken with tend to think that Dinner and Dance is the holy grail of an emcee's career. The truth is, emceeing a Dinner and Dance requires the emcee to have a multi-talented persona on stage. Singing, dancing, comedy, games, hosting awards presentations and speeches, and the list goes on.
However, if you prepare well in advance, you will likely do much better than trying to react on the spot and think on your feet. Always try to find out more about the audience during the events meeting with the client, like demographics, nationalities, past Dinner and Dance experiences and what sort of games worked well with the audience. Especially if the company has a track record of organising Dinner and Dance every year, then one can imagine that the audience excitement will only be visible during the lucky draw. But fret not, this is not over for you! You have still got a chance to make this event fantastic for the audience. And that is the best part about being an emcee; the challenge of bringing the audience alive, and once their energy is flowing, you will enjoy the rest of the evening with so much explosive fun!
There are a million and one way to spice things up. Think about how you can make the lucky draw more exciting, do your research on games that will work for the audience after knowing their profile, and find out any chance to insert other interesting segments like mass activity segment or showcase the hidden talents among the audience.
Dinner and Dance can be fun and exciting and doesn't necessary have to be a terrifying experience for an aspiring emcee. In fact, because of the fun nature of this type of events, it can be a lot less intimidating than a formal event where a wrong pronunciation or inaccurate fact or figure read could cost you your job!
In order for your jokes and punchlines to resonate with the audience, always stay current to world news. I know sex, race, nationality and politics are some of the great ingredients for laughter, but I always stay away from any of these and would advise you to do the same. Unless you are very confident, DO NOT try any such jokes that you may have seen other comedians did on YouTube and the crowd went laughing belly up. The last thing you want is to have an adverse reaction from the audience and seeing yourself on headline news.
Lastly, most if not all the audience at a Dinner and Dance just want a good time and be entertained for 3 hours or so. If your jokes or games not working out the way you want it, don't be upset and don't be afraid to wrap up the segment sooner than it should be and move on to the next game or segment. Always be real and sincere towards your audience, this way they will be more willing to connect with you, making your job for the night a lot easier.
B. Community Events
The term 'community events' is used rather generically to describe events where the event is held for anyone and everyone from all walks of life. The audience do not necessary come from a single organisation such as a company or a school, but rather they are there for the event. Think about block parties, festive celebrations at your community clubs, launch of new facilities in your neighbourhood and residents are invited as guests, National Day Dinner Celebration, etc.
Community events serve as an outreach and connecting with the residents or the public. As such, you will likely expect a very diverse audience. Some adults, pioneer generation or senior citizens may only be fluent in their mother tongue languages and as such are more reserved and will usually not take part in stage games or activities (unless the prizes are very attractive). They will prefer to stay in their seats or stand at the perimeter of the audience zone to watch and enjoy the performances. Children and youths are naturally more open to taking part in stage games or activities. Also, there will usually be other fringe activities contesting for their attention thus you may find yourself having to conduct games when there are only few people in the audience. Don't worry, just go ahead and do your games, the crowd will return to the stage area.
Given that the crowd is diverse, it will help you as an emcee if you speak slightly slower, do away with complicated words and speak other languages (as best as you can) to connect with the crowd. There's nothing more heartwarming than going off stage and into the audience zone to start light conversations with them. Sing a few lines of the popular songs (even without the backing music) and you will find the audience clapping and cheering for you!
C. Road shows
Many new emcees start off by doing roadshows as a way to build their skills - speaking with a mic, learning to use their voice, getting comfortable with hearing themselves through the speakers and gaining confidence to interact with people. As they get comfortable with their newly acquired skills, the next level is to understand how road shows work, what is the objective of the roadshow, the location or venue, timing, and promotional or awareness mechanics available. Audience or shoppers or passer by at road shows have short attention span and will only pick up key words and decide in a split second if they should check out what you are doing. Given the distracting environment in a shopping mall, or an open space in a heartland shopping area, there are 101 things to distract your audience. Going through lines after lines of your script on the product, features and why this is better than your competitors will not attract their attention. As the world develops with information in abundance online and everywhere, consumers don't like to be sold to or hard pressed to buy. In fact, they may know your product better than you do.
To be successful as a roadshow emcee, you must create the environment through your voice, words, sentences and your presence to gain the confidence and trust of the shoppers. If you listen and watch the voice, pitch, tone, presence, body language, facial expressions, words and sentences of the emcee, you can sense whether he is aurally creating the consumer's sanctuary, making the consumer feel comfortable and ready to take a step in and make a purchase.
While road shows may seem easy, it is often the most challenging. Unlike Dinner and Dance or Community Events, you may not have the luxury of a captive audience sitting in front of you. Sometimes you may think no one is listening as they appear uninterested or just shuttling past, trust me, their ears are listening for your key words.
There are many other types of events such as weddings, forums, private parties and more. But over the course of my experience, the 3 types of events above are the most often held in Singapore and you can be successful in all three.
Chapter 3: Mastering The Art of Emcee Games
Chapter 3: Mastering The Art of Emcee Games
In this article, I will share insights on emcee games as part of your stage entertainment to engage your audience.
Why Play Games?
Anyone and everyone, from a child to a senior citizen, all love to play games. From more sedentary type of games such as chess, sudoku, crossword puzzle to active sports such as telematch, treasure hunt and sports, games have been used for competition, entertainment, icebreaker, teambuilding, learning and development.
If you aspire to be a great emcee, apart from great linguistic and communication skills, great persona and disposition, you have to develop a great forte in engaging the audience through playing games. Many emcees are cognisant of this truth but still find it challenging to be a master of games, citing reasons including
- The audience is uninterested! I can't seem to get them to listen to me and play my game.
- How to play game when no one is in the audience? There are so many other activities fighting for their attention.
- The audience has played or seen the game last year. I am at a lost what games to play.
- Oh dear, my game doesn't work for this crowd!
- I am stuck. My game is already completed and I still need to kill time before the next performance is ready.
- It is so tough getting the 4-5 teams of 12 participants.
- My games are plain boring.
The list goes on and on. Trust me, every emcee's nightmare is having to do stage game with a cold and unresponsive audience. Sometimes at an event meeting, the organiser may have the impression that their staff are very enthusiastic and ready to party. On the actual day, it is appalling to find out the opposite, especially if they had a long day at work or they experienced a quarter of dismay business results. How to still engage their audience and be a successful emcee for the night?
Emcee Games Format: Stage, Table, Mass
In general, all games take on one of the three basic formats - Stage, Table, Mass. Let me first explain the game formats
1. Stage
- Participants are invited up onto the stage and the game will usually take place on the stage. The key characteristic is to entertain the audience through the game played by the participants on stage. Audience will predominantly be watching the action on stage. Classic example of a stage game would be the best dressed award catwalk contest.
2. Table
- This format is common for an icebreaker at a dinner event. The aim is to break the ice among guests at a table through competition and teamwork. In smaller events where there are around 5-8 tables, the tables can be given a team name each and compete amongst the other tables. The best example would be the scavenger hunt game where each table will be required to collect the items called out by the emcee.
3. Mass
- Mass games are predominantly interactions and activities that everyone can participate. Be it a cheer, dance, song or icebreaker, the key objective is usually to get everyone together as an organisation.
Principles of Emcee Games: Competition, Entertainment, Showmanship
1. Competition
Most aspiring emcees think about games as the games they played during their school days. Most of these games are played among different teams with a clear absolute outcome or winner. Winners are usually the fastest, most accurate, least mistakes, tallest, highest score etc. These games are focused purely on the first principle - Competition. Competitive games works in general with a younger age group audience or among audience with defined groups or teams like departments, divisions, nationalities, gender, etc. Each team ideally would have similar headcount strength to ensure exciting competition.
2. Entertainment
Entertainment, the second principle, takes the art of playing games one level higher. As an emcee, it is paramount to keep your audience entertained. Sometimes you might have a great competitive game going on stage and you completely forgot about the rest of the audience on the floor watching you. When you plan a game, it is important to incorporate the element of entertainment. Avoid games that are only visible at close range (as you may have audience sitting at the back of the ballroom who can barely make out what you doing on stage!). The tendency is for young emcees to copy games from TV game shows. TV cameraman can zoom in to give home viewers the close up of what the participants are doing. In live events, unfortunately, you don't have the luxury. I have tried those games when there where live feed big screens provided at the venue, but the audience were not as engaged as I thought.
To better incorporate the second principle, start by putting yourself in the shoes of the audience, not the participants in the game. Visualise in your mind how the game is played and ask yourself if you would be entertained.
On the same note, how much of entertainment your game provide to an audience really depends on what the game is, how you play and where you play. For example, the straw tower game, where each table is given drinking straws to build the tallest tower. I have seen it played as a team building game at a workshop and also at a dinner event as a table game. The level of entertainment to the audience is rather different. Make a guess which set of participants enjoyed the game better? The group at the workshop or the dinner event?
3. Showmanship
The third principle is the icing on the cake or I should say the tip of the iceberg. Just like an iceberg, you only seen the tip, but it extends way below the ocean. Simply speaking, to incorporate showmanship into your games, you need to think beyond the face value of competition and entertainment and really be excellent. This is what takes an emcee from good to great.
Using a simple game of throwing crushed paper balls into a waste paper basket:
The participants will stand on the stage while the waste paper basket is placed some distance away. The aim is to throw into the basket and win the game. We can easily identified the first principle Competition where the winner is defined by accuracy. The second principle Entertainment is also present, as audience can visually see the participants on stage representing their respective departments and making their throws. To further hype up Entertainment, emcee can ask audience to poll the winner or to cheer the participants. Showmanship in this case refers to the ability of the emcee to be successful in 10 consecutive throws, winning the wows and applause of the audience. Or showmanship could also refer to the participants being excellent with various fanciful throwing techniques, in between legs, hook shot, blind throw, back facing basket throw and all. This will certainly crank up the excitement of the audience.
When To Play What Games (Assessing Suitability)
It is crucial to know what games work for what crowd. Each of my game is assessed based on a number of factors. You may use some of these assessment criteria for your games:
1. Do the audience know each other well enough to want to play together? Any limitations of the audience that I must take into consideration during the games planning?
2. How is the seating arrangement? Round tables, standing cocktail, long tables, theatre setting, free style, etc.
3. Do you have a professional DJ and sound system to help you play music that will add effects to your game?
4. On games logistics, do you have a helper to help you with the game or the props? It will look too messy to be doing everything by yourself
5. Can you reuse your props or do you have to incur costs to purchase each time you play that game?
6. How is the language and level of interaction with your audience? Are your games instructions too complicated to comprehend?
7. Are there any sexual or sensitive connotations in your game that might offend the audience?
One important final question...
8. Is there a chance for me to display showmanship that will make me a better emcee and leave a deeper positive impression on the audience?
Games are great for any event in general and also a great tool for the emcee when there is a delay or hiccup in the event programme. Start to build your games repertoire today!
Chapter 4: The Epitome of A Great Emcee Lies In His Showmanship
Chapter 4: The Epitome of A Great Emcee Lies In His Showmanship
In this article, I will be sharing what SHOWMANSHIP is all about. Why are some emcees so captivating, charming and totally enjoyable watching them on stage? It may be the voice, the looks, the disposition, but I guess it would be more surreal to say it is the X-factor in the Emcee.
1. Do I Have The X-factor?
I have the honour of meeting and interacting with some of Singapore's finest emcees, both female and male emcees, and the question of whether one has the X-factor or not, doesn't apply in ultimately becoming a great Emcee. Each of them is different, has different personality, background, style and flair. So if you are wondering if there's a particular personality to be an emcee, the answer is NO. And neither are emcees born, don't let anyone fool you into that.
2. How Can I Polish Up My Showmanship?
The best way to polish up your showmanship skills is to first find out where your gaps are. It is not sufficient to say practice makes perfect. You may have many hosting opportunities, but without an experienced emcee highlighting where your gaps are, it will be difficult to improve. My suggestion is to video record your hosting and work with an experienced emcee to review. The best is to have an experienced emcee at your event as sometimes video recording may not be as effective.
If you are starting out, watch as many YouTube videos of successful emcees and follow some of them to their events to watch and learn if they allow you to. Sometimes it is easier to learn on the spot than over videos. Note down your observations and discuss with the emcee after the event.
In the course of my emceeing career, I found mental visualisation to be very be helpful. I will visualise the style and persona on stage, the way I am going to connect with the audience and how my movements, facial expressions, voice variety will add highlight to me on stage. Sometimes I will practice and rehearse in my mind or if time permits, an actual rehearsal in front of the mirror.
Some helpful advice here: It doesn't matter what is your personality in general, because on the stage you can be anyone you want. The best emcees' showmanship are not inborn, it is a result of continuous practice, tweaking what is wrong and improving what is correct.
Lastly, I want to conclude by encouraging you to define your Zone and strive towards it at every show. The Zone is a mental state of mind that makes you relax and be completely excellent at what you do. All sportsmen and performers know that they will be giving their best once they are in their Zone. For me, I know I am in my Zone when I have a great emcee opening introduction and managed to establish the connection with the audience. What's yours?
Chapter 5: Partnering For Success
So, the next time when you are the emcee for any event, always check in with the team and see how you can make the work experience a fantastic one for all stakeholders. Each event will have a different set of stakeholders, thus it will be great to know them and the next time you work with them, it will be a breeze and more enjoyable too!
If you would like me to discuss a specific area or topic, feel free to drop me a comment on the Contact page or email me at style.emcee.sg@gmail.com.
Chapter 5: Partnering For Success
In this article, I will be sharing what PARTNERSHIP is all about. People tend to think that the success of any event lies in the emcee. While it is possible for the emcee to make or break the event, we should never forget to give due credit to the unsung heroes - events organisers and planners, show producers, audio visual lighting team, deejays, photographers, videographers, stage hands, performers, venue providers, etc. While we as emcees are doing our routine on stage, these unsung heroes are working equally hard if not harder to make us look good up there.
1. Understand Your Events Stakeholders
It is very important to be familiar and acquainted with the various stakeholders and their roles at the event.
A. Show Producer / Events Manager
B. Audio Visual Lighting (AVL) team
C. Photographers / Videographers
D. Deejays
E. Stage hands
F. Venue staff
G. Performers
As an emcee, you may ask, shouldn't the show producer or events manager be undertaking this coordination arrangements? The simple answer is yes, but if you know their roles and responsibilities, you will not only have an easier time for you and also for everyone working together during the event itself. Everyone loves to work with great teams and great people. Get to know everyone and ask them how as an emcee you can help make their work better or easier.
2. Successful Partnership Breeds Successful Events
As the emcee for the evening, you may have to
- help the photographer with group photo taking by being his voice to arrange the audience
- help stage hands usher VIPs into their positions on the stage
- help the deejay to understand what music you want and when to play the music by visually or verbally communicating with them (don't expect them to read your mind!)
- help AVL crew to make sure audience can have a better time enjoying the event if lights are too dim or volume is too loud.
- help events manager or show producer to buy time for a last minute delay
- help organisers make announcements for some arrangements
- help performers get audience to participate or introduce them before their show
There's many more things we as emcees can offer up to make the event a great success apart from focusing on our role in stage.
If you would like me to discuss a specific area or topic, feel free to drop me a comment on the Contact page or email me at style.emcee.sg@gmail.com.
About EmceeRichardStyle
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Richard Style has established himself as Emcee, Presenter & Show Host in Singapore and regionally through the past 17 years. Multilingual and conversant across many industry sectors, Richard has been successful in winning the trust and hearts of both his audience and events partners.