Let’s face it – there are lots of people who want to be around celebrities. Every industry has them; they don’t have to be in pop culture. There are people who are noted for being good at what they do while others are legends in their own minds. As a marketing professional, I’ve run hundreds of trade shows, client conferences, and employee events. Adding a celebrity to host or serve as the drawing card for your event can be a blessing or a curse. This blog post presents two blessings and two curses. Three are well-known in their respective fields and one is no longer with us.

Blessing – Tim Sanders

When I worked for a company that provided customer care for the world’s leading brands, we hired Tim Sanders (early-stage employee of Broadcast.com who stayed on as Chief Solutions Officer following it’s sale to Yahoo, now a published author and speaker) as a featured speaker at our annual client conference. My role included vetting the speakers to ensure there was continuity of message, briefing speakers on the audiences, and helping any way I could with their speaking slot. Although I usually glanced through their books, I read Tim’s “Love is the Killer App” and enjoyed every paragraph. So our conversations flowed nicely. Tim was a total pleasure to work with and wowed a very tough crowd. He was the only speaker that received 10 out of 10 rankings from the 100+ customer experience experts in the audience.

Curse – the Cash Cab Guy

With every blessing there is a curse. The same company’s client conference featured evening entertainment – dinner on a mountaintop in Aspen, a black-tie special event complete with red carpet at Universal Studios, you get the drill. My colleagues and I thought the audience could use a laugh that year, so we sought a comedian. We viewed hundreds of clips and decided that Ben Bailey, the host of “Cash Cab” (a trivia game show that takes place in a Manhattan taxi), was the one. His clips were good, clean fun. Remember the Beatles’ “Paul is Dead” rumors? Perhaps Ben was replaced by a lookalike when he took the stage. Being no prude, I was raised by sailors and swear like the best of them. But this guy took working blue to a whole new level! Every sentence had expletives. No filter. The audience hated the experience so much that the company did not hold the event the following year.

Curse – Spoonman

A former employer held a major product launch party following an industry trade show in Seattle. We hired Artis the Spoonman (a local performance artist and the subject of the Grammy-winning song by Soundgarden) as the evening’s entertainment. Big mistake. Neither Spoonman nor his handlers took any of my pre-event phone calls. We became concerned that he would be a no-show. He showed up but was late and left the audience waiting. When I outstretched my hand for a handshake, he held his arms behind his back and coldly replied, “Spoonman does not shake hands.” OK, I get it. Beware of people who refers to themselves in the third person. That was the highlight of his performance. He seemed to not want to be there and left the second his performance ended.

Blessing – Tim Conover

Another blessing and one of the finest individuals I’ve ever worked with. When I joined an 80-year-old radio manufacturer, we wanted to add some pizzazz to our trade shows. A colleague suggested a magician named Tim Conover. Tim was no mere magician. His first career was as an engineer who had co-developed the modem. He combined the technical smarts to understand the products with the stagecraft of a master. I merely sent him some product catalogs and he created magic tricks about them! Who could have imagined the Project 25 standard for intereoperability as a rope trick! He thrilled every crowd and loved hanging out with us. We considered him an indispensable member of our intrepid little band. The job title on his booth badge was Traffic Magnet, and Tim kept our booth packed with the right people. Year upon year. He died tragically a few years ago. Godspeed Tim.

The lesson in all this? It is OK to hire a celebrity for your event. Just make sure you partner with the celebrity to ensure they understand your brand, your audience, and your expectations.