The Art Of Hosting Is 100% Planned & 100% Spontaneous: Rahul Manjal

In the latest addition to this exclusive interview series, Rahul Manjal, a seasoned emcee, speaks with Everything Experiential as he delves into the essential qualities and practices that define a successful event anchor. With over a decade of experience hosting diverse events, from corporate conferences to weddings, Manjal shares his insights on balancing professionalism with audience rapport, adapting to emerging trends in the industry and offering advice for aspiring emcees and event planners.

Excerpts:

In your opinion, what qualities are essential for a successful anchor or emcee?

Voice, on-stage presence, intellect, presence of mind and being a great photographer are some of the qualities that are essential for a successful emcee.

How do you prepare for different types of events, such as corporate conferences, product launches or weddings?

Corporate events require you to meticulously know your pronunciation, language and target audience because who you are addressing is very important. You need to study what age group you are addressing too. If it is a young dynamic audience, make it very energetic and peppy. If it is a senior crowd like a leadership team, do not do gimmickry. You must maintain your sophistication.

Personal events like weddings are taken very lightly by people. They go to shows unprepared even. In my 10 years hosting weddings till date, I have never approached an event without proper preparation. For a wedding, I would try and meet the couple and the family. If they don't have time or the bandwidth to meet, then I do it on call.

I study the family tree, their likes, dislikes and more. I only go to an event after having had this 30–40-minute conversation with the client. The more you sweat in exercise, the less you bleed in war. Similarly, the more you prep beforehand, the fewer goof-ups happen on stage and the more stylish it comes out on stage.

As an anchor, how do you balance being professional and building a rapport with the audience?

Usually, before the start of an event, people find me very serious. That's my art, I try to absorb the space and the knowledge around me. Once I go on stage, then people realise that I’m a super fun guy to be around. Post the event, people will approach me themselves, they’ll make conversation or have their selfie moments.

When I started my journey as a radio jockey, this was the training we got. We were told to be the friendliest person, always be a very warm, lovable person, yet not give it all out, because that's the mystery that surrounds any on-stage or on-screen personality.

One thing that my seniors taught me was to enjoy while it lasts. Make sure you make the audience feel very warm and comfortable around you. Focus less on making fans and more on making friends, because they'll always be around.

What upcoming trends do you see in the event-hosting industry and how do you plan on adapting to them?

I see there is a lot of AI technology, which will be a trend that will follow through. Even if you look at social media, whatever tool you have, it's just a tool, you know, what you do with it is more important. I may have an Instagram to support my fans and my client database or LinkedIn to increase my networking skills, but how I do it is important. Not every Instagram really needs to be that jazzy. Not every event needs to be high shouting energy. It's how you use a microphone on stage or  Instagram to boost your social network.

The technology landscape is rapidly changing and the reason why I’ve always done corporates and weddings is because I like to do everything. People like to box performers, but I think that you learn with every event and the more you adapt, the more you thrive.

Do you have any tips for aspiring anchors or emcees who want to excel in this field?

Emcees are constantly travelling across cities, sometimes across the globe too, we get to visit the best places and it looks like a very glamorous profession. Don't be drawn into the profession just for the sake of glamour and getting to travel, you must enjoy your work and do it to your fullest.

There are times when you know you've not done your best even when the event itself has gone well. You need to be honest with yourself and do your 100 per cent.

Can you share some advice for event planners or organisers on how to collaborate effectively with emcees for successful events?

I always believe that a very important thing for any event organiser or client is to make sure that the emcee is comfortable. I humorously describe events as disaster management. You do not know what will happen on the day of the event, you need to be prepared for everything. Someone once asked me how much percentage of an event is planned and how much is spontaneous. I told him it's 100 per cent planned and 100 per cent spontaneous because that is how it is.

Event planners should make sure that the emcee is booked in advance. We like to get booked in advance and keep a comfortable schedule for us as well. 

Usually what happens is you get in on an early morning flight and you don't get your hotel check-ins at the right time. Make sure that any artist gets a proper check-in and gets their amount of rest because they need to be fresh on stage.

Pratyaksh Dutta

BW Reporters The author is a correspondent at BW Businessworld. He closely looks after the vertical of Everything Experiential and writes on experiential marketing.