Youth.sg Launch Party

With one of the beautiful contestants, Jamie

Hosting the web portal launch party for Youth.sg at Ministry of Sound provided a unique set of challenges.

Target Audience & Choice of Verbal Weapons:
First of all, despite my colourful singlets, coloured hair, and misty grey contact lenses, I do not see myself as a rambunctious teenager. The expected turnout however, will have its fair share of restless young rebels (and rodents!).

How do I connect with this easily bored, probably cynical bunch?

Well, I decided to go with a screaming-monkey meets honest-quip-freak combo. Act too cool, and they'll ignore you. Go too crazy, and you'll scare everyone away. The screaming-monkey, especially one with a big smile, can be a cute animal to some people. The honest-quip-freak? Well, honesty is funnier than you think!

Because there were also sponsors on our guest list, marketing messages related to the sponsorship had to be weaved into my interaction with the crowd. So in addition to ensuring that our youthful majority was entertained, I also had to make the cheque-signing, prize-providing people in the VIP area happy by showing them that their publicity/promotional needs were properly taken care of in the show.

This bit of spin was easy to do because the brand names involved (street fashion label, teen-oriented mag, pop music label etc.), and the goodies they provided, were relevant and appealing to the young crowd.

Venue considerations and Emcee's movement:
We were given the hip-hoppy "Smoove" section in Ministry of Sound. There was no proper raised platform, and instead of an audience on one side, and the show on the other, we had a 360 degree situation: a round cage with the party crowd sprinkled all around.

This meant that I had to constantly move around, North, West, South, East, in order to ensure that everyone felt they were properly addressed by the party hosts.

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Thoughts and Memories:
Meeting Ms Olsen in person was cool. She exuded a graceful air. I also had a great time ad-libbing during the "Extreme Human Body Parts" game. We couldn't script anything because we didn't know who we could find in the crowd, and what sort of "Extremely Pointless but Entertaining" game we could play with them.

Other than Ms Olsen, there was actually another celebrity encounter. This lady with the million-dollar-smile was there to cover the event for her campus newspaper. I spotted Miss-Diamonds-Dimple and dragged her out of the crowd to play some games with us. She showed great showmanship and sportsmanship, and of course, dazzled us with her effervescent sparkle.

We caught up later in the V.I.P area and I managed to get a snap-shot with her. She half-jokingly reminded me that she would get into trouble with her management people if visuals of her at this launch party (without the usual glam-young-queen styling) were leaked out.

So.... a gentleman's gotta do, what a gentleman's gotta do. That photo of Miss Diamond-Dimples will be safely stored in my harddrive, instead of Flickr.

Meanwhile,
here's a group photo of me, Youth.SG portal ambassador, my co-host, and Ms Olsen.

Cheerios
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From left:
Emcee "Reckless-and-Bloated-Fat" Khoon
Ronald "Youth.sg Ambassador" Susilo
Emcee "Miss Nice-nice" Elaine
Eunice "Grace in motion" Olsen

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Youth
emcee