Create and Design Entertainment for Corporate Events

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Mike McAllen interview with Frank Boehm Creative. Please check out Franks website for more information and videos. www.frankboehm.com

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Transcripts:
Female: You are listening to the Meetings Podcast with Mike McAllen, Jon Trask and Tom Hillmer. The Meeting Planner podcast source for what’s new and exciting in the meetings and events industry. The information and opinions expressed in this podcast are of Mr. McAllen, Mr. Trask and Mr. Hillmer and are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of their past, present or future employers.

Please send in your question and comments to MeetingsPodcast@gmail.com and make sure to visit our website for pictures, video and show notes at www.MeetingsPodcast.com

Mike McAllen: Today we’ll be talking with Frank Boehm. Frank’s known throughout the world of corporate communications for developing cutting edge entertainment, attracting top level talent, and delivering excellence. Frank’s created, directed, and choreographed entertainment for almost 20 years now and worked with every major production companies serving clients in every major industry and venue. I have seen his work, I have worked with him, and I’m really looking forward to interview and I hope you enjoy. Hi, Frank.

Frank Boehm: Hey, Mike.

Mike McAllen: Thank you so much for being on the show. I know you’re really busy and I appreciate your time and I wanted to start this out and ask if you could tell the audience a little bit about yourself personally and how you got, how you started your business and you know, what led you to do all this crazy fun stuff?

Frank Boehm: Well, we create and design entertainment and something we arrived to over the last probably five, six years. Before that, we pretty much developed entertainment based on groups that we have put together like Rhythm Slam or Core Impact or People Slam and adopted those groups to whatever the creative called but right now, our work really is beginning at an earlier process, an earlier stage in the process where we will work with the production company and help them figure out what the entertainment should look like, what the point of the entertainment is going to be and how to get that across.

So, it’s – the dynamic has changed actually quite a bit and we are also in the process of taking that a step further where I’m beginning to offer my service personally apart from what my company does as a freelance creative director.

Mike McAllen: Nice.

Frank Boehm: And working you know, at an even earlier stage. I mean we have the experience and the nice thing about it is we can not only help develop creative but then actually implement it on site.

In terms of my own background, I started in the business as a dancer way back when, actually way back when the shows were really big and actually not relevant to creative at all, pretty much just entertainment and I began to choreograph for some corporate work, I almost just sort of fell into it in Chicago and after that I kept choreographing and then eventually began to build Rhythm Slam and that was the real beginning of serious corporate work for me.

Mike McAllen: Very cool. So, your company now also does music, correct?

Frank Boehm: We do. That’s – as we expanded, we realized that it would be very advantageous for us to be able to offer music creation both composition and production for two reasons. One is that we had been working with cast members who had these skills and I love to work with people who actually end up having to do the show.

So, if you’re going to compose a piece of music for me, guess what? You’re going to perform it. So, you’re involved in the process from A to Z rather than someone just sitting in the studio maybe pulling some library loops and other things and then handing off the project and going on to the next. It becomes more of an integral part of the process and it ends up being more effective.

So, that’s something we offer and we do it on occasion not as much as I would like but yes, that’s another area we went into.

Mike McAllen: Yes, that’s interesting. I know as our production company were always asking about music and they never really, once we get on site then they’re all, “What about the music?” Which is great if you can offer it up front and tie it all in. It’s fantastic. I really like the little tag line you had, not the little tag line but the creative extraordinary ideas in practical realities because that’s really where you can – you really have benefit for an event.

Frank Boehm: Well, and that’s where – I mean, things you know with budgets being tight and I mean, they’re tightening and yet again I would say this is probably the third or fourth cycle I’ve lived through where you know, budgets are getting tighter and more and more if there’s going to be any kind of entertainment, it has to be practical.

It has to make sense. It has to be yes, entertaining and yes, grab them but at the same some sort of relationship to a marketing campaign or a meeting theme and that’s actually fun. I enjoy trying to figure out how to make those connections but that’s where the practical reality that and of course making it work within a budget.

Mike McAllen: Right, right. So, what are you finding these days? When do you brought in a project? I was just thinking about you know, when a client sends out an RP, are you in that process for the production companies right away or you …

Frank Boehm: Well, sometimes. I love getting involved as early as possible but you know frankly, we’re called in at any given point. I mean, we had a call last year for a show that was happening 24 hours later the next day and I mean, it was just you know, just let’s look at the website and decide what we’re going to use, what’s the budget. Okay, we had an hour and a half discussion. I got on the phone, we’re going to ask the cast and we were off and running to do a (tech and dress 00:06:25) in Las Vegas.

Mike McAllen: And all those people, are they, all your people, are they all over the place or how …

Frank Boehm: Well, primarily in Los Angeles. We have most of our dancers, our percussionists; a lot of our creative people are in L.A. There are a couple of people I love to work with in the Bay area, one of our horn guys is out of Seattle, another one is in New York, some of our velocity still guys in Orlando. So, they’re kind of all over but mostly in L.A.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Frank Boehm: But we get involved in the process at all different stages and I love to get involve early. I mean, one of the things we do is we keep developing entertainment groups and this is kind of interesting because you know when Rhythm Slam started, it was because Stamp was a phenomenon at that time. And we’re talking 12, 13 years ago maybe more now. And you know, corporate was of course catching on and like, “Can you do this?” And the first call I turned down, I was choreographing a show at that time. Second call I got I thought there’s something going on here but I couldn’t do that show either.

By the time I got the third call, I’m thinking, “You know, I’m just going to say yes and figure out how to do this.” Which I think there’s a lot of us in the business do on occasion. And that led to Rhythm Slam which just totally changed my business and since then we had created a number of groups and some of them have very odd inspirations like (Bibbo 00:08:00) Slam was inspired by the Nike TV spot because I saw that and like if there’s any way I can reproduce that on a stage, that will be phenomenal and we were able to do that (Bibbo 00:08:13) Slam, it’s not as hot as it used to be but the first few years we had it, it was the hottest thing we had going.

So, then on the other hand you know, we looked at some things and we tried to figure out what might be effective like our newest project, the Central Station which has really taken off and I tell you, how that came about was we started working a lot with a couple of DJs integrating them into our percussion shows and our other shows. We enjoyed that process but my music director and I, we had dinner one night, we’re thinking like it would be really great if we could do more with the DJs. Is there anything more we could do?

And then we thought well, it would be great if you know, we had a DJ who could really play percussion, really well at a high level and integrate it to things and we realized that after some more discussion that that was really not possible but a good percussionist could learn DJing skills and that’s exactly what happened and that would develop the Central Station which is based on the idea of a DJ percussionist which is a phenomenal sound and look and then we add violin and horn and vocals and whatever else you know fits with creative and the budget and stuff.

Mike McAllen: Yes. I watched …

Frank Boehm: See, that’s something we just created.

Mike McAllen: It’s very cool. I watched it and if the listeners don’t know if we haven’t already said this that your website is really a very comprehensive website. You can watch any of the acts that you guys have in there. It’s very cool.

Frank Boehm: Right.

Mike McAllen: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off.

Frank Boehm: No, no. That’s – I was just saying that we have gotten to the point where we create groups too and then occasionally, we do something unusual for a client like for Fleishman-Hillard, we did a vocal effects choir. Now, we had been working with Beat Boxers and vocal effects guys for years but we had never thought of creating a choir. We did this to support a video that Fleishman-Hillard did and it was so cool, we decided that this should be a group. So we have …

Mike McAllen: That was going to be my next question to you about that. That’s a fantastic idea to engage everybody. That was one of the – that was going to be my next question about the choir effects and where you came across all these people. It’s pretty amazing.

Frank Boehm: Well, the people – all people we’d worked with, I mean that’s I think one of the reasons that we are able to be so flexible and so comprehensive in our approach to developing and creating entertainment and constant that we can come up with something that’s really cool because we work with an amazing array of talent and you know, if I don’t know it, one of my guys is going to know it and it’s just a matter of tracking things down. I mean, you know like we have a guy whose a flutist and a beatboxer. He does both things at once.

And you know so, it’s just such a broad range of talent and skills that we work with that we can you know constantly put something together like when Fleishman-Hillard approach us and said, “We want to do this vocal effects choir.” Because they had seen you know, the Academy Award a few years ago and the Honda TV commercial and, ”Can we do that?” And I’m like, “Sure. Of course we can do that.”

In fact, a couple of our beatboxers were in the Honda TV commercial so it’s just a matter of pulling the resources together and figuring out you know, how many people their budget could tolerate and yet get across what we needed to do and all those sorts of things and then actually develop the you know, the work.

Mike McAllen: It’s fantastic. And one other one was – I wondered, how did the parkour thing come about? Is that the right way to say it?

Frank Boehm: Yes, it is parkour. And it’s interesting because there again, I was familiar with it because it’s been an underground phenomenon for a while and one of the things we do is kind of try to stay on top of cultural ramblings. The problem with corporate work is it’s very hard to pitch things to people that are not sort of already out there because when you go to corporate client, you’re going to say parkour and then they’ll look at you and say, “What? What the hell is that?” Because they’ve never heard of it but if you go to them and say, “Hey, we want to do something like blast or stamp.” You know then they know it.

So, but we still try to keep sort of in touch with what’s going on. So, we were familiar with parkour. It started out in France and it became sort of a craze among very young people in major cities, L.A., New York, Chicago, and to a certain extent here in San Francisco, in the Bay area. And then I start – I got one call for it and we quickly realized that there are very strong issues with doing this in a ballroom or a live situation.

Namely that you – parkour is based on continuous running and surmounting of obstacles in the way so I’m running from point A to point B and I’m jumping over trees and cars and you know through fences and things like that so that it’s a beautiful metaphor for business meetings for overcoming obstacles and you know in a creative way, these guys are pretty amazing but in order to do that in a static setting, you would need to basically turn the ballroom into a giant jungle jam and it gets very prohibitive for cost point of view plus in the end, you end up running in a circle which is not that interesting.

So, the more we talked about it, the more we realized that this is really not a live phenomenon. Now, in the meanwhile I’ve heard that there’s been some parkour “happening” at some business meetings and I only saw one and it was an amazing set. They had recreated the city skyline and it took up, well, I’d say it took up probably a third of the ballroom from literally the left wall across the back wall and probably the right walls in gigantic set and it was exciting, it was exciting for about a minute and a half and then the guys run out of stuff to do and they started basically repeating themselves.

Anyway, the point is that we realized this is something you have to do on video and it’s phenomenal for video because even just one guy and of course you can make that one guy, change him out and you know that’s the corporate guy you know …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Frank Boehm: … the speaker. You just make him look like he’s going to start running up to an object and then our parkour guy takes over. There’s a lot of fun things to do with it and we did some you know, some fun proposals so far so we’re waiting for that to really move but it’s kind of not in the consciousness yet.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Frank Boehm: But we’ll get there.

Mike McAllen: Yes. I have seen some videos with the guys in Europe doing that. Very crazy.

Frank Boehm: You know, it’s interesting because in Europe they use in TV spots all over the place and it’s much more probably in the consciousness. Here, the only thing I’ve seen is that fairly mediocre, I think it’s a Mazda commercial. I don’t know if you’ve seen it where there’s some guys jumping over cars.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Frank Boehm: And that’s about it and it’s not very creative you know and so – but it will catch on I think. But that’s one of the things too where we’re you know – it’s so exciting that we want to be ahead of the curve a little on this but we sort of waiting for the business to catch up to that idea a little bit.

Mike McAllen: The – I saw – I was walking through San Francisco recently and there was the Learning Annex thing and they had a class for it which I thought …

Frank Boehm: Is that right? Wow.

Mike McAllen: I wondered, that would be kind of fun to video tape that.

Frank Boehm: Those guys are amazing you know. I mean, they just are so dedicated and you know, I thought at first well, this is just – these guys are just acrobats but it really is a different skills set and these guys work really, really hard at it. So, like if you’re doing like a shoot and you’re going to say, “Okay, we’re going to run an approach to this thing and you’re going to jump over it and then you’re going to climb up that wall.” And then they prepare meticulously for that stuff.

Mike McAllen: Yes. There’s a movie out too that has those guys in it too. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. I forgot what’s the name of it.

Frank Boehm: Yes. That was the [00:16:40] movie called District 13. That’s what sort of kick off the craze that’s been now.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes, yes. That was it.

Frank Boehm: That was six years or more but it was used in Goldfinger and I understand Madonna actually used the group parkour in her recent world tour. So, it will you know, it will get there at some point but we try to you know, do things like that and then we – I mean, it’s actually been a very creative year for us. We also did some mechanics which again you know, I saw that wonderful movie that melded hip hop and step dancing. Shoot. I’m blanking out the name of it right now. But that was out what, over a year ago or so and I’ve always loved step dancing, which is the dance that’s based primarily on black fraternity and black sorority.

Mike McAllen: Right, right. Yes, I remember them in college.

Frank Boehm: It’s incredibly percussive and very, very powerful but it also has a limiting aspect to it and then I saw this performance by Black Grace which is a group from New Zealand that’s based on (mawry 00:17:47) movement. And they – there are some similarities in terms of the warrior roots of both styles of dance but the Black Grace group from New Zealand incorporated some rhythmic vocals and as soon as I saw it, I said, “That’s it. I have to put this black colored step dancing together with hip hop and vocals.

And I think we can come up with something cool.” Because one of the things we always try to do too is customize all of our projects or have some element that allows customization. And in having chance in a lyric section of the work that we can customize and keep a very powerful and rhythmical is perfect for clients.

So, we put together some mechanics and we did a couple of shows for Abbot Pharmaceuticals that were – the audience just, just loved it. So, you know that’s another example of something we said, “Well, let’s try and put something like this together and see if it flies.”

Mike McAllen: It’s very cool. So, when you guys – now that you’re more involved with the creative and the whole show, is it openings mostly or is it transitions too between – when do you usually, when are you usually doing your thing?

Frank Boehm: Well, the thing that sells entertainment is always the opener and then its added value to do inner stitials and closures and so we always offer that. And sometimes you know, we do quite a bit. I mean, if you have a one day meeting, we might do an opener, a couple inner stitials and a closure but on occasion, we do just an opener and then go home.

So, it does vary a lot. I mean, I think it’s definitely – our work is not cheap so when we can say we can certainly do these other things and they will be different. So, we’re not just repeating the opener you know in little chunks for inner stitials and the closure, we will come back and do something different every time we come back. And it adds value and then people can see well, this is the group you want to have here.

Mike McAllen: Yes, plus you have your menus getting bigger and bigger so you can really tie in a lot of different things.

Frank Boehm: Right. We try, yes. But even with one particular group like just sticking with some mechanics for example, we may start with this opener but then within that group, we also have two people who are excellent percussionists, we have two people who are amazing tap dancers, we got three people can do (gamba 00:20:23) dancing which is a South African miners’ dance. So, we could come back several times and do things that are movement based but look and sound really different.

Mike McAllen: So great. So great to engage the audience. It’s …

Frank Boehm: Yes. Well, that’s always been a big part of it too you know, is trying to figure out a way to get the audience involved. Sometimes it’s simply not appropriate but a lot of meetings are sales-based audiences and those guys and gals just love to let off steam and to do that in a rhythmical way on a call and response and you know, to really get them involve is fun and we often involve execs in our opening numbers and we have you know, there’s a lot of tricks you can use. I think everyone kind of knows them but they are very effective you know.

Mike McAllen: Yes, I think it’s fantastic when the execs put themselves out there for that that really builds the team behind them. I mean …

Frank Boehm: Yes, it definitely helps humanize them too and I think …

Mike McAllen: And even when they’re not good at anything, it’s even better for it looks …

Frank Boehm: Right, exactly. It doesn’t matter. Like you’re willing to go out there and try that?

Mike McAllen: Right, right. Yes, yes.

Frank Boehm: So, the last show we did you know, we had the exec come out and drummed with us for 45 seconds at the end and he you know, he was not a drummer. I showed him, I’m not a drummer either so I showed him like this is what a non-drummer would do. And it doesn’t matter because we’re not going to mic your drum, just look aggressive and look comfortable and he came out and to our surprise, he had sunglasses on and made himself looked really cool and the audience just went nuts and when he was done you know, the first thing he said is, “That’s going to be the hardest thing I’m doing today.” So, the rest is going to be a breeze. And he had the audience in his pocket you know.

Mike McAllen: That’s great. That’s fantastic. So, I don’t think I thought about was like if someone wanted to follow in your footsteps and kind of get into this kind of stuff, what would you recommend they would do because you know, somebody is really interested in getting into this corporate pond?

Frank Boehm: On what level? As a performer or …

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes pretty much on the performer level or maybe on the creative level. I mean, would you have any advice for anybody or is it just in the business and start?

Frank Boehm: Yes, I mean people come at the creative events from so many different resources and …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Frank Boehm: … writers, they’ve been actors, they’ve been dancers, it’s hard to say I mean I think …

Mike McAllen: Because you came out from a dancing group.

Frank Boehm: Right. I was a dancer and then I choreographed a lot of corporate work. I mean, I choreographed other things too but I knew the business well from choreographing – actually in Chicago where I lived at that time, I was in a company that did a lot of – a dance company that did a lot of corporate work and so I began to learn the corporate work through that dance company. I started to choreograph some things for them when the choreographer got over you know, overbooked and that’s sort of how I got familiar. My big break was with Merritt’s, the old Merritt St. Louis when it was big and happening and I choreographed a series of five series videos which was a huge – I mean that was my first job in business and it was immense. I mean, we had something like five videos, we must have had three or four, five cast members on each one and it goes weeks and weeks of work and it was a fantastic experience. I worked with Dan Moss, whose still in the business and his creative director, Peter (Moorcroft 00:24:01). People who have been in touch for God, 20 years or more now.

Mike McAllen: That’s great. So …

Frank Boehm: I mean it’s hard to say how to recommend getting into – I don’t know if people actually choose this business, do they? We fall into it somehow.

Mike McAllen: That’s so true. I guess that happened to me.

Frank Boehm: Yes, I bet.

Mike McAllen: That’s true. That’s true.

Frank Boehm: You can’t go to college for this stuff, that’s for sure.

Mike McAllen: No, really can’t, can you? So, what’s on the horizon for you personally and for your company?

Frank Boehm: Well, I’m really excited because I’m starting this freelance creative work and I have gotten some wonderful feedback from some companies I’ve talked to about that so I’m looking forward to getting some projects underway with that and in terms of immediate stuff, we have auto show coming up and we have Hewlett-Packard show coming up and we have a TV spot in – an original TV spot in Boston that we’re going to be working on.

So, kind of the usual things. I do have to say though that I’m sure everyone is feeling the same thing but this year has definitely slowed down.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Frank Boehm: Last year, 2007 was the busiest year we ever had. We had over 45 shows last year. And this year, I could tell right away in January that things were different. We had an Alltel show for example, it was not a big show but it canceled and the producer on that show told me that the entire Events Department at Alltel was fired, was let go.

Mike McAllen: Oh, my God.

Frank Boehm: And he said, “I’ve never seen anything like this in 25 years in the business.” And that was back in February and I’m thinking okay, this is going to be a different year. And you know, you get that feeling sometimes because you know, things are decided very late, they can’t make a decision, they’re going to wait to see what the sales figures look like and they wait and wait and can’t make commitments and then things where there are commitments you know, have canceled.

So, it’s been an interesting year and at the same time, I was just talking with someone about this the other day, the odd thing is that from an income point of view, it hasn’t been that different because we’ve done fewer shows but we’ve done some really, really big shows this year with big cast and you know, or shows that went on for a whole week you know like a huge trade show we did for Volvo at the mining show, mining expo.

Things like that, that were big cast and went on for quite a while so it’s been interesting year and I think the you know, the economy is in such a bad shape right now that people are tentative to I think to make commitments and of course you know, you always have to have to people meet. I mean, no matter what.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Frank Boehm: You have to meet face-to-face, it’s like you don’t have to have entertainment.

Mike McAllen: Yes, that’s what I was going to say is that I’m finding it being the budget are much smaller but they’re doing more stuff. I guess they’re trying to get their sales teams to you know.

Frank Boehm: Yes. But I think too there’s opportunities there and that’s what I’m kind of excited about the creative work because one of the things I think I can bring to this is, okay, so we’re not having any entertainment. I get that. We’re not having a big opener. It doesn’t look right.

However, the meetings still has to have a sensibility of interest and I mean for lack of a better word, showbiz quality to it. And so, how can we make the speaker more interesting? Maybe I bring in a beatboxer and support him, maybe I bring in an actor and do an interaction with him, not just kind of coaching him or her along but doing something to support the messaging that makes it more interesting and frankly, I’ve been thinking a lot about the hallway meetings are conducted.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Frank Boehm: You know, like why don’t I have to start at 8:00 o’clock in the morning? I mean, maybe it would be better – well, this is kind of radical idea but maybe it would be better to let people workout and play golf and do stuff in the morning and then have an evening meeting.

I read an interesting article in New York Times about, it was a tech industry meeting in New York I think it was and it was an evening meeting where the ballroom was divided into almost like little bars you know, like you know here’s the themed bar over here and here’s another themed bar over there and at several of those, and of course each station have a bit of common bars, they all served liquor but each station was themed a little different and of course the topic of discussion in that area was you know, whatever and the entire meeting was greet – you know, the entire meeting had one focal point at the beginning where everyone was just greeted by you know the head of the company or somebody, very short, explained that we have these different stations setup, these were the different topics, go to it.

And people could have a very relaxed interaction at each of these stations. I thought, well that’s brilliant. I mean, why do you always have to sit in rows like school children you know at 8:00 o’clock in the morning? And have this razzle dazzle opening number and then a bunch of boring speeches.

Mike McAllen: I agree.

Frank Boehm: There, you know it’s like a radical rethink of how we do what we do is part of the game at this point.

Mike McAllen: Yes. And weaving a story into the whole thing is always you know, if you can weave a story into everything people will remember it and feel more engaged. They can look back on it and you gave them an experience also. So, that’s …

Frank Boehm: You’re absolutely right. I mean, if you always think of it as you know, this is a story we’re trying to tell. I mean, that gets forgotten a lot too but you’re absolutely right.

Mike McAllen: Well, I want to thank you again and how can people get a hold of you if they wanted to …

Frank Boehm: Well, the best way is to just check out my websites at www.frankboehm.com and I am of course in the office which my e-mail and office number are on the website so I’m easy to get a hold of.

Mike McAllen: Yes, and I’ll put links on our website too…

Frank Boehm: Oh, thank you.

Mike McAllen: … so they can just go from there straight over. And so thank you very much, Frank and I hope to talk to you again to see what else is going on.

Frank Boehm: You’re welcome, Mike. It’s great. Take care.

Mike McAllen: All right. Talk to you later.

Frank Boehm: All right.

Female: We appreciate and thank you for listening to the Meetings Podcast. You can find Mike McAllen at grassshackroad.com, Jon Trask at alliantevents.com, and Tom Hillmer at creativegroupinc.com. The Meetings Podcast theme music comes from the Delgado Brothers which can be found at DelgadoBrothers.com. Special thanks to RipTideGraphics.com for the audio editing of this podcast.