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Be creative with Trivia game shows

Be creative with Trivia game shows

“Keeping your trivia night entertaining by coming up with fresh ideas and being creative”

 

Welcome back to the blog! Today we are going to look at the not so simple issue of creativity and how you can turn your trivia event into something unique, fun and diversified. We have spoke before on the blog about the need to ensure that you mix up your formats, styles, questions and events to ensure it does not become stale and to keep the audience interested. Trivia is a cut throat business and with so many rivals out there the minute your ideas and performance begins to drop is the minute the client will look to start booking someone else. Entertainers and trivia hosts need to think outside the box, turn current ideas upside down and above all else constantly keep their head in the game and place them above the competition.

 

Be creative with trivia game shows – The Sell

The first thing to mention before I go into how you can be creative is another small, what am I talking about, another HUGE benefit of being creative is that it makes your whole trivia package easier to sell to two different people –

 

  • The booking client – Sell them variety.  If you can display in your sales pitch to the client the vast ranges of games you offer, the customisation options and how you will be varying up the trivia every week to ensure people come it is going to be way more impressive than strolling in there saying “Well it is going to be 100 questions every week…10 on music, 10 on science etc etc”. If you go in there with passion and enthusiasm and are able to convey clearly how you are going to entertain the audience the chances of you being booked increase.
  • The customers – Give them variety.  Every person who is a player in any of your trivia games is a potential booking client.  They may refer you to their employer, or they themselves are an employer.  This is good for you because they will keep you in mind for their company annual parties.  At the very least, they have a relative that will soon have a wedding, birthday party, anniversary party and so forth.  Adding variety to your event shows your capabilities as a diverse trivia host.
  • Be creative makes them stay longer and come back week after week.  If you are doing weekly trivia at a bar consider that the customers will stay at the venue longer and what better what to appeal than to mix things up. The same routine week in week out may only result in customers being bored and feeling as though if they miss a week they wont miss anything. If you create a sense of unexpected  and “what will happen next week” then it will be more impressive and alluring to your customer base.

 

Be creative with trivia game shows – Mixing up the norm

Let us then start to take a look at how you can be a little more creative –

 

Picture Rounds

Most trivia hosts use a picture round…and I can see why, they are fun, engaging and get everyone involved. Pitched right and it can really test and tease players who will be screaming out “I Know that face….” but just can’t come up with a name. It also appeals to the players who maybe don’t fare so well in the standard questions. But having just 10 celebrities each week may become mundane so don’t be afraid to mix it up. Logos, film posters, dingbat style questions, missing vowels rounds, blurred images, stills from films, pictures of bands….the options are endless here. I run close to 200 events per year and very very rarely will my picture round be just a case of identifying 10 random faces. It all has a theme, a topic or takes the picture round into new areas. That means the players will never known what is coming next week and it keeps them interested and excited.

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Music Rounds

Pretty much the same applies as the above. Do not fall into the trap of having just 10 songs week in week out where the player has to identify the artist and track title. Have different themes each week……use TV intros and film excerpts, TV commercial clips…..anything and everything. Even, what line comes next or who is the lead singer of this band style questions are better and add diversity!

 

Use of Special Rounds

I will end this with my biggest tip of all….special rounds each week. Depending on the nature of the quiz and the time I have (as well as the players and space available) I either always do 1 special round every week as part of the normal quiz or 1 bonus round at the end of the quiz for a jackpot prize of a bottle of wine (supplied by the bar owner only!) or a couple of beer vouchers etc. This can involve all sorts but my biggest success has been in using game show systems –

Buzzer Systems DigiGames

The likes of DigiGames have been providing game show systems that replicate TV shows for over 15 years and to great success.  Easy to play, fun to use and providing your event with that game show feel are just some of the perks but they can also massively help in when you are diversifying the trivia night. If at the end of the night you hold a raffle, and x number of plays then get to play a game of say “Jeopardy” or “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” on stage it will keep the excitement going. Even if a team is having major struggles with the trivia itself, adding in this sort of round will keep their attention until the end as it “may just be their week” where they get to play. Have everyone put in a $1 for a raffle ticket and the winner takes the prize. Have a who wants to be a millionaire style game with a rolling jackpot. $1 per player, say 40 players enter and and the first person doesn’t win the prize rollovers to next week and so on…this means within a month you are looking at $300+ prizes.

 

At the end of the day, and I have mentioned this before, diversity and keeping your trivia show and event mixed up are key tools to success. Without this your competition will take over and you will find yourself without bookings. Keep it entertaining, keep it different and above all else keep it as creative as you can. That is the way to ensure success!

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