I Predict a Riot!

How do you inspire an audience of 15,000 people to the point where they are hanging onto your every word? How do you engage with every person in an audience of that size, on a personal level, that leaves them demanding more? How do you create a truly electric experience – in a field?!

This is what all speakers aspire to do and yet how many of us actually achieve it and have the opportunity to perform to a crowd of such a size?

On Saturday 23 August 2014 I witnessed an expert ‘speaker’ at work, who had an audience of around 15,000 people eating out of his hand. Ricky Wilson, the lead singer of the UK band Kaiser Chiefs was the ‘speaker’ I watched at the small music festival, CarFest, held in a field in Hampshire. There is a great deal that speakers can learn from people like Ricky.

Passion – Ricky Wilson has huge passion for his ‘subject’. I suspect that the band write all their own material and much of it probably comes from personal experience. Each song is like a short speech – a story or lesson that they want to share with their audience. Because it’s personal to them, they have real passion for the subject and that comes across in how they perform each song, or how they deliver the ‘speech’. Speakers must have passion for what they are talking about and one of the best ways to ensure this is by speaking from the heart and from personal experience.

Engagement – how do you engage on a personal level with that many people? All speakers know the importance of eye contact when looking to engage with members of an audience. But how do you manage this with 15,000 people and when it’s dark and you can’t even see their eyes? One way that Ricky manages it is through the cameras that were filming his performance and relaying the images onto the big screens around the music stage. He’s obviously done it before and knows that when he looks right into the camera, if you’re looking at the screen, it really does feel as if he’s looking right at you!

Expertise – Ricky Wilson can dance and leap around a stage, climbing up and down the rigging and jumping in and out of the crowd, while still singing perfectly. I don’t know if he’s been trained to sing, but he knows how to do it professionally, still keeping the tone, pace and vocal variety that we expect from his songs. No stopping to take a breath, just because he’s thrown his microphone in the air and run across the stage to catch it. Ricky even managed to carry on singing while they poured iced water over him, as part of a charity stunt! How many speakers do you know who could do that?!

The atmosphere at CarFest was electric that Saturday evening. The entire crowd of festival goers – some of whom might not have even heard of Kaiser Chiefs but who were there because it was part of the festival – was on its feet, dancing and cheering. We sang along to songs we’d never heard before; we raised our arms and clapped along when we were told to; and we clamoured for more before they were allowed to leave the stage at the end of the night.

If you’re a speaker or you speak to promote your business, what can you learn from the live performances of KaiserChiefs and other bands? If you’re still not sure, go and watch a live music performance and you’ll find out!