Producing Beauty Pageants: Open Call - Paperback

by Anna Stanley (Author)

When I began producing pageants in 1983, I held Informational Meetings to tell prospective contestants about my pageant. If I could personally meet prospective contestants to explain the pageant process, I would have a better chance of getting these girls to attend my motivational deadline-to-register event: a pageant commercial filming, boutique photoshoot, or pageant workshop. Besides, an Open Call session was the best place and opportunity for me to educate prospective contestants about sponsorship support, such as how to pitch to sponsors, collect sponsorship fees, and return to the deadline-to-register motivational event to become official contestants. Meeting prospective contestants also built a foundation of trust. After every Open Call session, I set a deadline to collect the first sponsorship installment (never a deposit, as this is too easy to walk away from). To motivate the deadline date and encourage many Open contestants - usually ending up to be about 40% - I needed to have an enticing motivator, such as a pageant commercial filming, a boutique photoshoot, or a pageant workshop. I truly believed that the deadline - and all that it encompassed - had to be the secret to my huge contestant numbers. It didn't occur to me, at least not until years later, that what I was doing before the deadline was the result of huge contestant entries. Whatever this powerful industry secret is called - Informational Meeting, Contestant Meeting, Contestant Call, Recruitment Meeting, Registration Night, Casting Call, Orientation Meeting, Orientation Tea, Open House, Open Call Workshops, Pageant Informational Meeting, Pageant Meet Up, Trunk Show Open Call, and last, but not least, Open Call - it is incorporated by the #1 youth pageant system in the world, National American Miss. You might be wondering what is so secret about Open Call in the pageant industry, because you may have already heard about it. Open Call is simply the strongest contestant recruitment tool designed, even though we borrowed the terminology from the modeling industry. Open Call is designed to secure the GREATEST PERCENTAGE OF CONTESTANT ENTRIES. Pageant directors who do know about Open Call, yet choose not to employ it, probably don't understand its strength and, therefore, can't perceive the financial impact that it can bestow upon their pageant system's bottom line. Pageant directors who do employ it, like International Junior Miss, USA National Miss, and last, but not least, the most successful of all, National American Miss, often make Open Call appear as inconsequential; after all, it is rare that successful pageant directors want to admit to the secret of their success. They probably fear that their competition (other pageants) will also employ Open Call, segment the contestant pool, muck up their business model, and affect their income. This is unlikely to happen. There are many newbie prospective contestants - more than enough for every pageant system out there. You just need to know where to go, to get the girls to come to you. The non-Open Call pageant producers' attempts to reach out to the same demographics - before they are snagged by Open Call pageants - often prove fruitless. What generally happens is that the non-Open Call pageants prime those girls for Open Call pageants Pageant directors who plainly don't know about Open Call - well, what they don't know can hurt them. I asked Kathy Raese, director of Porcelain Dolls Nationals and Heavenly Angels, if she employed Open Call in her pageant systems. She replied, "What's that?" While I did include Open Call in my business model, from the start, it wouldn't be until years later before I truly understood the Open Call mantra: going to the girls, to get them to come to you. Producing Beauty Pageants: Open Call shows you just this.