Let’s Chat

I went to the OUAB event “An Evening with Josh Radnor” this week. Josh Radnor is a TV/Film actor famous for playing the role of Ted Mosby on the hit show, How I Met Your Mother. Radnor was inspiring and entertaining. You could tell he felt so comfortable talking to the crowd. It was a very special homecoming for him since he’s originally from Bexley, OH. It was cool to hear someone you watch on TV every week talk about going to the North Market and explaining where things are on High Street.

The event was during the season 9 premiere of HIMYM so as a special treat, he brought a copy of the new episodes with him and played them for us without commercials. I thought maybe we’d watch the live feed with commercials but it was so awesome that he had his own legit copy. It was really cool to watch the show with a large crowd and all laugh together. Also, knowing he was there sitting with his family watching it too, was neat. It is an experience I will never forget.

During OUAB events, they commonly have question and answer sessions with the celebrity at the end of the event. It normally drags on forever and people ask stupid embarrassing questions. The OUAB event I was at last was the “Winning Gold” event with the three Olympians and that was the first time I saw them do Twitter questions. Attendees could tweet their questions to the celeb using a specific hashtag that was displayed on the screen prior to the event. At the “Gold” event, OUAB members read the Twitter questions into a microphone.

Radnor handled the Twitter questions differently. He took out his phone and scrolled through the Twitter feed on his own. He could filter out the questions that were dumb or he didn’t want to answer. The fact he was doing it all himself made it feel more informal and led it to being more humorous. We could see that it was really him using his Twitter. It was an unspoken confirmation that it was truly his account.

It was charming because you could tell he was still new to Twitter and was asking us how to do certain things. He also posed the question to the audience if we thought that Twitter really helps celebrities get the word out about their projects? He said he’s spoken with friends in Hollywood and they felt like it didn’t work too well. The audience consensus was that Twitter does help promote things like movies, events and products but that it can’t be all hype and buzz, the substance and quality of the thing you’re promoting has to be there too.

I think that having the celebrity use their own account for Twitter based conversations during an event is going to be way more common in the future. It makes the event more engaging and interactive. It adds an ounce of realism and relatability towards the celebrity because they use Twitter on their phones just like everyone else.

The hashtag they used for the event was #JRadnorOSU which I thought was kind of long and generic, but it worked. I bet that OUAB will continue to incorporate Twitter in their pre-show and post-show activities. Also, I’ll be curious to see if future events will have the same format of the celebrity reading the tweets themselves or if that was just unique to Radnor. I hope they keep that up because I don’t like the interjections of the OUAB members, I think it detracts from the event.

Overall, I absolutely loved this event and was sad I had to leave early to get to my staff meeting. If you ever get a chance to see Josh Radnor speak, I highly suggest going.

In the meantime, check out the hashtags at the next event you go to and how they’re used.

You can follow @JoshRadnor and @OUAB on Twitter.