Promoters deliver an elite crowd for hot nightclubs

At 10 p.m. on a cold Tuesday in February, “Rhino” the bouncer disappointed three shivering girls in a long line outside Cain, one of New York's hottest nightclubs.

"Sorry ladies," Rhino said. "We're already full."

Not exactly. At Cain, and dozens of elite nightclubs in the city, bouncers are on the lookout for the right kind of people. Partygoers who get in are on the "list"-—not because they made reservations--but because they were recruited by promotion companies like Neo Entertainment of lower Manhattan. The list is a kind of ready-made jet-set party, just waiting for a venue and some alcohol.

Elite clubs are increasingly relying on party promoters like Neo Entertainment to bring in the kind of clientele they want, when they want them. Of course, the final call on entry to Cain and other hot clubs is the bouncer’s or the club manager’s.

Inside Cain, Neo Entertainment's "co-hosts" for the party that night, Noel DeJoia, 35, and Ruben Araneta, 34, were settling down to a table in the corner, setting it off with a curved metal trough of ice, a couple of bottles of Smirnoff vodka ($300 apiece at club prices), four carafes of orange and cranberry juice, and Laura and Leesa Andrew, the auburn-haired twin models from Oregon who are key components of Neo Entertainment's business. On the sunken dance floor of the Africa-themed club--complete with men rhythmically pounding on hand drums-–fashion-conscious list members were making their bid to be the hippest Tuesday night crowd in New York.

There aren’t any famous people on the Neo Entertainment list, said owner and co-founder Ken Tanaka, but he tracks the celebrities who show up at the parties his company promotes. Among them are Nicki and Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Luke Perry, Ice T, members of the Manchester United Soccer Team and the Rolling Stones.

With little more than a list of handpicked names, a few e-mail accounts and some models, Tanaka, 28, and his partners help deliver crowds like this one on a nightly basis. It's a service many club owners will pay dearly for: Promoters these days often take the club's cover charge at the door as well as 20 percent of gross sales at the bar, or about $50,000 on a good night, according to Tanaka.

"The list promoters are crucial to a club now," said Richard Unger, a 50-year-old nightclub consultant based in Sarasota, Fla., who has worked around elite clubs since he was a teenager. "It's a whole different world."

With the exception of one or two clubs, like the famous Bungalow 8, which has a capacity of only 80 people and a celebrity-studded Gold Card list of more than 500, all of the top clubs in New York use promoters, Tanaka said.

Lists fill a marketing gap left by the decline of radio advertising, due to the popularity of iPods for music listening, and the ineffectiveness of flyers and other forms of advertising, Unger said. The elite club industry also is becoming increasingly competitive for the same small group of on-list hipsters.

And while exclusivity has always been part of the scene, club spending on outside promoters has really taken off in the past few years, Unger said.

"It's not like the old days of Studio 54," he said. "It's very tough for clubs to reach people on their own now." In the old days, a bunch of flyers, word of mouth and a hot reputation was enough.

Tanaka, a stocky, muscular film school graduate from Greensboro, N.C., started to build his list about four years ago when Araneta, who had been working for another promotion company, approached him with the idea. DeJoia joined later.

The list now includes 10,000 names and e-mail addresses. But it's not the number that counts. What matters, Tanaka said, is that almost every person is a handpicked New York partygoer, chosen for one of a variety of qualities: money, style, looks or personality.

"We've got it pretty together now," Tanaka said in his 1,600-square-foot bachelor pad that doubles as his office. He was leashing his Shiba Inu, an exotic Japanese dog, for its first walk of the night at a quarter to midnight. "We can ‘make’ a club," he said.

The list also is paying off in other ways. Recently, NBC contacted Tanaka about a casting call for a new reality television show.

And as for getting the right people to sign this list: That's where the models come in.

Club promoters will often hire striking female models, like the Andrew twins, who have modeled in runway shows, done a skit on “The Late Show with David Letterman” and ads for Johnson & Johnson and cosmetics maker Max Factor, to go to clubs with clipboards and sign up people. Rich, stylish men will usually oblige.

"Obviously we trust these girls," Tanaka said. "I mean they're hot. They know who they want to hang out with."

 

Note from CoolBars.com management:  

I would like to personally thank  Benjamin Harvey for allowing us to reprint this fascinating article.  Until next time, good luck and I wish you all the success in the world!

Mike Sullivan
www.CoolBars.com