Tennis Shoes. Lights. Fashion Shows and Dance how “iLlumination” is changing the entertainment landscape PART I
What does a Hip Hop Icon and Living Legend Female DJ, Fried Green Tomatoes, Seven Beautiful Women, A Hair Stylist/Hair Artist’s London Love interest’s (aka potential new Beau’s) totaled car all have in common, besides myself… Its another story for another day and will make at least a good 8 pages in my book Chronicles of a Homeless Beauty Queen: Pageant Secretes Reveled. I’m in from another random adventure and as I step up into my oblong closet looking for the finishing touches to my outfit. I can’t help but to think its “Progress Show Day” and the Corporate office has sent persons from Florida to observe our school and our students during their fashion showcase. My girls are so excited. I tend to have the worst luck with stockings/tights but I’m a head of the game this time and have just found an extra pair. Heading out of the closet with a pair of matching pumps to match I bump into a box that I hadn’t seen in a few months. I open the box to find the tennis shoes given to me by Ivan “Flipz” Velez, an international dance choreographer and producer. I’m taken back to the summer of 2012 and I remember reading his email saying “…Welcome to the team Rachael…your about to start an amazing adventure and this will be the best time of your life…” I chuckle to myself and think what an adventure … Flipz you have no idea!
I was so blessed to work with “Flipz” and Miral Kotb the founder of Season Six’s America’s Got Talent dance company iLuminate on the Dallas leg of their Six Flag tour as a personal and production assistant. From finding and hiring seamstresses, to making sure the technical team had their Starbucks, to making flight and hotel reservations; to acting as a temporary in house accountant there were so many lessons learned and they came fast. After this experience I now realize that technology isn’t just a platform it’s a fulcrum and we have yet to tap fully into its potential in and across multiple fused markets. As evident from Diane von Furstenberg and Sergey Brin with GoogleGlasses walking at New York Fashion Week, Digital coats, Circus du Soleil etc… we find that the box that we once held our thoughts on product placement and branding was made of glass and has now been shattered. There are no walls no ceilings. The only limits that exist are bound by our own thoughts.
There is a creative juncture where luxury, beauty, fashion and sport intersect. Technology infuses the landscape and the ultimate merger is formed where consumers are engulfed by the ultimate entertainment experience. As a result Brands are in the very powerful position of actually being entertainment and influencing emotions in an even greater way. Steve Stoute wrote about the“Tanning” of America and the influence Hip Hop (the music industry) had on culture now I think what we are witnessing is another step in our evolution that I like to call the “iLlumination” the transformation of humanity. This is an exciting to be alive – and a very profitable time to be in the Advertising/Marketing industries if you can fuse and define new niche markets; and connect fearless participants.