Firework, the world’s leading shoppable video e-commerce and livestream-shopping platform for the open web, announced that Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute and Chairman of DataLucent, joined their Advisory Board. Pedraza will help to spearhead Firework’s expansion into the global premium, luxury goods and services industry. Pedraza brings 18 years of luxury expertise, serving over 1,100 luxury and premium brands globally across dozens of categories, via consulting, research, education and, most recently, personal data technology innovation. Pedraza is a pioneer in using neuroscience principles to inspire and educate front-line teams to build customer relationships that deliver extraordinary experiences for both associates and customers while increasing sales. Prior to founding the Luxury Institute, Pedraza served in executive roles at major consumer brands.
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The fit between Pedraza and Firework emanates from the fact that both aim to empower consumer goods and services brand teams and their customers to engage in emotionally intelligent, extraordinary relationship-building experiences. Firework enables brand teams to connect open-web audience ownership and e-community building into social platforms. The Silicon Valley innovator works with global luxury labels and their corporate, store and online brand ambassadors to extend into a new level of personal relationship-building powered by interactive livestream and shoppable video commerce. For example, on August 27, 2021, Davidoff Cigars used Firework to stream live from the Taj Mahal Palace in India to celebrate an hour-long connection embracing passion and spirit with their engaged aficionados. More than 80,000 celebrants joined in the interactive livestream. Firework and Pedraza are empowering brands such that localized, personalized, livestreamed versions of premium and luxury brand-to-customer experiences become the preeminent communication medium.
For Pedraza, Firework is a dream-come-true technology and partnership. “As the world’s first end-to-end, fully connected, human-powered tool, Firework is bringing livestream and shoppable video to life for large and small businesses. There is no other innovator engaged in the livestream sector that comes close to delivering Firework’s blended capabilities of livestream, shoppable video, on-site web stories, content creation, editing, data, and distribution while creating an emotional connection between a brand and its customers. Its powerful tools enable brands to connect to luxury-centric publications, retailers, apps, mobile device OEMs, and media buying agencies. Firework’s network effect is creating the most revolutionary base operating system for livestreaming ever conceived”.
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This livestream shopping trend is moving quickly across the world. From its innovative roots in China, it is sweeping beyond India, throughout western Europe, and across the United States. The Firework team and Pedraza predict that 2022 will bring about a revolutionary shift in how we think about the relationship between luxury brands and affluent consumers.
“I am thrilled to join with founders Vincent Yang and Jerry Luk on this ethical technological journey. These two emotionally intelligent innovators are empowering human expression via livestreaming on a decentralized scale never imagined. I am also looking forward to joining my luminary Advisory Board peers, including best-selling author of Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data, Rishad Tobaccowala, as we walk this path of using digital tools to empower the transformation and elevation of the human connection to brands,” said Pedraza.
“We are very excited to have Milton join the Firework advisory board. Milton brings a depth of knowledge of the luxury and premium consumer mindset across his years of experience that cannot be duplicated,” Firework CEO Vincent Yang said.
