Kitesoul Magazine #17 English Edition

When kiteboarding starts selling
perfumes, well, that's it!
In this modern and iper-communicative era, increasingly devoted to marketing it is
very simple to understand when a sport becomes really popular and successful. That
is what happens when a sport activity and the world of values represented by it transcends
the boundaries of technical publicity and invades the world of mainstream
advertising. Therefore, no more adverts of just equipment, components and apparel
which publicize any particular trade brand and communicate with their target of enthusiasts
through shared stylistic languages and codes. Quite the contrary, you take
the sport in question and perhaps an athlete or a character representing its top in
terms of popularity, style and personality and make him the perfect testimonial to
advertise and sell any product on the market: soaps, cars, holidays, drinks, you name
it. This is exactly what is currently happening to kiteboarding: telecommunications
companies, pharmaceutical brands and automobile businesses have all understood
how cool this sport is, because it means fun, social relations, nature, bravery and
well-being. And they begin to use it as they best see it fit. The latest mainstream
advertising campaign that fully drew from the world of kiteboarding is the one by
the prestigious fashion house Armani. The occasion was the launch of the famous
perfume Acqua di Giò for which they produced a beautiful video, refined and alluring
in total Armani style, starring the British rider Tom Court. Stylish black and white
images shot in South Africa, show the North international team athlete performing
spectacular manoeuvres and enjoying the adrenaline and excitement of riding and
capture his wild and seductive soul. At 25 years old, Tom Court is not only one of the
best athletes out there, but he is upsettingly handsome and he also radiates extreme
charm, as his You Tube Channel proves https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa4U-
3I1RkE1bVHKQXz1azDw. The new video advert is the first one of a series of episodes
entitled The Scent of Life with which Armani aims at representing through various
characters the scent of life. Kitesoul reached Tom in between one of his journeys and
asked him about this experience which somehow is going to change the world of kiteboarding
in terms of mainstream communication. Here is what he told us: "Firstly
I was asked by Xtreme Video to go to Paris and consult at a Youtube Lab project for
some brands. To see where and how they could naturally include extreme sports into
their brands. As it turned out one of these brands was Armani. After discussing ideas,
they decided that Kitesurfing was a good fit for them and something that we could
work on. I pitched my schedule in South Africa and then we made a plan to shoot in
Cape Town this January. The filming itself was about three days, working with Red
Cameras, I chose the team of Jason Hearn, Bas Koole and Noe Font to work with and
we pushed to get it completed as quickly as possible. Working closely with the Armani
art directors from Paris. It’s hard to get anything finished that quickly, however