Celebrity Strategy Definition: celebrity strategy has been around for thousands of years. It is the strategy used by anyone wishing to build their visibility to achieve influence and who is hopefully seeking this outcome for reasons of wanting to make a positive difference on the planet.
Celebrity Strategy Definition Variation:
For the purposes of Celebify and the Celebrity Strategy education project, a definition of celebrity strategy is that it is a skill gained by a personal brand strategy expert and entertainment creator who has had actual experience at least a few or more times either helping or observing first hand an actor or “Star in Business” go from being relatively unknown to becoming famous in their industry, and now is assisting you to not just build your visibility in your sector but to celebify you for good so you can give back to your field and community and in the process maybe even make have a positive impact on the world.
Meet Yianni Stamas. Producer, Writer, Director, Actor, Singer, Songwriter, Choreographer and Founder of Celebify and Celebrity Strategy
Yianni Stamas has directed actors in entertainment who, during the course of their career, have won either an Oscar (Nic Cage) or a Golden Globe (Irene Miracle) or were nominated for an Emmy (Levar Burton and Jessica Tuck). These collaborative works include a full length movie that is a combination of Super 8 and video (“The Rave” with Nic and Irene), a theater workshop skit (“Muscle Lady” with Levar) and a 16mm feature film (“Love Curse Broken” with Jessica). These projects were based in either Hollywood or New York City, Manhattan, in the early and late ’80s.
You have likely never heard of the works mentioned, which is because Yianni is not famous. But but he has had well known and highly visible creative collaborators as well as clients for whom he designed and implemented celebrity strategy personal brand entertainment creations.
But for Yianni it isn’t enough to simply want to help people with Celebrity Strategy to build their visibility in their industry, he thinks it is important to do so by giving back and making a difference.
He does this for the “Star in Business” which is someone in any industry who is the face of their company and is keen on entertainment media arts.
And on this page we are going to go from 1970 to the present looking at Yianni’s unique and eclectic pathway to get where he is today using celebrity strategy to help you celebify for good.
The Evolution of Celebrity Strategy
- 1970 – 1980 “Insight is Magic”
- 1980 – 1990 “Celebrity Collaboration”
- 1990 – 2000 “Life is a Reality Show”
- 2000 – 2010 “All Business is in Show Business”
- 2010 – 2020 “Celebrity Give Back”
- 2020 – Present “Be You to Win”
1970 – 1980 “Insight is Magic”
Yianni’s Celebrity Strategy journey started in 1970 when he was an 8 year old Houdini fan performing magic entertainment on the back of a hippie house truck (photo above).
What did Yianni learn from age 8 to 18 by studying the celebrity strategy work of Harry Houdini (Erich Weisz 1874 -1926)?
One thing was that Yianni intuitively understood even at a young age that Houdini had his finger on the pulse of what would intrigue and help his audiences. He had the gift for understanding that “Insight is Magic”.
1980 – 1990 “Celebrity Collaboration”
City of Angels to the Big Apple
celebrity collaboration after celebrity collaboration occurred for Yianni both in Hollywood and Manhattan, NYC in the ’80s.
Helping to facilitate this was Yianni’s first job at age 18, for which he moved from a small California town with a population of around 100 people to the metropolis known as Los Angeles.
Yianni’s employment was with Zoetrope Studios, the physical location of which was a part of a creative community experiment by filmmaker Francis Coppola for around three years.
Yianni worked on the Zoetrope studio lot on Las Palmas in Hollywood throughout the three years as the assistant to the head of education who was the late August Coppola.
August is Francis’ brother and Nicolas Cage’s father.
Yianni is grateful for the opportunity to have worked with August and considers him to have been a mentor who regularly gave him literature reading recommendations and with whom he often discussed the writing process.
After moving to Manhattan in 1988 Yianni started to develop the “Love Curse Broken” project that became a full length 16mm motion picture.
It was a movie in which everyone, including the crew, acted the part of themselves, and therefore led later to the making of a series of episodes for a genre that would emerge called “Reality Show”.
1990 – 2000 “Life is a Reality Show”
In the narrated intro of Yianni’s feature film “Love Curse Broken” that he had just finished making, there was a promise that the storyline of the real life experiment would continue as it was lived. So Yianni Stamas spent much of 1990 trying to figure out how to do this without having to make another feature film.
He figured that maybe if he carried his camcorder around with him in his Hell’s Kitchen New York City neighborhood and filmed his life and creative projects that it could be put together into a weekly half hour long cable show.
And in 1991 that’s exactly what he did, calling the program his “Video Diary NYC” experiment in reality. At this point there was not yet such a thing as a reality show.
The series ran continually, week after week, for approximately ten years. It was sometimes called just “Diary” and other variations on the concept of a video journal in New York City featuring behind the scenes of an artistic community.
“Video Diary NYC” launched more than a year before “The Real World” started broadcasting, which is often thought of as the first official reality show.
2000 – 2010 “All Business is in Show Business”
Starting to plan it in 2000 and then actually launching the company in 2001, Video Film Web was in many ways an outgrowth of the “Video Diary NYC” program in that an artistic community had been created as a result of having done the show.
VFW offered personal brand and actor media services including filming, editing and website creation. Actors who were clients are performers who you would likely recognize from movies, TV and the Broadway stage, and included sitcom stars and a winner of a Tony.
Other clients included “Star in Business” Dramatics NYC as well as prestigious institutions such as Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Film at Lincoln Center, NYC Department of Education and the New York Public Library.
Question: What did Yianni Stamas learn about celebrity strategy from these experiences?
Answer: “All business is in show business.”
2010 – 2020 “Celebrity Give Back”
Yianni decided to recognize those he saw making a difference in their communities who he called PIA (People I Admire). Thus in 2010 he started the “Platinum PIAs Community Awards Show NYC”.
He hoped that by recognizing those who were known in their community or industry or in the arts, it would encourage others to do what they were doing in terms of giving back.
The Platinum Pias was an annual happening with awards ceremonies in eclectic Manhattan, NYC theaters, screening rooms and community media labs. The PIAs ran for ten years until 2019.
The “Method How” Blog Collection
Also, as an educational project, Yianni began to create, one by one, blogs that were on topics having to do with entrepreneurship and the industry of entertainment.
There are now approximately 60 of these blogs in various entrepreneurial and industry of entertainment “Method How” categories.
At this point Yianni was in his 50’s, and got a B.A. in Media from Empire State University as well as an M.A. in Arts Administration from Baruch College.
