Backroom Behavior

The Context

A lingerie brand created an immersive sip-and-shop activation built around burlesque performance, designed to bring their brand world to life in physical space and drive both connection and commerce in a single evening format.

The Challenge

How do you design a sonic environment that holds multiple modes at once, seductive enough to set a mood, dynamic enough to carry live performance, and commercially functional enough to keep people browsing and buying? The sound couldn't just be a playlist. It had to be a through-line.

My Role

Sonic creative director responsible for developing the full soundscape concept, curating and sequencing the musical narrative and executing live across the activation.

The Approach

The brief was essentially a brand world problem. The lingerie brand occupied a specific emotional territory: grit and sensuality in tension, not softness, and the sound needed to hold that same duality without tipping too far in either direction.
I mapped the evening as a three part act: an interactive photo booth performance as a duo into two solo gogo acts, an intermission for shopping, keeping the crowd engaged and curious for the final burlesque performances. Each act had its own sonic palette: rock-inflected textures and darker rhythmic undertones in the opening, jazzy and sensual sounds for shopping and a loud, signature close to the evening.

The transitions were as important as the music itself. Moving between burlesque performance, browsing and conversation required pacing decisions that felt invisible, so the room could shift without anyone noticing the hand behind it. Blending rock, alternative R&B and darker electronic textures, the soundscape stayed coherent across very different moments in the evening.

The Outcome

The sonic environment supported both the narrative and commercial flow of the evening, maintaining immersion through performance and sustaining energy through the retail and social portions without breaking the world the brand had built. The activation functioned as a cohesive brand experience rather than a retail event with entertainment added on.

Why This Work Matters

Sound is the most underused tool in experiential design. Most brand activations treat it as background. This project was built on the premise that sonic identity is as intentional as visual identity, and that when it's done right, people feel the brand without being able to name exactly why.