Vice Media’s Rafael Lavor: Shaping Media Strategy for Tomorrow’s Audience

Meet Rafael Lavor,  Head of Strategy MEA  at Vice Media, whose illustrious career spans over 18 years of shaping the creative landscape. With a diverse background that includes leadership roles in local innovation consultancies and global creative agencies, he has orchestrated groundbreaking campaigns for iconic brands such as Peugeot, Mastercard, and Amazon. Renowned for his strategic prowess, his work has been celebrated with numerous accolades, including awards at esteemed ceremonies. 

Join us as Rafael shares his wealth of experience and insights into navigating cultural complexities, harnessing AI in gaming, and pioneering impactful brand activism in the ever-evolving media realm.

Congratulations on your appointment as the Head of Strategy MEA at Vice Media. Having worked in creative strategy, digital communications, brand management and more for over 18 years, could you please share your career journey and any interesting experiences you encountered?

Thank you! I’m really excited to join the VICE team. One thing that I emphasized throughout my interviews for this job was my love for working with unconventional individuals. I believe that interesting experiences often arise from embracing the unusual, leveraging the unexpected, and capturing unique perspectives. Around 17 years ago, I used to manage research for an innovation consultancy. This involved moderating focus groups, conducting interviews at various locations like parties, subway stations, and malls, and even stopping people on sidewalks to inquire about behaviours and brand perceptions, among other things.

Once, during ethnographic explorations around neighbourhoods in São Paulo for a gas company, my colleague and I approached a woman to discuss her preferences regarding household services. While we were near her home, she asked us to wait outside. Suddenly, her husband emerged—with a gun on his belt. Yes, a gun. Despite being terrified, we managed to explain who we were and what we were doing, partially diffusing the tension. Despite his initial suspicions, we ended up engaging in a lengthy conversation about his experiences as an unemployed security guard, local politics, rising prices, housing issues, and, yes, gas services. It was an incredibly strange, risky, and unexpected encounter, but nonetheless valuable. This experience taught me a great deal about genuine dialogue, sensitivity, openness, personal biases, and the unpredictable nature of life. 

As a strategist and researcher who has worked across different markets and different agencies and consultancies in automobile, FMCG sectors, how different is the MEA region from Brazil? How did you cope with the transition?

Outsiders tend to perceive Brazil as a monolithic country, but it is certainly not. It is replete with internal regional nuances, cultural specificities, ethnic diversity, historical issues, and severe inequality problems. Similar to the Middle East, Brazil presents a spectrum of societal complexities. Navigating these continental challenges requires keeping biases in check, conducting thorough research, and remaining open to listening. Listening becomes a superpower to cope with such a transition. I have conversed with numerous individuals and delved into various books about the region, encompassing its history, diversity, dialects, landscapes, economies, religions, cities, conflicts, cultures, and more. Yet, I still acknowledge that I know very little. I will always remain a foreigner, continuously learning. As long as I retain this perspective, I will be fine.

In the MEA region, there are bound to be cultural nuances that matter. How do you accommodate them in your creative campaigns? How are audiences responding to them?

Cultural nuances, at a certain point within the creative process, culminating in execution issues: do we ultimately have the capacity to incorporate all cultural nuances into everything we planned, or do we need to compromise somewhere? It’s a conundrum we all face. We either promote something extremely resonant to a specific audience on a smaller scale or go big and risk diluting the message. The best scenario is trying to find a universal human truth hidden within local habits: the need for love, the search for meaning or security, the desperation of being lost and alone, or the craving for external validation. Desires, wishes, anxieties, fears—regardless of one’s ethnicity, religion, or cultural background, we all seek the same things as humans. Culture is built upon human needs and emotions. Whenever we can unearth and refine those raw inner emotional triggers, chances are the audience will have a resounding response.

While conceptualizing a brand campaign, how can you ensure that the idea resonates with the audiences the way it should?

Do your homework: Conduct thorough research to uncover something deeply relatable to the audience—a truthful insight, an interesting fact, a behavioural paradox, or a gripping tension—anything that can resonate amidst the noise of timelines.

Frame it beautifully: Distill the most poignant insight or truth about the audience into a single keyword or short expression that everyone involved in the process memorises. This becomes an internal dogma, a guiding meme, repeated until it’s recited back to you.

Recruit internal allies: Ensure that the team involved has relevant previous experience and a cultural background suited for the challenge. Team members may share important similarities with the audience, such as age group, mentality, overall perspective, stage of life, expertise in the category, or other relevant factors. You need a collectively empathetic team.

Finally, trust the process: Have faith in your creative partners and help them take ownership of the audience’s perspective by crafting the details of ideas and executions through people’s lenses along the way.

As a result of emerging technologies such as cloud computing and IoT, the media industry has been impacted significantly. Please provide your insight into how to implement these technologies to stay on top of trends while not sacrificing people’s touch?

Honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t see the omnipresence of connected screens and touchpoints as a good thing.  It’s like more connected devices mean more screens, more interruptions, just more of everything. But here’s the thing: the more options we offer, the less value they seem to hold for people. It’s basic supply and demand.  And our attention span – and our patience – keeps on diminishing. We’re drowning in a sea of uninspired content, diluting the impact of advertising spaces. The way I see it, the answer is to make advertising premium. We’ve got to make it worth people’s time, something they actually want to watch. With technologies like IoT, Cloud Computing, and Machine Learning, we can streamline processes, sure, but from the consumer’s side, it might feel like an invasion of privacy or just too much information. As we navigate this digital landscape, let us prioritize the needs of our audience. Let’s put people first and craft premium content spaces that resonate deeply with them.

What are some of the most innovative or creative campaigns you have overseen? How did they differ from similar campaigns and what did you learn from them?

Let me tell you about one campaign that I absolutely adore. Activision Blizzard teamed up with Crispin Porter and Boguski to launch Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 in Brazil. The game, with its flawless revamped gameplay mechanics, not only brought back the classic Tony Hawk experience but also revived beloved soundtracks from previous editions.

What made this launch truly special was its homage to the Brazilian audience. Among the iconic tracks, there was a special nod to “Charlie Brown Jr.,” a band that made history in the 90s and 00s scene. It was led by the charismatic singer and skater, Chorão.In a stroke of brilliance, the team decided to make this homage even bigger. They remastered not just the game, but also the band’s hit track’s music video. Through family contacts, they secured never-before-seen footage of Chorão and the band, giving fans a glimpse into their history.

The result? A brand new music video launched with zero media effort that became an overnight sensation. More than a decade after the band’s dissolution, fans from that generation felt deeply honored by the game’s tribute. This beautiful campaign tapped into nostalgia in a distilled, truthful, and well-crafted manner. It serves as a reminder that even in today’s digital age, connecting with the most basic human emotions remains the most effective strategy for capturing hearts and minds.

With a new year ahead, what do you think will shake up the entire creative and media sector in 2024? What should we be prepared for?

The blockchain has undoubtedly left its mark, but the NFT trend proved to be a fluke, and dedicated Metaverse spaces are yet to make a comeback. Surprisingly, Space Computing remains a distant concept. In the current landscape, my bets lie on Gaming powered by Artificial Intelligence and Impactful Brand Activism.

AI is revolutionizing the creative industry, offering both challenges and opportunities. Embracing this transformation, we must harness AI’s potential to elevate creativity to unprecedented heights. Consider the possibilities of Gaming Platforms as canvases for exploring AI’s capabilities. With AI tools, we can craft immersive content with minimal resources, leading to unimaginable outcomes. Moreover, brands and companies must take decisive action. The world faces crises—from environmental degradation to geopolitical tensions—and it’s time for businesses to step up. With their influence, corporations can drive positive change, shaping regional and global policies for a sustainable future. Ultimately, it’s everyone’s responsibility to contribute to creating a livable world.