Charles Lavoie | Staying Consistently Creative in China

Topics Discussed and Key Points:

● Charles’s history doing business with China and his current role at WPIC

● How Charles defines “creativity”

● Maintaining creativity in-house versus outsourcing creativity to KOLs and KOCs

● How brands should go about looking for KOLs or KOCs in order to maximize ROI

● Teaching creativity

● Differences in creative processes between the West and the East

● How brands can stay creatively consistent in different markets

● How foreign brands can cut through the noise in the Chinese market

Episode Summary:

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Charles Lavoie, who leads and manages WPIC Creative Labs.

Prior to joining WPIC in April 2021, Charles had served as the Marketing Director at BIOTWIN, the Director of Strategy and Business Development at PBB Creative, and China advisor to both Can Life Sports and CareerUp. He is also the co-founder of Beijing-based Infina Vodka and is responsible for the growth of the company from the ground-up to distribution across 10 different cities in China, Hong Kong, and the Northwest of Africa.

Charles’s career so far has seen him developing brands, design thinking strategies, and advertising campaigns for clients such as Acura, Uber, Daimler, Tencent, Tourism Vancouver, World Bank, as well as the Quebec and Canada Governments.

According to Charles, the challenge of the creative professional is to bridge the “gap between invention and commercialization”, which requires innovation, and not necessarily about creating something new but looking instead at the existing brand and their existing resources, and from that fashion an idea that benefits the business by being both profitable and relevant.

Listen in as Charles compares the strengths of in-house creative control to those of outsourcing creative to KOLs and KOCs. He also gives his thoughts on how to “teach” creativity to your team, navigating differences in creative processes between the West and the East, and delivering creativity through a consistent brand framework in different markets.

Key Quotes:

“[Creativity] to me is bringing past or existing concepts or inspirations together to create something new.”

“The gap between invention and commercialization is innovation. [...] We can be creative as much as we can, but the big challenge is to be creative and relevant.”

“China is way stronger in anything that is technical and the West is stronger in everything that is strategic.”