He was born in Sarajevo, where he completed his studies in industrial design at the Academy of Fine Arts. The war forced him to leave his hometown and set off into the world, where he built a successful career working for several Fortune 500 companies. Recently, he returned to Zagreb, his first stop after leaving Sarajevo more than 30 years ago. The circle will close on November 21 when Van returns to Sarajevo to speak at the No Limit BH Advertising Festival.
To my first question about why he left Sarajevo, Van says:
“Yes, I studied design at ALU in Sarajevo, which gave me an incredible foundation. The war in Sarajevo was catalyst for me to leave, but beyond that, I felt a deep need to see and understand the world for myself. I wanted to know if the world I’d imagined—the one I’d been so drawn to—was out there. Design became my airplane, allowing me to explore and connect with new people and ideas across borders. I was young, curious, and completely in love with design’s potential to create change.
But for a long time before I was obsessed with western world of Rock ‘n roll, pop art and the unique creativity of Anglo-Saxon culture. I was drawn to how they communicated, how they expressed ideas and made sense of the world.”
Media Marketing: You first moved to Zagreb, and from there to Toronto, where Interbrand hired you as part of their branding agency. After two years, you became the creative director in their New York office. What was that experience like – being a Sarajevan at the be running creative department of one of New York’s biggest agencies?
Van Rais: Yes, that’s right. While I was working in Toronto, Interbrand reached out and created a position for me. A few years later, they sent me to New York to work on the Victoria’s Secret account, and wow—what an experience! The NYC office was electrifying, buzzing with hundreds of people, nonstop projects, pitches, and, of course, the constant rhythm of office parties.
After so much moving, New York finally felt like home. Managing a team there was no joke – New Yorkers are smart, quick, and competitive just for the thrill of it. In the beginning, my team was practically running me. There’s always someone sharper, faster, or bolder, and that challenge was part of what I loved about the city. I was younger, more fearless, and a little crazy, and I soaked it all up.
Over time, I gained a bit of a reputation as a prolific creative with a knack for making clients happy, winning awards, and driving new business. I won’t lie—it felt great to be celebrated internally and to have the privilege of choosing projects I was passionate about. But, I try not to let it get to me. No big deal, right?
As a Sarajevan, I brought a sense of humor and a bit of mischief—a rebellious rock ’n’ roll spirit that says, ‘Don’t take it all too seriously.’ That’s the Veseli Bosanac in me, always staying grounded, always ready with a laugh. Sarajevo taught me the art of improvisation, the power of imagination, and the strength of resilience. But above all, Sarajevo instilled in me a warmth and boldness—a set of values shaped by a multicultural city that’s been through everything and still stands strong. Those universal values translate beautifully, no matter where I go,
Media Marketing: Famous organizations gave you the opportunity to work on campaigns and branding for some of the largest Fortune 500 companies. Who taught whom? Did you teach them, or did they teach you, or was it a mutual exchange of knowledge and experience?
Van Rais: It’s always a mutual exchange. My clients know their businesses better than anyone, and I’m there to bring a fresh perspective that helps them see new possibilities. I believe in their vision to working with them to bring it to life in the most impactful way possible.
I see my role as a true partnership. Sometimes, getting to that final vision isn’t all beautiful and polished. People tend to overcomplicate things, and part of my job is to strip away the noise until we’re left with the pure, powerful essence of idea.
I’m not just focused on aesthetics; my goal is to create a lasting, meaningful connection that resonates at a deeper level. My clients recognize that difference because it’s what sets me apart as a designer. I bring their brands to life in ways that go beyond where most designers stop, uncovering the raw, human truths.
I also bring a unique set of processes that add real value to organizations. Working with major brands has given me a strong point of view, a voice as a true brand expert, and the freedom to experiment. My role is to provide a provoking perspective that ignites conversation and builds trust. When we build that foundation together, the creative solutions fall into place.
“Don’t change. Bring new and exciting things into your life, it will change everything”
Media Marketing: What were the biggest challenges you faced while working in New York?
Van Rais: One of the biggest challenges in New York is meeting clients where they are. It’s like a dance – if they’re not following, the dance stops. My role is to help clients understand and use Behavioral Branding tools, but the challenge is in illustrating the opportunity and helping them see a clear path forward.
Scale adds another layer of complexity. Clients hire me for the tough stuff—the big, messy problems that aren’t simple or straightforward. And the larger the client, the more technically challenging and slower the process becomes. It’s a dance that requires patience and a steady understanding of the root issue.
New York’s competitive atmosphere can be intense, but I’ve learned that my strongest asset is trusting myself and my inner knowing. By staying true to that sense of who I am, I can navigate any challenge. Ultimately, it’s about finding the freedom to trust my instincts, it has always led me to the best outcomes.
“Anything we think, feel and do is survival”
Media Marketing: When did you realize that behavioral branding was your calling? What drew you to it so strongly?
Van Rais: In 2016, I had a wake-up call: I realized that behavioral science could completely reshape how brands connect and succeed. Suddenly, I saw branding through a new lens. Behavioral science offered something traditional branding missed—it put people, their motivations, and real psychological insights at the center. It was like finding the missing piece.
Many executives struggle to understand how to make their brand truly financially impactful. Behavioral Branding bridges that gap by turning business challenges into human-centered solutions that resonate. It’s not just about solving surface-level problems; it’s about going straight to the heart of what drives people and using that knowledge to create brands that last. Traditional branding tends to overlook its most powerful resource: people. Behavioral Branding, by contrast, is evolutionary—it’s customer-centric, financially effective, and based on real science. To me, using science in business is an elegant and precise way to solve problems, and it brings brands closer to their true potential.
“Using science in business is an elegant and economical approach to solving problems”
Media Marketing: Seven years ago, you and a few partners founded the agency Hello-Better. Is it entirely dedicated to behavioral branding? What services do you offer your clients?
Van Rais: More ACCURATE strategy for more reliable results.
Our strategy leverages psychology in our practices, providing a clearer, more accurate understanding of the challenges we solve for our clients.
We’ve established a new standard: Behavioral Branding. Our consultancy is dedicated to strategic practices with a unique value proposition, redefining traditional branding by integrating psychology, technology, and high-end design. This fresh approach optimizes business outcomes, delivering consistent results and measurable ROI at the same cost as conventional creative work. It’s a superior way to approach strategy consulting, using Applied Behavioral Science as a powerful tool to understand audiences on a deeper, functional level. With purpose to help brands to be more helpful to human.
We are solving internal and external problems of business and brands optimization. HUMANS! Our services are designed for leaders who know they should make an investment in branding but often struggle to understand and measure the ROI afterwards.
We work with Fortune 500 companies, AI and marketing leaders to integrate Behavioral Branding for enhanced optimization and monetization. We help them with new visual identity systems design.
We’re passionate about helping ambitious scale-ups position themselves as category leaders, enabling them to charge a premium. And present premium with design quality.
We also support smart startups seeking to make informed branding investments, recognizing that precise brand positioning is a make-or-break factor.
What’s new? A centralized, scientific approach that drives meaningful change within businesses and brands. What’s new is that we are successfully enhancing the effectiveness of brands and businesses.
“Many executives struggle to make their brand financially impactful. Behavioral Branding bridges that gap, transforming business challenges into human-centered solutions that resonate. Applying behavioral science turns branding investments from hopeful to helpful.”
Media Marketing: In your opinion, is behavioral branding the most important of many trends in marketing today? In my opinion, it is!
Van Rais: Absolutely! The economy, business, technology, and marketing trends are constantly evolving. But we can ask: what will not change in the next 10 years?
Human behavior remains the one constant – it doesn’t change.
The future is clear. There’s a lot of compelling evidence that understanding human behavior is one of the most important trends in marketing. The idea is simple: we need to leverage human psychology more effectively to drive business success.
Leaders recognize the value of investing in branding but often struggle to measure its ROI. By applying behavioral science, these branding investments can move from hopeful to genuinely impactful.
Beyond marketing, establishing behavioral science as a central practice at the government level could systematically benefit a country by improving the well-being of its citizens.
Media Marketing: Behavioral branding and AI? Can AI ‘kill’ the humanity that represents one of the fundamental values of behavioral branding?
Van Rais: I love great paradoxes!
All technological advancements are fundamentally behavioral; they have shaped human evolution over time.
AI is an incredible addition to Behavioral Branding. For me, it’s a tool that helps deepen our understanding of human behavior. AI tools will enhance how we apply science to markets.
From a behavioral perspective, AI will meet our innate demand for human connection (through anthropomorphism), fulfilling our basic need for social interaction. People on the fringes of society – those who are older, lonely, or otherwise vulnerable – may find alternative relationships with AI appealing. This can be positive, but it may also create a false sense of control, which can be misleading.
Government regulations on AI are essential. Without them, tech companies could undermine democratic processes, as we’re already beginning to see. Conducting real-time experiments on billions of people with minimal regulation will likely have unintended consequences.
See diagram:
Also, I love Jerry Seinfeld’s joke about wearing helmets
Media Marketing: How do you see the future of branding in light of the increasing application of AI?
Van Rais: AI is going to be fantastic for customers.
The value of Behavioral Branding lies in creating behavior-driven benefits for customers. AI will enhance these benefits by delivering high-quality experiences affordably and enabling real-time measurement. It will help us uncover issues we didn’t even know existed, providing a way to measure the previously immeasurable. This deeper understanding of audiences will guide purpose-driven behaviors.
AI has the potential to redefine advertising and branding. Brands could play a completely different role in our lives, helping us discover the best products and offering options that perfectly meet our needs. It could even create personalized brands that align with our desires, transforming how we interact with brands in the future. This is just a fun idea—but who knows?
In terms of service, AI could greatly improve training and performance. Imagine a hospital where AI provides real-time support, helping staff excel and deliver outstanding patient experiences. Nurses, for example, could receive instant feedback for better patient care. Subtle aspects of performance that are hard to notice and improve could be refined to perfection. Amazing, right?
A major challenge brands face today is measuring performance and core values. Executives often struggle to fully understand brand purpose because it’s difficult to measure or receive prompt feedback. AI offers the potential for deeper insights into brand performance.
With my AI partners, I’m implementing a model to measure brand performance in real-time. We’re uncovering insights that were previously unattainable. Thanks to powerful computing, we’re discovering new metrics with exciting potential—I’ll share more on this soon.
But what is AI’s role here? Research shows that people are often skeptical of brands using AI. Negative portrayals of AI have fueled fear and mistrust—similar to the doubts many have about self-driving cars.
I think the AI movement did a poor job of branding itself. Anyone interested in volunteering to help with the rebranding?
“AI will help us find problems we didn’t know we had.”
Media Marketing: You recently completed a circle in your professional life – you returned to Zagreb. What have you brought with you in terms of knowledge and experience?
Van Rais: I come and go. I’m on the move, and that reflects my relationship with my old country. I come to visit, sometimes staying longer. Part of it is that my mom is getting older, but I also feel increasingly comfortable spending time in my old country while exploring more of Europe.
The U.S. is my home, but Europe feels like home too. I love the idea of working more actively with European clients to build a more diversified portfolio. This is something I’ve always wanted to do, and now I’m making it happen. I’m in an interesting and advantageous position – I have a lot to offer here in Europe, and I want to bring even more to the U.S. as well.
Media Marketing: How much does the experience you gained working with American brands shape your work today? How different are we, and can those experiences be applied here?
Van Rais: Absolutely. I do have some experience in the EU, but many European clients are looking to understand the U.S. market and how it operates, making it difficult to step outside an American mindset. I recognize that there are significant differences.
Globalization has succeeded in profound ways. English is widely spoken, and expecting to find Coca-Cola anywhere on Earth has become normal.
The basic principles of branding and psychology are largely universal, despite geopolitical contexts. However, the political and economic systems in the U.S. and Europe are quite different, and this influences how branding and business are approached. Branding isn’t taken as seriously in Europe, or rather, it doesn’t hold the same competitive position in business as it does in the U.S.—with exceptions for brands that compete heavily in the U.S. market, like German car manufacturers, and other global brands. Branding in Europe tends to be more laid-back, especially when it comes to competition and consumerism.
Media Marketing: What can young people expect from you, and what advice do you give them?
Van Rais: Do what brings you joy and experiment freely. Enjoy every moment, push your limits. But also, make it a point to do one thing that’s hard.
There’s a unique opportunity in tackling hard things simply because they are hard. By “hard,” I mean tasks that aren’t necessarily exciting, trendy, or instantly rewarding, but are deeply important. Investing in yourself is hard. Volunteering is hard. Showing kindness is often hard. Not striving to be “cool” is hard. Being bad at something new is hard.
I recently started playing tennis. I love it, and I’m not good at it—and I don’t care if people judge me. It’s actually fun to be new at something, even if I’m not great. The opposite of doing hard things is staying comfortable.
“Hard and right feel like the same.”
Media Marketing: Soon we will have the pleasure of welcoming you to Sarajevo. You’re coming as an exclusive guest at the No Limit BH Advertising Festival. Did Irena have to do much persuading, or did you accept the invitation immediately? Are you looking forward to coming to Sarajevo?
Van Rais:I can’t wait to hang out! I haven’t been to Sarajevo in so long, and this is the perfect opportunity to visit and hopefully be helpful to others. I feel incredibly privileged to be invited to conferences and to meet new people – it truly means a lot to me. It’s Sarajevo. Thank you!
Media Marketing: What will you talk about at No Limit?
Van Rais: The title of my presentation is “New Will Change Everything.”
Change is difficult. New things are easier and more interesting for us as people. In the end, new will change everything.
Media Marketing: There’s one wish in Sarajevo that I would happily fulfill for you. What would you wish for?
Van Rais: I’m leaving this one to you and your readers – surprise me! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
