From Banesco to Life Cinemas: A Marketing Career Across Three Countries

Daniel Vergara has spent 15 years leading marketing and communications teams across Latin America, moving from banking in Venezuela to cinema chains in Argentina and Uruguay. He currently runs marketing at LIFE Cinemas, where he has worked since 2019, and in 2025 he also joined the company's film distribution arm, LIFE Films.

Vergara's background combines formal training — a business administration degree, a management master's, and studies in marketing, advertising and digital marketing at Venezuelan institutions including IESA and UCV — with a self-described love of unexpected ideas. In 2020 he also founded Requeso, a pizzeria, extending his brand work beyond the screen industry.

His core argument is that people do not need more messages; they need better reasons to pay attention. A relevant brand, in his view, has something authentic to say and delivers it memorably, because every brand is competing for just a few seconds of audience attention.

At LIFE Cinemas, this philosophy produced a singular positioning: after audience research, the chain repositioned itself as 'the cinema for popcorn lovers' — summed up in an internal 'first commandment' that roughly translates to 'love popcorn above all things' and, operationally, 'within the strategy everything, outside the strategy nothing.'

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How 'El Cine de los Amantes del Pop' Became Life's Strategy

The Career Arc: Banking, Cinex and a Pizzeria

Vergara's path shows how the interview subject has moved between categories with different audiences. He began at Banesco, a Venezuelan bank, then moved to the Cinex cinema chain, later Atlas Cines in Buenos Aires, and finally LIFE in Uruguay — with Requeso, a pizza venture founded in 2020, as a side project. The thread is consistent: brand building and customer experience rather than a single industry.

'The Cinema of Popcorn Lovers' as a Positioning Bet

LIFE's research-driven decision to own the popcorn ritual is a practical example of the focus Vergara preaches. The phrase 'El cine de los amantes del pop' gives the company a simple, testable promise — and the 'within the strategy everything, outside the strategy nothing' rule is designed to stop the brand drifting into generic cinema advertising. Whether the bet pays off will depend on execution: cinema attendance is driven by film releases, pricing and experience, not messaging alone.

Creativity, Data and the Team

The interview presents a consistent method: use data to understand the customer, use creativity to turn that understanding into an experience, and discard the first idea because it is usually the most obvious. Vergara also credits his team for pushing campaigns further, which is a reminder that the strategy depends on organizational alignment as much as on the idea itself. This is self-reported perspective rather than independent evidence, so it reads as a management philosophy, not a proven formula.

Three Brand-Building Practices From Vergara's Playbook

For marketing and brand professionals, Vergara's account offers three practices worth testing:

  • Define one audience-specific promise, as LIFE did with 'the cinema for popcorn lovers,' and apply a strict filter: within the strategy everything, outside the strategy nothing.
  • Discard the first idea in every briefing — Vergara calls it the most basic and obvious one — and push for a second or third version before presenting.
  • Treat data as the starting point, not the finish line: LIFE used audience studies to find the popcorn angle, then relied on creative execution to make it memorable.