Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland
I'm an experienced and endlessly curious marketing leader, AI & Automation builder, problem solver and (digital) marketing strategist with a background in martech, automations, performance marketing and originally programmatic advertising. I'm currently the CMO at Barona. I sit in Barona's leadership group & AI steering, and lead our Head-ofs and a total team of +20 marketing and comms professionals at our Group MarComs unit covering all of our brands. I look after our marketing strategy and its implementation with a data-led mindset, and make sure we align with our company strategy. With our team, we help keep our brand vibrant, and provide a seamless customer experience to our B2B & B2C Customers with marketing and communication that we can be proud of. My background is in the media agency world, so I have a good understanding of both ends of the spectrum, especially when it comes to building ad ops and digital excellence. Since 2021, I've built additional skills and interests in incorporating AI and automation in RevOps and Marketing. I'm always looking for new and innovative ways to become a better marketer and leader, inspire the team to deliver better value, and I'm always looking to solve problems and recognize new value creation opportunities in everything I do. My thinking is simple - I believe successful building blocks of marketing strategy for brands can ultimately be found only when you're able to set up a data-led culture to collect high quality data to leverage AI. I believe this, combined with leadership understanding the power of branding as well as unit economics, customer insights and high quality content (in b2b Demand Gen & Thought Leadership -based content specifically) to be the only truly working combination that drives long-term growth in marketing and revenue today. The more the marketing ops need to scale (with agents & people), the more lean processes & workflows become essential components to this, and the more pivotal well functioning cooperation with your stakeholders in C-level, sales, CX, UX and product units becomes. If you made it this far in this wall of text and you think our thinking is aligned - I'd be happy to connect, chat and exchange ideas or discuss potential board roles.
As CMO, I'm responsible for our Group Marketing and Communications function (of a total of +20 inhouse people + partners) at Barona and report to our COO (previously our CEO). I directly manage our four Heads (Brand, Comms, B2B, B2C) of Marketing leadership who each lead their own teams of managers and specialists and are each performance responsible for their own sections of our marketing and communications operations. My key stakeholders are our C-suite and BA-leadership as well as our Sales leadership from our business areas. My main responsibilities are: - Aligning and driving marcom strategy with our business strategy, in cooperation with our leadership, to make sure our direction and focus is aligned. - Membership of the Barona Executive Management Team - Handling the budgetary and financial framework for our Group Marcoms function. - Leading our MarComs Steering group, and support our Head Ofs in each of their sectors. - Team wellbeing, goals setting, yearly action plans, marketing development. - AI steering membership (and AI & Automation development whenever time allows. Specifically Claude Code & Github based Marketing Brain/OS system development since 03/26.)
I was responsible for our Group Marketing and Communications function (of a total of +20 inhouse people + partners) at Barona and reported to our CEO. I directly managed our four Heads (Brand, Comms, B2B, B2C) of Marketing leadership who each lead their own teams of managers and specialists and are each performance responsible for their own sections of our marketing and communications operations. My key stakeholders were our CEO and company leadership, and Sales leadership along with the rest of our B2X, B2B & B2C Customer Experience Steering forum representatives from our business areas and all OneBarona companies and brands. My main responsibilities were - Aligning and driving marcom strategy with our business strategy, in cooperation with our B2B, B2C and B2X Customer Experience Steering Groups, to make sure our direction and focus is aligned. - Handling the budgetary and financial framework for our Group Marcoms function. - Leading our MarComs Steering group, and support our Head Ofs in each of their sectors. - Team wellbeing, goals setting, yearly action plans, marketing development. - AI & Automation development
In this position I was responsible for marketing strategy on the Barona Group level. In practice, this means I Interfaced heavily with our B2C & B2B Customer Experience units and core teams (along with the rest of our shared functions of Technology, Process and Service Offering units), consulted our business unit leaders within the context of marketing and helped build our operative cooperation models between business, sales and marketing - and make sure that our marketing strategy (B2X/B2B/B2C), marketing operations and execution lines up with our strategic goals and our company level strategy. I did this by collaborating closely with the rest of our marketing leadership of Head Ofs, and being the main person responsible for our continuous marketing development (utilizing a data-led approach), yearly plans and setting operative goals as well as handling our budget and financial framework for the entire Barona Group of companies regarding the MarComs function. I also additionally continued to lead our Marketing Automation & Web Analytics team, and was also responsible for our MarTech stack, setup and efficiency.
I lead all of the Performance Marketing operations at OMD Finland. I was in charge of developing the OMD way-of-working of performance marketing, and helped our client teams implement these processes and best practices for our key clients to create value and ensure optimal performance. I was also acting in a Head of Digital capacity for one of our key clients in a multi-agency setup, managing a team of specialists (SEM, Social, Programmatic, SEO) and helped optimize the client's digital marketing operations. Additionally, I continued as OMD's Programmatic Team Lead, consulting on OMD's most demanding programmatic solutions and integrations, while continuing to develop a culture of "programmatic excellence" for the programmatic team of specialists at OMD Finland.
In this position I was in charge of developing and implementing performance marketing processes, tech and best practices to create value for our key clients. I also resumed my duties as the Programmatic Team Lead.
As the team lead for programmatic operations at OMD, I was in charge of resourcing the team to different projects, developing the overall level of the programmatic team at OMD and improving working processes. Additionally, I consulted and ran programmatic operations for a select few big clients and ensured profitability within programmatic operations internally. On the Omnicom-level I was also in charge of all of our publisher PMP deals and I was the main liaison between our publisher partners and DSP partners, and lead the joint projects we developed together, particularly with MediaMath who we used as our main DSP at the time.
Programmatic specialist in charge of developing programmatic operations for a select few big clients. My tasks included: - Developing and understanding programmatic and display solutions as part of (digital) marketing strategy and ops to better serve my clients' digital marketing operations - Programmatic campaign planning, optimizing and overseeing programmatic campaigns for my clients - Programmatic and data driven campaign setup (desktop, mobile, video), ad trafficking, monitoring and operating different DSPs - Finding insights through analytics and data to offer the best campaign ensembles spanning multiple different services and technologies to achieve the most cost effective results for the client - Customer meetings and consultation on my field of specialty - Mentoring trainees, sparring with junior colleagues Programmatic purchasing platforms, ad-serving platforms and other tools in my daily use: - DCM, MediaMath, Adform, DBM, Sizmek, Google Analytics, Bannerflow, etc.
Producer (/Junior Specialist) in charge of programmatic purchasing for several customer teams. My tasks included: - Programmatic and data driven campaign setup (desktop, mobile, video), ad trafficking, monitoring, optimization and generally operating the DSPs as well as reporting and invoicing - Direct display and video campaign (CPC, CPM) booking, monitoring and reporting - Analyzing campaign results, finding insights and making future suggestions based on them - Customer meetings and consultation on my field of specialty - Mentoring trainees and teaching the basics of programmatic Programmatic purchasing platforms and adserving platforms in my daily use: - Adform, Mediamath, DCM, DBM, Sizmek, Bannerflow Among my clients were known brands such as Nissan, Pepsi, ST1, GSK, LähiTapiola, Verman, YLE, PostNord and many more.
Learned about the different facets and disciplines of digital marketing such as SEO and SEM, programmatic purchasing, social media marketing and content creation, as well as marketing automation and analytics. Most of the trainee time I spent focusing fully in data driven programmatic purchasing.
For altogether eleven summers during summers holidays of my studies (From June to August during the years of 2004 - 2015, when I was 14 to 25 years old) I worked for the family business as a chimney sweeper. Work assignments included clearing ash and soot from chimneys, maintaining and cleaning heating systems, furnaces, industrial space heaters and ventilation systems as well as invoicing and maintaining the customer register. Working as a chimney sweeper taught me the importance of working with and getting along with different kinds of people and working efficiently and independently. I feel I was incredibly lucky to get a chance to work blue-collar for a large chunk of my youth to balance the time with my studies as it taught me the values of customer service and the mindset and expectation of hard work (and that hard work pays off) from an early age.