The Art of Turning Strategy Into Success.

We Are Atlas

Or just Atlas, if we’re being less formal, is a marketing agency. In other words, we help companies succeed and stand out from their competitors through marketing.

We’re not your traditional ad shop. We operate somewhere between strategy consultants and creative agencies, because business strategy is at the heart of what we do. We define a company’s place in the market and turn plans into action in ways that are guaranteed not to go unnoticed.

We bring together business strategy, market positioning, brand, communications, creative thinking and commercialization.

There are hundreds of companies in Finland calling themselves advertising and marketing agencies. ~~They all think they’re the best. And that they can do everything.~~

When you’re looking for a partner among agencies, we suggest considering three things:

Have the people doing the actual work – especially the creatives and strategists – created distinctive, effective work that has delivered serious results before? If they haven’t, chances are they won’t suddenly start now.
Do they understand the actual business challenge or problem you need to solve?
Are they nice people to work with?

You guessed it. We at Atlas are quite happy to stand up straight and claim that you can check all three boxes with us.
There’s plenty of evidence for numbers one and two. You’ll discover number three when we get to work.

Vesa Tujunen, Founding Partner / Creative

Over the past 25 years, Vesa has worked as a creative, creative director, agency leader and strategist, with a client portfolio ranging from Finland’s largest corporations to agile start-ups. He has created and led marketing at TBWA, DDB, Make it Simple, Dynamo & Son and SEK, along with leading Nordic creative teams for brands including McDonald’s and Fortum. He has served as CEO at Dynamo and Make it Simple. Vesa has created and executed numerous campaigns that broke new ground and pushed the boundaries of advertising and communications. His work has won more than a 100 Finnish and international advertising awards, including a Cannes Lion and the only Epica Grand Prix ever won by Finland. Vesa has enjoyed some success as a director. After a campaign starring The Dudesons won silver and a stunt featuring comedian Krisse Salminen took the Grand Prix, Vesa decided to stick to creative work – even though his promising directing career would almost certainly have eventually taken him to Hollywood.

Vesa has always believed in the power of long-term concepts and simple messages, although he strongly denies being simple himself. There are very few ways to cut through all the noise and actually make an impact without a message that is clear, understandable and repeating consistently. During his career, Vesa has played a significant role in accounts including Oikotie, S-market, Coop, Sale, Prisma, McDonald’s, Apetit, Atria, Finnair, Nokia, Mars, Hartwall, Olvi, Finnish Design Shop, Fortum, Neste, Telia and Vellamo.

Vesa started his advertising career at SMOY, an agency specialising in direct marketing. Its recruitment process taught him what is perhaps the most fundamental rule of marketing: you have to stand out. SMOY didn’t require previous experience from copywriter applicants – only a university degree. So it was obvious they were going to receive a mountain of applications. Vesa had an A3-sized photograph taken of himself wearing nothing but a rather unforgiving pair of swimming briefs. He laminated it and added the headline: “Would you hire this man as a swimsuit model?” On the reverse, the copy continued: “Neither would anyone else. But he will become Finland’s best copywriter.” Apparently, the application won by a landslide.

Vesa divides his time between Helsinki and Barcelona and spends long stretches standing in front of a stove. Too long, according to some.

+358 40 084 7877 vesa.tujunen@weareatlas.fi

Jaakko Kastari, Founding Partner / Creative

Jaakko is a Finnish-American, Savonian-born creative co-founder with armfuls of awards and a skill set that stretches from advertising and design to photography. His versatility is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that after creating world-class advertising for McDonald’s Finland as an Art Director, he later found himself photographing a McDonald’s campaign by the legendary Wieden+Kennedy for the US market.

Jaakko is that rare breed of visual creative and Art Director who actually understands business. In other words, he doesn’t just create beautiful visual worlds and demand that the logo be made smaller. He takes the time to understand what the client actually needs. Brands that have benefited from his uncompromising craft and modern eye include Oikotie, S Group brands Coop, Sale, S-market and Prisma, HK, Apetit, Friends & Brgrs, OnePlus, Tori, Telia, Tikkurila, Vellamo, Koskenkorva Vodka and Ingman – plus US brands including Livo, Vault, Miami Walkies and Devon Windsor Swim.

Jaakko first rose to nationwide fame at the beginning of the millennium when, as a fresh-faced young creative at the advertising agency BoB, he appeared on the Finnish version of The Apprentice. As far as we know, he can now walk down the street undisturbed. He spent eight years living in Miami and running his own advertising business, and still has a second home there. In Florida, he absorbed not only the dynamic American entrepreneurial spirit but also became deeply involved in the start-up world and the particular challenges of marketing young companies. He also learned a great deal about what kind of windows your house needs in case of a hurricane. His agency background in Finland includes BoB Helsinki, DDB and Make it Simple. His interests include wakeboarding, taking coffee far too seriously, excessively long walks and Savonian sarcasm.

+358 44 377 4077 jaakko.kastari@weareatlas.fi

Antti Leskinen, Strategic Operating Partner

Antti Leskinen is a Strategic Thinker with capital letters. A business strategist whose particular strength is seeing where a company could go – and understanding what might happen when it gets there. Antti has advised countless SMEs, helped create an electric bicycle company, transformed an ordinary advertising agency into a leading communications consultancy for the built environment, owned a digital design agency in Lithuania, served on the boards of numerous companies and mentored young entrepreneurs. His CV also includes a stint as tour manager for The Rasmus and production manager for The Dudesons. And, at the beginning of the millennium, judging the Miss Helsinki competition. There was apparently a scandal that year, although Antti maintains it had absolutely nothing to do with him.

There is one common denominator in everything Antti has done: curiosity. A curious mind and an ability to absorb new things quickly have proven rather useful in business. In strategic leadership, imagination can be more important than knowledge – as can the ability to interpret facts, weak signals and what they might mean for the future of a company.

When it comes to everyday life, Antti is not particularly obsessed with tiny details. His hobbies are another matter. Among other things, he turned a 40-year-old Harley-Davidson into a land-speed racing bike and set an unofficial world record for the standing mile at 244 km/h. As he likes to say: If you want to go fast, don’t rush. The faster you go, the more careful you need to be. And since speed doesn’t fix mistakes in business either, it pays to be thorough. No shortcuts. However tempting they may be.

Antti lives in the countryside and possesses an unusually deep understanding of the characteristics and differences between potato varieties. If he weren’t a strategist, he would probably be a farmer – although that profession, too, comes with a healthy supply of risks and unexpected situations. Antti holds an MBA. His thesis explored what was then an entirely new subject: environmental marketing. Potato varieties were apparently not included in the analysis.

+358 50 555 9966 antti.leskinen@weareatlas.fi

Advisors

Timo Hakkarainen, Advisor

Timo holds a Master of Arts degree in History. He never ended up becoming a historian or disappearing into dusty archives, but his career in growth companies has been fairly historic in its own right. It is probably no coincidence that his motto is: “Don’t read history. Make history.” Timo was one of the founders of Bolt.Works, which disrupted the staffing industry by turning a traditional service business into a platform business – and grew from zero to €100 million in just six years. Now he is attempting something similar in property maintenance with Markku.fi, the company he founded. Timo also founded Software Sauna, which operates in several countries, and is involved as an investor, board member or shareholder in companies including GreenStar Hotels, Avaindata and tai.ga. One thing Timo’s companies tend to have in common is speed. There is plenty of that in his spare time too: he is reportedly the owner of Finland’s fastest Datsun.

Pekka Siivonen-Uotila, Advisor

Pekka’s entrepreneurial story has been told in the Taivas + Helvetti book series and in numerous Finnish media outlets, from Helsingin Sanomat to Talouselämä. And for good reason. His career as a relentlessly persistent serial entrepreneur is difficult to match. He has founded or been a major owner in companies including Laitilan Wirvoitusjuomatehdas, the Avidly/Zeeland marketing group, Dagsmark pet food and the Perniö food business. He is also the founder and Chairman of Nordic Foodtech VC, a venture capital firm investing in the future of food. He has served as Chairman or board member of dozens of companies, which means there are more than enough stories to tell about the adventures along the way. There are plenty of stories from his private life too. Not many people, for example, can boast that an emperor has spent the night at their home. Admittedly, it was a couple of hundred years ago, when the Emperor of Russia visited Manor, which Pekka now owns. But still. An emperor is an emperor.