06 · About
Erik Mashkilleyson
Strategy & AI Director, Avidly · Former Digital Experience Director, EMEA at Siegel+Gale
I am a strategist working across brand, business and technology.
For nearly 20 years, I have helped organisations decide what they should stand for, how they should grow and how that should translate into experiences people understand and value. Much of my work has been with businesses that are complex, technical or creating markets that are still taking shape.
Today I am Strategy & AI Director at Avidly in Helsinki. I advise leadership teams on positioning, brand architecture, narrative, business transformation and AI, and help shape Avidly's own thinking and capabilities in these areas.
Before Avidly, I was Digital Experience Director for EMEA at Siegel+Gale in London. I led the development of the firm's digital experience practice across the region, with responsibility spanning strategy, senior client relationships, new business and commercial performance. The work connected brand strategy with customer experience, digital products and transformation.
Earlier roles at Nortal, N2 and Wunderman took me from brand and service design to technology, communications and global marketing. At Wunderman I worked on Nokia across an agency network spanning more than 60 countries. At Nortal I worked with leadership on brand architecture, marketing strategy and new business concepts.
A recurring theme throughout that career has been making difficult things easier to understand: new technologies, scientific breakthroughs, complicated organisations and unfamiliar propositions. Recent clients include Solar Foods, Origin by Ocean, Framery and Wärtsilä.
AI has made that question more interesting. As execution becomes easier to automate, I am increasingly interested in the qualities that become more valuable: judgment, taste, trust, empathy and commercial imagination. I call this The Human Premium, and it is the subject of my writing and speaking.
I have co-authored an Ivey and Harvard Business Review teaching case on Nike's brand recovery. My work has been recognised by SABRE, CRESTA, Grand One and the Finnish Comms Awards, and I have served on juries including Effie Finland and SABRE EMEA.
Away from work, I sing tenor in an award-winning choir. I also co-founded a Helsinki theatre company, once played the title role in a musical about a seal, and remain a former Finnish Monopoly champion. →
Selected roles
- Avidly, Helsinki
- Strategy & AI Director
Brand strategy, business transformation and AI
- Siegel+Gale, London
- Digital Experience Director, EMEA
Led the regional digital experience practice
- Nortal, Helsinki
- Creative Lead, Brand & Product Strategy
Brand architecture, marketing strategy and new business concepts
- N2, Helsinki
- Brand & Service Strategist / Copywriter
Brands, services and experiences including Posti, Moi Mobile and Bittium
- Wunderman, Helsinki / London
- Global Communications Manager, Nokia
Global agency network across 60+ markets
How I work
I am trained in strategy and comfortable with the strategist’s toolbox: research, category and competitor analysis, customer and stakeholder interviews, segmentation, journey mapping, brand architecture, positioning, behavioural insight, message architecture and scenario thinking.
Porter, Ehrenberg-Bass and the 4 Ps are familiar to me, but I don’t force every problem through the same framework. I first work out where the real tension sits, then choose the methods that will expose it.
01
Diagnose the system
I start by understanding the context around the brief: the category, business model, customers, competitors, organisation and forces changing around them.
Depending on the problem, that can mean research, interviews, behavioural data, customer journeys, category mapping, competitive analysis or looking at how value moves through the wider system.
02
Find the tension
Good strategy usually becomes clearer once the central tension is visible.
What does the organisation need to change?
What do customers believe today?
What would have to become true tomorrow?
Where are ambition, behaviour and reality pulling in different directions?
Finding that tension gives the strategy somewhere to work.
03
Build the strategic answer
Different problems produce different outputs.
The answer might be positioning, brand architecture, a category definition, narrative, customer journey, value proposition, audience strategy, experience principles, behavioural idea or a combination of several.
The framework follows the problem.
04
Make it usable
I want strategy to help people make decisions.
That means turning analysis into a small number of clear choices, principles and language that can guide what a company builds, says and does.
Strategy should reduce complexity without flattening it.