Erik Mashkilleyson

Work / Case study

Finnvera

A little optimism can start something bigger.

We gave Finnvera a clearer role in the story of Finnish business growth.

Brand strategy, concept and copy · 2024–2025

Client
Finnvera
Project
Brand strategy and Kasvu ei synny yksin
Year
2024–2025
Sector
Public financing
My role
Strategy Director, brand strategy, concept and copy
Themes
Growth, Behaviour, Culture
Sheet
09
Fig. 01
Finnvera’s animated logo.

I led the strategy behind Finnvera’s renewed brand, defining “The Missing Piece” as its organising brand idea and “Growth doesn’t happen alone” as its promise to Finnish businesses. The strategy turned a trusted but distant public financier into a more human partner for ambition and growth.

01 Challenge

Growth has an emotional problem

Finnvera has spent decades enabling Finnish companies to invest, export and grow. Research showed a gap between that role and how the organisation was experienced. Trust was strong, yet potential customers, especially ambitious SMEs and exporters, found Finnvera distant, complex and less approachable than it needed to be. The visual identity, verbal expression and expert communications also lacked a shared centre.

The strategic challenge was therefore bigger than communications. Finnvera needed a clearer role in the minds of business leaders.

Growth itself provided the tension. Investment can mean risk, responsibility, debt and uncertainty. In a difficult economy, those associations become stronger. Finnish culture adds its own vocabulary of caution: don’t reach too high, don’t boast, don’t tempt fate.

The opportunity was to give ambition a credible ally.

Fig. 02
Finnvera poster in a snowy bus shelter: Kell’ onni on, se onnen tuplatkoon.
Finnvera poster: “Kell’ onni on, se onnen tuplatkoon.” Familiar Finnish sayings become invitations to imagine growth.

02 Brand

The Missing Piece

I developed Puuttuva palanen, The Missing Piece, as the organising idea for the brand.

It expresses Finnvera’s role in one simple image. Companies already bring the ambition, expertise, technology and willingness to grow. Finnvera can provide the piece that helps those plans come together, whether through financing, guarantees, expertise or connections.

The idea became a brand code as well as a strategic principle. The missing piece could shape the visual identity, language and communications across very different subjects while keeping Finnvera recognisably Finnvera.

The brand strategy and the autumn 2025 campaign were deliberately developed as one system, anchored in Finnvera’s role as an enabler of growth and in the missing-piece device.

Puuttuva palanen.
The Missing Piece.

Fig. 03
A hand placing a white box beside another on a pale wooden surface.
The Missing Piece: the part that helps a plan come together.

03 Promise

Growth doesn’t happen alone.

The strategy led to a simple brand promise:

Kasvu ei synny yksin.
Growth doesn’t happen alone.

It captures a practical truth about business growth. Companies grow through customers, employees, financiers, partners and ecosystems. Finnvera has a defined role inside that network.

The promise also changed the emotional register of the brand. Finnvera could speak about growth with confidence and warmth, acknowledging uncertainty while giving businesses a sense that growth can be manageable when the right partners are around the table.

The strategy describes this as turning Finnish pessimism into realism-based optimism: growth can be possible and manageable when it is pursued together.

Fig. 04
Newspaper page with a Finnvera ad, Mikä laulaen tulee, se platinaa myy, using the missing-piece device.
Print execution: “Mikä laulaen tulee, se platinaa myy.” The Missing Piece connects cultural optimism with Finnvera’s practical role.

04 Culture

Rewriting Finnish pessimism

The campaign took that brand idea into Finnish culture.

We started with familiar proverbs and sayings, many carrying the restraint and fatalism embedded in Finnish attitudes to ambition. Then we gave them a new ending.

Kell’ onni on, se onnen tuplatkoon.
If you have good fortune, double it.

Mikä laulaen tulee, se platinaa myy.
What comes singing can sell platinum.

Joka kuuseen kurkottaa, voi unelman toteuttaa.
Those who reach for the spruce may realise a dream.

The device was simple enough to repeat and flexible enough to keep surprising. Familiar language created recognition. The missing piece visually completed the thought. Finnvera became the element that helped an ambition go further.

The campaign extended across film, outdoor, print, digital media and Finnvera’s own channels. The same strategic system also informed leadership communications, annual reporting and modular content for ongoing communications.

Fig. 05
Print ad: Joka kuuseen kurkottaa, voi unelman toteuttaa.
“Joka kuuseen kurkottaa, voi unelman toteuttaa.” One repeatable brand idea can generate an entire family of expressions.

05 Organisation

One idea across the organisation

For me, the most important part of the work was creating a brand platform capable of travelling beyond a single advertising campaign.

The Missing Piece gave Finnvera a recognisable visual and conceptual code.

Growth doesn’t happen alone gave the organisation a promise that could guide the story it tells customers and stakeholders.

Realistic optimism gave the brand a tone and cultural stance: ambitious enough to encourage growth, credible enough for a public financier.

Together, those elements created a system that could stretch from a bus shelter to a financing conversation, from a brand film to an annual report.

The refreshed visual and verbal expression was unified around the missing-piece idea, with the campaign, owned channels, reporting and expert communications all feeding the same brand.

Fig. 06
The missing-piece mark on an office wall, an exhibition stand and business cards, with the Finnvera logotype.
The missing-piece mark across interiors, an exhibition stand and business cards.

06 Impact

A warmer brand with measurable momentum

The work gave Finnvera a more coherent way to talk about growth and translated a financial institution’s role into an idea people could immediately understand.

The wider programme recorded:
+116% annual growth in views of the Finnveran vuosi content.
4.22 → 4.38 in support among key stakeholder groups.
3.96 → 4.16 in overall reputation score.

The first phase ran in autumn 2025 as a pilot in entrepreneur and chamber of commerce media, LinkedIn and Finnvera’s website. In spring 2026 it extended to outdoor, PR and events.

Executives and experts went through media training. Interview requests went up afterwards, and Finnvera’s comments on exports, growth financing and ownership changes began to appear regularly in target media.

Website traffic grew, especially on entries related to financing and guarantee searches, and share of search rose.

The print execution “Joka kuuseen kurkottaa, voi unelman toteuttaa” also won the November–December 2025 Kuukauden aikkarimainos competition.

Fig. 07
Finnvera annual report spreads on a laptop and pages, with infographics of guarantee exposure by region.
Annual reporting rebuilt as a modular content bank for campaigns, articles and social media.

Joka kuuseen kurkottaa, voi unelman toteuttaa.

07 My contribution

Strategy that became a brand system

I was the strategy director behind the renewed brand.

I defined Puuttuva palanen, The Missing Piece, as the organising idea for Finnvera’s role and helped turn that strategy into the promise Kasvu ei synny yksin, Growth doesn’t happen alone.

From there I developed the strategic tension around Finnish pessimism, the idea of realism-based optimism, the campaign concept and much of the language that brought the brand to life.

The formal project credit records my contribution as strategy, concept and copy.

01What we created
  • Brand strategy
  • Brand idea: The Missing Piece
  • Brand promise: Growth doesn’t happen alone
  • Campaign concept
  • Copy
02My role

I was the strategy director behind the renewed brand.

03Impact
  • +116% annual growth in views of the Finnveran vuosi content.
  • 4.22 → 4.38 in support among key stakeholder groups.
  • 3.96 → 4.16 in overall reputation score.
  • Website traffic and share of search rose after the pilot.
  • More interview requests for executives and experts after media training.
04Recognition
  • Winner, Kuukauden aikkarimainos, November–December 2025.