Don’t let Maiju’s youthful exuberance fool you. When it comes to planning and creating effective marketing, she’s an experienced super-woman – Especially when it comes to the expertise required for understanding and addressing the needs of the B2B and global industrial sectors.

Stark contrasts

Maiju is all about stark contrasts. Not many creative types speak “engineer” as fluently as her and look at the complicated puzzle of meeting widely varied objectives as a welcome challenge. All this comes to Maiju as second nature. “While my profession suggests being creative, my educational background reveals that I am indeed an engineer. Artist and engineer – not the most obvious combination, but it works!” It is no surprise that the art and science of creative problem solving and finding the right commercial communications approach to technical solutions are among her favourite kind of challenges to tackle.

Her persona of stark contrasts and opposing extremes extends to her personal life as well. To balance out a wild sense of humour and a love of hard core punk music, Maiju is also a qualified yoga instructor, instilling a sense of calm and zen-like serenity into not just her own everyday life, but also the rest of us at Brandkind. She holds weekly classes for us at the office, to help us all cope with the hectic pace of agency life.

Off the deep end

Maiju has always been intrigued by the deep end. She enjoys working on accounts that require a deep dive into the business landscape, operating environment and customer psyche. A strategy based on a solid foundation helps identify relevant insights and create the framework for an effective creative process.

Another thing that runs deep in Maiju’s veins is her love of nature. She has taken her passion and green attitude and made it part of her mission at Brandkind as well. On top of all her other responsibilities, she is also the acting Head of Sustainability and responsible for almost single-handedly establishing the agency’s environmental program.

Finding balance

The one thing we could all learn from Maiju is the importance of balance. She continues to show all of us how it is possible to be a hard core professional and a playful goofball all at the same time. “It’s important to be nice to everyone. Good cooperation stems from both mutual respect and the freedom to be yourself in every situation. There’s so much we can all learn from each other when we are open to it.”

Maiju also speaks on the importance of finding a healthy balance between work and rest. “If you want to perform well in this type of creative work, you need to look after your physical and mental well-being. I take my work seriously and maintain a high level of ambition, but at the same time I recognize that if my body and mind are tired, my creative ideas will most likely be tired as well. I like to keep things fresh.”