How TBWA\NEXT Is Fuelling Creative Enthusiasm for the Future

Mikko Pietilä is back at TBWA. And there's a lot more to this than a simple ‘man gets job’ story.

As part of the TBWA collective’s focus on building up its NEXT unit, which concentrates on the brand experience of the future and connecting the most innovative talent in the collective, Mikko’s been appointed as the regional chief creative experience officer (CCXO) of NEXT from January 2024. 

Formerly executive creative director of 180 New York, he’s returned to the agency where he spent almost a decade beforehand, and will be based in his native Finland, but working across the Nordic countries and supporting Europe more broadly alongside the global NEXT team.

The X in his title is crucial to understanding the broader story of this move. “Brand experience is the hottest frontier of storytelling; everything is shifting towards it,” says Mikko. “And it's up to us to embrace it, figure it out, and experiment. When social media hit back in the day, everyone realised we can do everything again for the second time. Now it's time to do everything again yet again. But it's not tied to any specific medium anymore. It's at least as important how the brand is present, with you on your everyday, as it is for what they are saying on their paid media. And it's going to be even more important in the future because we're going to be immersed in brand experiences. A great idea is still the king but it's how it expands and behaves – how you become a part of life for consumers. That's why it's a really interesting role.”

But the X is not at the expense of C. Nor can it ever be. “Experience is creative,” says Mikko. “It's always been there. Great message is an experience, connection with a brand is an experience, being in a retail location is an experience, a mobile site is an experience. It's about making that holistic and also making the best out of it.”

He prefers not to think in terms of contained campaigns. “Our partner brands and the things that we produce are becoming more immersive and active, not starting at any specific point and ending at any specific point, but more or less ecosystems – things that are a part of your life. Advertising will shift into something more ubiquitous,” he prophecies.

As TBWA’s global innovation practice uniting brand experience capabilities under one umbrella, NEXT has existed for around two years, but in 2024 “it's gonna get more hands on,” as Mikko puts it. “This year it's gonna get tangible. We have work coming out on many frontiers, many of our regions, many continents. You should watch out for Nordics pushing out some really breakthrough stuff as well during this year.” 

Prior to NEXT’s creation, TBWA\Helsinki had become known for its brand experience work, rather than traditional advertising. “Helsinki has the legacy of being an innovation hub,” says Mikko. “And that's why Helsinki will play a key role in the future of NEXT in the region. They're going to be an important player in the whole thing because innovation has always lived here.”

Mikko was central in building that culture of innovation, so it makes sense to have him back in the saddle in Helsinki with a more expansive role along the same lines. It wasn’t a hard decision. “The gig with 180 New York was fun as hell. It was around a year and a half and the agency grew a lot. But it was exciting to get invited back home but with a broader network role.” 

The future Mikko will be looking to prepare the network for will be shaped by AI. “We’ll be innovating and preparing the collective to get the best out of gen AI tools in the current landscape while preparing for the future of AGI [artificial general intelligence],” he says. “The new team member is here to stay. So we need to gear up our creativity, our creative capabilities, internally and outside with our partners.”

Thinking in the future will require a lot of testing – and, importantly, “breaking” – technologies that will come to define our world. “Everything that is new, we're playing with it. We want to push our clients and projects into spaces that eventually are going to be there, but we also want to be the first to understand them, break convention and disrupt. The world is disrupting faster than ever right now. If we want to disrupt the status quo, as TBWA does, we need to be there on the edge of what is happening right now and what is still relevant a year from now.” 

“A lot of it is predicting the waves, being on par with culture, doing things at the speed of it and seeing where the world is going, taking our brands there and making them relevant there, so they can get the share of attention that they deserve.” 

This isn’t just catnip for the tech bros though. Mikko’s convinced that now is the most interesting time to be a creative. And he wants to make sure everyone in the TBWA collective feels it. As he builds out the capabilities and ties different players within the Nordic and Europe regions together through it, laying down structures will be crucial and finding new talent is part of the process to come, but he’s also committed to cultivating the existing talent within the global collective and “creating enthusiasm for what's to come.”

“It's also reigniting creativity,” he adds. “The idea is still the king. Creatives and creativity is still the lifeblood of any shop in the industry. There's just a much broader selection of methods and instruments. Creatives want to know how big the goal is and what to shoot at it. The methods are bigger, but the goal is way bigger now.”

There’s a sense of a new era dawning for TWBA in Northern Europe. With Alex Pineda moving a few months ago from TBWA\RAAD in the UAE to become TBWA\Helsinki’s new CCO. The end of 2023 saw a strong run of pitch wins in the regional hub too. “We've been mates for many years,” says Mikko. “He's really innovative. He's a great leader who just gets people, if you know what I mean. TBWA\Helsinki is back in the game and energised as hell. There's really great focus and with that comes great energy to the Nordic region as well. I think they got their momentum back and it's gonna be really interesting what's to come.

“For me, it feels really great to come back into the collective that I love so much. I've seen a couple of networks in my time and the way that TBWA works as a whole actually is a collective. People work across continents every single day and the flow between offices feels effortless. I know the collective like the back of my hand. So it's great to come back and to a role that is building something new, being part of the next phase of the evolution of the whole network. So I couldn't be more happy and excited about it. It feels really great.”