Elina Koivisto

As a professional, I am specialised in branding, customer experience, and marketing. My main interest lies within finding customer-centric solutions to strategic and marketing-related challenges. My background in research combined with experience of consulting major Finnish and international corporations has enabled both analytic and practical approach to developing and executing brand strategy.

As a marketer, I believe that customer insight should always be the starting point for developing powerful brands. Here, branding is a force, which we should use for good – to create movements that give consumers something larger than themselves to believe in, and connect with the others around them. What is more, using human-insight as starting point (and throughout the process) enables marketers to genuinely create a value for customers. To make this a reality, we need to work in an iterative and agile manner in each step along the strategy and design process. Practically, this entails engaging both internal and external stakeholders through various methods as well as testing and experimenting to find the best solution.

As an academic, my research and teaching themes include value co-creation, customer experience, and brands. My doctoral thesis ‘Essays on Value Co-creation in Experiential Marketplaces’ (2018) discussed the value of consumer experience within marketing. Currently, I am part of multi-disciplinary Burning Stories research team, that aims to create new understanding of participatory cultures, and the team for WTSUP! initiative that aims to bring about social change in Middle East through entrepreneurship training. In addition, I have been teaching on the topics of branding, customer experience management, and consumer behaviour.