Our partner Mäksä joined the Tietotulva podcast (in Finnish) to talk about the hottest topics in marketing. The episode covers:
- A framework for getting started with short-form video as a brand
- The individual elements that can take your videos to hundreds of thousands of views and make your account the most-followed in your industry
- Nordic Business Forum 2025: lessons for marketing leaders
- Höyrymedia's growth story: how we grew from €100,000 to €1,000,000 in revenue in three years
The episode quickly became Tietotulva's most-listened episode for several months, and we've had positive feedback from marketing managers and marketers alike. It strikes an excellent balance between substance, entertainment and practical marketing lessons.
Three content pillars lay the foundation for your content strategy
In the Tietotulva episode, I dig beneath the surface into how marketing really works today, with practical examples and without the usual jargon. One of the key themes is how to define content pillars for your brand. I firmly believe it pays to build your content around three pillars, such as viral videos, behind-the-scenes videos and sales videos. They need to be balanced, with the emphasis on something other than pure sales videos. But isn't the point of marketing to sell? Yes, but how often do you turn on the TV to watch the adverts? Exactly. Me neither.
The tips that take your videos to hundreds of thousands of views aren't something you learn at school. They take thousands of repetitions, which is exactly what our team has put in. It's worth putting 80% of your thinking into the first few seconds of a video. I also explain why authenticity always beats a polished “advert feel”. I show real cases: our clients' videos that have taken off without a single euro of paid advertising. Many clients are surprised that their short-form video distribution budget is tiny compared to what they spent before, yet their content gets watched more. Or at least watched beyond the first second.
Lessons from Nordic Business Forum
Nordic Business Forum featured speakers with very different types of charisma. I break down how they presented and explain how your company can make use of different personalities. Social media is no longer just for high-energy young people: it pays to lean boldly into your own personality, even if it's a little calmer. My book tip on the topic is Robert Greene's The Art of Seduction. It's a book about charm, and it introduces several types of charisma, such as energetic, authentic, trustworthy and determined. Not everyone needs to be energetic. Authenticity wins.
At NBF, creativity guru Rick Rubin also talked about modelling creativity and why it matters in marketing. People process abstract ideas differently, which is why it's easier to adapt an existing piece of creative work than to create something completely new from scratch. Clients and teams find it easier to give each other feedback when there's a “model” to work from. For us, a model might be a video made by an American basketball team, and how it can be adapted into an engaging content series for a Finnish grocery brand.
Höyrymedia's growth story
I also share Höyrymedia's own growth story: how in three years we've grown revenue from €100,000 to a million, while building a team that makes more than 200 short-form videos a month. The journey has been explosively fast, but naturally not always easy. I talk honestly about what went wrong, where we succeeded and what we've learned along the way. While others jumped into short-form video because it was a trending business, we at Höyry were already making it back when people dismissed TikTok as a dance app for kids. Today short-form video is much more than TikTok, and rightly so. Many of our clients find Facebook Reels the most popular format of all.
Höyrymedia started from the idea of combining business understanding with an understanding of social media: being the link between content creators and business decision-makers, and doing things in a new way. We use influencers in production, behind the scenes where the magic happens, rather than in front of the camera. It has worked, and we've found that the short-form video service we've developed brings real value to FMCG brands. In startup terms, we've found our product-market fit, so we'll keep putting even more effort into serving and understanding large consumer brands and their audiences.
More on all of this in Tietotulva. It's more than a marketing podcast: it's an honest look at how to build a brand that feels human, not like an advert.
