CV

LinkedIn | Helsinki, Finland | kristian@ktervo.com | +358 45 112 8490

Executive Summary

AI creates value only when it solves a problem. Deployment alone produces nothing. That principle guides my work as AI Team Lead at Sanoma, where I lead the exploration of new frontiers in AI and automation for marketing production as part of a company-level strategic initiative covering both B2C and B2B.

AI tools on their own remain strictly confined islands. For example in marketing the value appears when brief, production, assets and activation form one chain built on machine-readable data, modular enough that no single tool choice locks in the future.

By the end of the decade, the competences that matter most in that chain will be the ones a machine cannot supply. When AI makes production cheap and easily scalable, the value of creativity grows, as human-only competencies should be the ones behind ideation and uniqueness. Brand strategy and brand experience stay human-led, new craft emerges where knowledge of, lets say, semiotics, behavioural psychology and uniqueness meets AI-assisted and led content production, serving only one goal: creating value to consumers by resolving problems. I expect a complete makeover of organisational structure to form around these needs instead of today’s obsolete structures, with technological literacy as a basic skill for everyone.

Venturing into the unknown with full confidence

I designed the operating model for my newly founded AI team from scratch. The team brought together professionals from different Sanoma Media Finland business units around AI goals, and no model existed for organising such work in a field that keeps constantly moving and evolving. I believe strongly in processes, and my answer was one that learns: every working cycle compares predicted impact with actual results and corrects the criteria, and the working model itself was adjusted when transferring the work moved from exploration to implementation and back.

I also lead the preparation for decision-making on which AI technology to choose, how to scale its use and which processes to redesign and how. The results so far include a controlled route to publication for AI-generated content, fully generated key visuals for live campaigns and for example a full automation that turns media plans into production tasks and machine-readable data.

In consumer-facing work, trust has to be earned with hard work, but it can only be lost once and that can happen quickly. That is why I treat responsibility as a competitive advantage in the AI age: legal and privacy groundwork comes before the production phase, and the company’s decisions on AI use draw on research into how consumers receive AI-generated content.

Behind this is more than fifteen years of creative work, including nearly ten years as an Art Director, which five of them at Nelonen Media: brand development for Nelonen, Ruutu and several major Finnish music festivals, and national campaigns with a combined reach in the hundreds of millions and budgets from €10,000 to €1.5 million.

The creative idea sets the direction, whereas AI and automation serve to fulfil it. I enjoy creative problem-solving most where there is no ready model to follow.

Solving problems, creating competitive advantage

Procurement, privacy and regulation may set some of the pace of AI adoption if left untreated. Someone has to keep experimenting and moving forward. The project intake model I designed for my team weighs workload and friction against impact and potential. Its friction scores have proved a good forecast of where work might slow down so we could solve upcoming friction in advance.

Many needs that look like software/technology problems are usually process problems. The boring truth. I approach AI as process work rather than a software roll-out: whatever the technology can do, it has to serve to overcome the problems people actually have. Unified processes, shared technology and a common way of working are what truly prepare an organisation for AI.

AI adoption is a change in how people work, and it happens in daily work, not in training rooms. The capability to deliver AI technology and redesigned processes grows faster than an organisation’s capacity to absorb change, and friction is greatest where the change touches professional identity. I therefore plan communication and involvement alongside the technical build from the first day, and when a tool is left aside in a busy week, I treat it as a leadership question.

In AI, the facts often do not exist yet. When I admit what I do not know and speak in plain words, people bring their own views, and that is where trust and experimentation begin.

Good decisions requires transparent and understandable solutions. My decision proposals turn business goals into a viable roadmap and a practical operating strategy, show what happens if nothing is decided, name the central tension openly and separate validated figures from estimates. Transparency builds trust faster than polished results.

Responsibility can be turned into a competitive advantage: regulation is only the floor, and acting responsibly is what creates trust. It also means deciding who benefits from AI. If the gain stays inside the production chain, the customer never sees the saving but does notice when the result gets blander. In a landscape that is unclear, stressful and hard to keep up with, a producer who has solved these questions once for its whole way of working can offer responsibility as part of the service.

Professional Experience

TEAM LEAD (GENAI & RPA), ART DIRECTOR | SANOMA MEDIA FINLAND | 2026–PRESENT

Interim Team Lead and project manager in company-wide Creative Marketing AI Initiative spanning across B2C and B2B marketing, targeting to make AI-led automation a native part of marketing production across consumer (B2C) and business (B2B) units. Alongside the AI role, Art Director for Nelonen Media TotalTV.

• TEAM AND PROJECT LEADERSHIP
  Built the operating model for a completely new six-person AI team spanning B2C and B2B from scratch, based on two-week Design Sprint cycles and a project intake open to anyone in the organisation. Prepared the business case and investment proposal that gave AI-generated content a controlled route to publication, with an enterprise-licensed platform now in a pilot across business units. Also leading the initiative’s process automation stream, and Nelonen Media’s top-priority prioritisation projects for TotalTV and TotalAudio, a two-year programme started in 2025 that reallocates marketing budget and human resources according to business goals and has significantly improved the return on marketing investment.
  
• VISION AND DIRECTION
  Led the building of a modular roadmap for AI and process automation in marketing, turning business goals into solutions with realistic prioritisation and implementation. Compared alternative technology paths on two-year costs and risks, identified the missing integration layer and merged two major parallel development streams into one initiative, avoiding partly overlapping procurements. The work involves extensive stakeholder management, from leadership to the users who help define the requirements.
  
• HANDS-ON DELIVERY
  Led the building of an LLM-based converter that turns media plans into project tasks and checklists previously compiled by hand, piloted on a live campaign, and designed the data architecture and automation workflows behind it. The converter also creates the machine-readable data that modelling marketing return and forecasting workload require. Negotiated terms and contracts together with procurement.
  
• RESPONSIBILITY AS ADVANTAGE
  Moved legal and privacy groundwork ahead of production: data-input guidance for pilot users, reviewed by privacy and legal, and a proposed risk-decision model for small AI purchases that builds on the existing escalation process. Commissioned and scoped Sanoma’s first consumer study on how audiences receive AI-generated advertising, to guide the company’s own use of AI in published marketing.
  
• AI IN CREATIVE PRODUCTION
  Led the team that produced a fully AI-generated key visual set for a live programme campaign, and the generator is now in production use. As Art Director for TotalTV, prepared the decision on where generative AI is used in key art production.

ART DIRECTOR | NELONEN MEDIA (SANOMA) | 2021–PRESENT

• Leading the rebranding of well-known Finnish B2C brands like Nelonen, Liv, Jim, Ruutu, Tammerfest, Rockfest, Suomipop Festivals, Aito Iskelmä Festival, Jysäri, and Wanaja Festival.
• Nation-wide marketing campaign production with production budgets ranging up to €100.000 and marketing budgets up to €1.5 million.
• Marketing concept creation and production for TV productions like Big Brother Finland, Elisa Viihde Original Series, Vain elämää, Farmi Suomi, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and music concerts like Maija Vilkkumaa Nokia Arena.
• Development Project Leadership: Social media efficiency project 2024, business-critical strategic projects like Nelonen Media’s 2025 prioritisation aiming to reorganise the use of total marketing resources including budget and human resources, TotalTV rebrand 2025.
• Creative Competence Lead tasks in Nelonen Media Creative like developing modern workflow and standards, guided trainees.

ART DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT | RIANNO COMMUNICATIONS | (2017–)2021

• Subcontractor to Rianno Communications from 2017 to March 2021, followed by four months as a full-time Art Director and communications consultant.
• Video production, graphic design, communications consulting and photography for clients including Tori.fi, Change Lingerie, B. Braun, Mandatum Life and Dr. Oetker.

ART DIRECTOR | NATIONAL COALITION PARTY, KOKOOMUS | 2017–2021

• Nationwide campaign production, covering graphic design, video production and copywriting, for the Parliamentary Elections 2019, the European Parliament Elections 2019 and the Municipal Elections 2017.

PHOTOJOURNALIST | TURKU UNIVERSITY STUDENT MAGAZINE | 2012–2013

• Photojournalist, graphic designer of the magazine.