Sami Viitamäki has been named executive director of digital at Havas Worldwide New York. In his new role, Viitamäki will work across all major clients at the Havas flagship NY office while expanding and integrating the agency’s digital capabilities.
Most recently, he was partner and executive digital director at TBWA in Helsinki, where he headed the digital strategy, advertising, service and content design teams, and worked on top global brands including Nissan, McDonald’s, Adidas, Singapore Airlines and GSK. Before that, Viitamäki served as executive planning director for the agency.
Under Viitamäki’s leadership, TBWAHelsinki became an innovation hub for the global network and last year was ranked among the world’s top 10 digital agencies by The Gunn Report. Viitamäki’s Helsinki team created numerous international award-winning campaigns and innovations, including the Nissan NISMO Watch product concept, Cannes-winning Nissan RUMBLE, Nissan LEAF Play Future: Today, which was selected for a Google Insights showcase, and the Gold Effie-winning Angry Birds campaign for McDonald’s in China.
Viitamäki has also served as the head of Digital Arts Network Finland and was a board member at DiVia, the Finnish Digital Marketing Round Table at the Aalto University School of Economics. Before TBWA, he was online and marketing manager at Scandinavian telecommunications company TeliaSonera.
“The best modern creative agency is a collaboration between technology thinking, content thinking and business thinking, and Havas Worldwide has a very strong foundation in all those areas,” Viitamäki said. “The focus of my role will be to drive the interplay between them and produce work that pushes boundaries to succeed on any screen or media.”