Title	METSÄ PRO NEMUS INNOVATION CENTER
Brand	METSÄ GROUP
Product/Service	METSÄ WOOD PRODUCTS
Category	D04. Digital Installations
Entrant	MKTG Helsinki, FINLAND
Idea Creation	MKTG Helsinki, FINLAND
Idea Creation 2	GREAT APES Helsinki, FINLAND
PR	MKTG Helsinki, FINLAND
Production	GREAT APES Helsinki, FINLAND
Production 2	MEDIAMONKS Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS

Name	Company	Position
Anni Silamo	MKTG	Senior Account Director
Laura Hyvärinen	MKTG	Executive Producder
Jani Nummela	MKTG	Creative Director
Julius Meriläinen	MKTG	Designer
Jaakko Koskinen	MKTG	Copywriter
Noora Maijala	MKTG	Producer
Valtteri Santala	Great Apes / HiQ	Account Director
Niko Sipilä	Great Apes / HiQ	Creative Director
Maarit Kotiranta	Great Apes / HiQ	Designer
Mikko Sairio	Great Apes / HiQ	Managing Director
Mikko Saario	Great Apes / HiQ	Lead Developer
Teemu Huttunen	Great Apes / HiQ	Senior Developer
Sami Reinilä	Great Apes / HiQ	Senior Developer
Mikko Matinaho	Great Apes / HiQ	Developer

Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation ?

Metsä Group is in the business of bioeconomy. Your competitive edge relies on your ability to innovate: bioeconomy is very much an economy of new products, processes and simply put, new ways of creating sustainable, renewable streams of output. Be it a product innovation that will replace a fossil-based product or a new process of utilizing wood byproducts even more efficiently, it's about your ability to innovate and think forward. The Pro Nemus Innovation Center is the epitome of just this. It's forward thinking. It's innovative. It's the Metsä brand exemplified. And when you visit, you will believe it too.

Background

Metsä Group has built a new bioeconomy mill in Äänekoski, Finland. It's the largest wood-processing mill in the Northern hemisphere. The total cost is over 1.2 billion euros, making it the biggest investment in the forest industry in Finland, ever. Metsä wanted to built a visitor center next to the new mill. A center that they could take their target groups to and make them Metsä believers. The objective was to design and then implement - all the way to opening day - an experience that would be both memorable and fun but also really tell Metsä's story. That after your visit, you'd know about Metsä and their business and you'd really feel like you'd experienced something new. Something you'd never seen before. Something that would tie into Metsä and make you see just how unique they are.

Describe the creative idea

The creative idea was to be just as bold and innovative as Metsä themselves are. The biomill is the first of its kind: it harnesses a next-gen process of wood processing that has never been achieved on this scale before. The mill does not use any fossil fuels at all. In fact, it produces energy in excess of its own needs and actually powers other mills. It's literally something from the future. We knew that in order to tell the story of a cutting-edge operator, you need to be cutting-edge yourself. We felt strongly about being just as innovative in our storytelling as Metsä is in their business. Whatever we would do, we'd have to match Metsä in terms of innovation. This is simply it. We knew that if we could do that, we could tell the Metsä story the way it deserved to be told.

Describe the strategy

Our audience are capital investors, decision makers, forest owners and even internally, Metsä employees. Our strategy was to tell Metsä's story through their five business units - and the different products they all produce. It all starts with the Finnish forest and the trees that are being harvested - and continues all the way to the outer edges of the world where finally the end products are exported to. It's essentially the story of the forest: the sapling is born, it's harvested and processed into products lasting centuries, eventually returning back to the soil where it once sprang from, to be born again. Benefits: -this linear story is easily digested by all of our various target groups -allows us to talk about circular bioeconomy that is Metsä's core -enables us to communicate various messages about Metsä values (sustainability, biodiversity, responsibility) -allow us to tie Metsä's actions to global level

Describe the execution

We built over ten digital experiences that are all innovative in one way or another. And they are all integrated into the building. Actually, to be more precise, the building was designed to house these experiences, so it's really the other way around: the building is integrated into the experiences. This is what really sets Pro Nemus apart. We didn't just go and put up a couple of displays to a building that already existed. The whole building was designed by architects to facilitate these digital experiences. Then it was really built from the ground up. There's a pathway that leads to our Photo Booth utilizing an iPhone and the iOS Depth API for real-time green-screening, there's a dark room built just for a video-projected, touch-driven space where you activate the forest by body movement. The physical is really integrated into the digital, creating a never-before-seen complete experience.

List the results

Pro Nemus has been a tremendous success, probably even more so than we could have anticipated. We knew we had put our best effort into it, but its reception has caught us by suprise. The center opened on June 16, 2018. After the summer holiday season was over, it has been fully booked. Currently they are accepting reservations until January 2019, and it's completely full. From dusk till dawn, Pro Nemus is filled with visitors going through our experiences. Whenever they open up another month for booking, it fills up immediately. Metsä estimates that the center will be at 100% utilisation rate at least for the next two years. Because of this, Metsä can't even hold internal tours for their own employees. There is no better result for Metsä than the utilisation rate: they are having people come in voluntarily to hear about the Metsä story for two hours.