CLIENT
Harvia is a global leader in the sauna and spa market. At the heart of its strategy is a powerful mission: Healing with heat.
In 2021, Harvia wanted to explore what that mission could mean beyond the words themselves. Co-founders invited the company to approach the question differently, using artistic exploration to create a deeper and more experiential understanding of an idea central to Harvia’s future.
CHALLENGE
Mission statements are usually developed and communicated through words. But Healing with heat describes something that is fundamentally also sensory, emotional and embodied.
Rather than asking how the mission should be communicated, we approached a different question:
What could we understand about “Healing with heat” if we stopped trying to explain it and explored what it actually feels like?
This opened the possibility of using artistic practice not simply to express an existing idea, but to investigate it.
PROCESS
We brought together artists working with movement, sound, light and film: choreographer and dancer Minna Tervamäki, sound artist Ava Imogen Grayson, lighting designer Ville Tolvanen and director and cinematographer Vanessa Vandy.
Instead of giving them a tightly defined creative brief, Harvia’s leaders entered into an exploratory process with the artists. Each artistic perspective became a different way of approaching the same question: what does healing with heat feel like in the human body and mind?
The process deliberately left room for interpretation, experimentation and unexpected connections. Sound influenced movement, movement influenced film, and the artists’ interpretations gave Harvia’s leaders new ways of encountering an idea they already knew well in words.
As Päivi Juolahti, VP of Innovation and Marketing, described the difference:
“The process was very different from my point of view. If we would have done this with an ad agency […] I would have needed to give the exact brief to the creatives, approve everything and make sure that the outcome is as we envision it.”
Instead, the artists were given the freedom to explore what Healing with heat could become.
WHAT CHANGED
The process resulted in a multisensory art film combining movement, sound, light and cinematography. But the film was only one outcome.
The artistic process created a different way for Harvia’s leaders and stakeholders to engage with the company’s mission, moving from explaining Healing with heat towards experiencing and interpreting it.
Rather than producing one definitive meaning, the work deliberately opened the mission to different personal interpretations. In doing so, it demonstrated how artistic exploration can make an established strategic idea visible in ways that conventional analysis and language cannot.
The multisensory short film brings to life how healing with heat feels like, in a unique interpretation and collaboration between all of the artists involved.
“The essence of our art is to bring feelings to surface, so that people don’t need to think about it in words – instead, they can simply connect to the sounds and movement in an intuitive way.” Minna Tervamäki, ballet dancer and choreographer
The film is an art piece open to different personal interpretations. Watching it with headphones turns into a very intimate experience, much like being in a sauna. And with each person that experiences it, the film takes on a new life.
“We wanted to create a space for each person to have their own experience, in the same way that being in a sauna is a different experience for each of us. My first impression when I saw the film was a very powerful experience, I got goosebumps. The sounds, visuals, lights, movements, and facial expressions draw you in. It is a holistic piece of art that invites you to feel and reflect for a few moments.” Päivi Juolahti, VP of Innovation and Marketing, Harvia
