I tell you, for a transportation client, Helsinki Regional Transport have a nice sense of humor.

Beer + Beverage = Radler. Which if my sources are correct, is Beer and soda. Or beer and lemonade, judging by the photo.

More from the Helsinki Region Transport, urging you to take public transportation rather than drive.

OKay I'm down with public transportation. But only if it's in a lovely tilt-shift art direction world.

Helsinki is growing. And that's both a good and bad thing. Good for the economy. Bad for the car commute. Helsinki Region Transport wanted to target drivers for the first time and encourage them to start taking public transportation.

Drivers, who when polled, said they were too lazy to find where to get a transportation cards.

Instead of showing the benefit to public transportation, Helsinki Agency 358 chose to highlight the problems of driving instead. And then offer a bigger incentive.

For the duration of the "Take a Spring Break from Driving" campaign (which breaks today) everyone who signs up for the first time will get the HSL travel card delivered to their homes and two weeks travel-time for free.

Wow. Can we say "hand holding?"

While the first PSA posters for this "places" campaign, which showed only a womans crotch and the check-in status caused some backlash in that they were "slut shaming" (but not really), this one shows the mans crotch as the object to be checked into. Equal opportunity objectifying. Or, to catch a snippet from the linked post, everyone relax a little, step back and try to see the point.

Spinfy have figured out how to jam magical fairy tales into apps that will spellbind kids and make them want to read. That's a neat hack, that. They do all this from a gravel pit in Finland, apparently. Once inside the teeny cabin you'll find every fairy tale joke you can muster deadpanned, a team of animators dressed like santas helpers, and even grandma.

Lets have the Finnish gais explain:

In the "meat-packing district" area of Helsinki, in an old slaughterhouse renamed Kellohalli opened as a restaurant. Kellohalli has a different approach to food. Food is seen as fuel, a stimulant, a topic. Food can be anything, even a way to express feelings.
The Helsinki World Design Capital 2012 wanted to highlight Kellohalli as one of its main events. We did four posters to communicate the essence of Kellohalli.

In other words, food is sex. Dirty. Messy. A mashup. Gross. And oh so yum. Yikes. Pork Chops. Chicken legs. Cucumbers. If your mind went dirty places at those words, you need to visit Kellohalli. Also: OMG YOU PERV. Call me.

Monsters.

This creepy PSA shows what children may see when their parents are drunks.

Makes you shudder.

Mad clowns, zombies, drunk santa, creepy as fuck rabbit. The scariest one is the little kid being strapped in to his car-seat by a masked man. You can feel his fear.

Insight: There are situations where you shouldn't laugh. If you laugh there, something must be really funny. Like say, for example, when you just fired half the office you bastard boss from hell. I'm getting Sedelmaier meets Roy Anderson vibes in the execution here, and that retro works for me.

File under delightfully macabre. Finnish Agency 358 Helsinki created this poster for "Hush," along with a teaser: bloody hammers placed around Helsinki movie theaters.

My question is, why bother with the poster? You had me at bloody hammers.

Update: Agency 358 wasn't behind the poster, only the activation elements. It was in fact Scanbox Entertainment who did the poster.

KONE make elevators and escalators and they know full well that most accidents in either are caused by people ignoring the tiny things that cause them. "Finnish elevator company KONE wanted to make a safety campaign about this issue - both internal and external. How do we communicate that without being condescending or preachy?" All I can say after turning into everyones insta-baby-sitter around all escalator is preach on, because by am I ever sick of people not watching their kids, or the tiny things like shoelaces and long flowing dresses as they embark on an escalator ride.

See also Kone Safety Elevators

Could you imagine having say, Otis elevators as your client? Like KONE they'd probably ask you to tell people how to use they human transporter-machines without getting hurt. That's what they're doing here and in KONE - Safety escalator

You think Germans are punctual? You haven't seen a Finnish office at five o'clock on a Friday.

Finns are the most punctual people in Europe. We are very protestant when it comes to work ethics. We work until the eight hours have been completed. Our film shows the first 0.5 seconds after the workday has finished on any given Friday.

Finnish agency 358 was tasked to promote the new season of Finland's version of Cops, called Poliisit.

They created a sort of Mugshot Yourself app on Facebook to make use of the show's fans. Thousands more flocked to become a "Usual Suspect," by downloading the app, and putting their face in a mugshot.

From January to February, the number of Facebook fans grew from 10,000 to 30,000.

So check this out. Some people don't just hear music, but they see colors and geometric shapes as a visual aid. They call this neurological condition Synesthesia.

Two well known artists who suffered from it were Wassily Kandisnky and a Finnish composer named Jean Sibelius.

Agency 358 Helsinki was tasked with coming up with a visual identity for the Sibelius Academy. Since no one round the office had this condition (or LSD) they went with the next best option: Creating software that analyzed music according to pitch, timber, tempo etc, and transformed it into colors. It's kinda like they asked Sibelius himself to design the identity.

"Heineken is the sponsor of Flow Festival 2011. To make the most out of the sponsorship, 358, Helsinki set the bar high: Let's come up with something so interesting that it will become an integral part of the uncompromising festival's programme. The idea, Heineken Open Source Stage, is based on open source principles and Facebook liking. It is not only part of the programme but it's also part of the festival site. Now the crowd can suggest anything and like any ideas they see. Within the first week and a half the site got 150,000 visits, the visitors made 2,000 suggestions for acts and their ideas were liked 14,500 times. That's pretty good for a hipster festival in a city of 500,000 people."

NYT.fi magazines motto is "right here, right now" and they wanted more eyballs on their website. Helsingin Sanomat responded by coming up with a battle concept, three teams lead by celebs had to complete tasks across the city of Helsinki in one day, and points given in the shape of like & shares on facebook were added to their score. Make a bus driver laugh. Breakdance in the central station. Freestyle rap to someone over 50. Collect five kisses from strangers. As the teams sped through their tasks, the clips generated brought the traffic to NYT.fi.

One day. 47 tasks. Play rock paper scissors with a celebrity. Make a bus driver smile. Get a piercing. Three teams threw themselves into Helsinki and made it better place to live. The teams got points for completed Battle tasks, Facebook likes, Youtube views, Twitter tweets and Campaign site views.

See also the image: NYT BATTLE

What do the ladies fo if they win the lottery? Shopping of course, but wait some detors are to be had sending them from New York to Rio, to Tokyo and then Thailand where they somehow rope the hungover boys into pushing their car out of the water.

What would you do if you won the lottery? These three mates thought that perhaps a vacation would be a good idea, and already at the airport their choices lead them down a "hangover"-esque path of debauchery and party.