• Reportage

Source: DIGIDAY (in Japanese)

Article discusses a seminar on Sei-katsu-sha* Data-Driven Marketing, the next stage in the evolution sei-katsu-sha insight, the cornerstone of the Hakuhodo DY Group’s communications work. The full-day seminar, held by the three Group companies Hakuhodo, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners and D.A.Consortium for over 250 client partners, featured 13 sessions related to the utilization of data in advertising and marketing.

The unlimited potential of the Hakuhodo DY Group’s sei-katsu-sha data

The corporate world’s interest in leveraging data grows keener by the day. Many companies today are beginning to focus their attention and energy on tapping data not just for achieving short-term goals, but for building relationships with their customers in the mid- to long-term, with an eye to further developments in the future. On July 19, the three companies Hakuhodo, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners and D.A.Consortium (DAC) held their first joint seminar on Sei-katsu-sha Data-Driven Marketing at Roppongi Academyhills in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo. The seminar, which was held in two venues, was attended by a total of over 250 client representatives. Their unwavering enthusiasm throughout the day was testament to their high degree of interest in the subject.

The seminar began with a few opening words from Masayuki Mizushima, Hakuhodo’s President & CEO. The 13 sessions that followed covered a wide array of topics, including an introduction to the Hakuhodo DY Group’s Sei-katsu-sha Data-Driven Marketing, a presentation by LiveRamp, which has one of the world’s largest stores of consumer analysis data, and sessions titled “Sei-katsu-sha Insight + Science: The Hakuhodo DY Group’s Data Hermeneutics” and “Creativity and Systems Development Necessary for Sustainable Business Growth.” This article introduces some of the highlights of the sessions.

Making data truly work

“The digitalization of marketing. The digital transformation. Data-driven marketing. Not a day goes by that we don’t hear these key words,” said Masayuki Mizushima, Hakuhodo’s President & CEO, beginning his opening address.

During a recent observation visit to in China, he had observed cashless payment using facial recognition and vein authentication, as well as the implementation of a social credit scoring system that takes into consideration everything from academic achievement to posts on social media. Whether or not Japan follows China’s lead in these remains to be seen, but the collection and utilization of a multitude of sei-katsu-sha data is also underway in this country. “We, too, have built a track record in Sei-katsu-sha Data-Driven Marketing, with over 200 companies using our proprietary data management platform, the Sei-katsu-sha Data Management Platform (Sei-katsu-sha DMP),” Mizushima explained. “We also recently launched Sei-katsu-sha DATA WORKS™ (trademark registration pending), a comprehensive integrated marketing solutions package.”

In terms of tapping data, the Hakuhodo DY Group has attached greatest importance to making data truly work. Based on the Sei-katsu-sha Insight philosophy the Group has advocated since 1981, today it understands sei-katsu-sha through data and leverages data at every stage of its processes, from to planning marketing strategies, to implementing measures. “As long as the society evolves, we want to move forward in step with the challenges facing companies,” Mizushima concluded.

Developing techniques for using personal information securely

Next, Executive Marketing Director and Corporate Officer of Hakuhodo and Hakuhodo DY Media Partners Motohiro Ando gave an overview of Sei-katsu-sha Data-Driven Marketing. Here, special mention should be made of the independently developed K-Statistics & Data Fusion technique.

This technique anonymizes personal information that was not previously able to be used externally due to security concerns, creating information on “virtual individuals” that is sufficient for marketing purposes, enabling its integration with other separately collected data sets. In addition, moves are afoot to establish a data exchange platform in collaboration with various platforms and data holders.

Sei-katsu-sha DATA WORKS is a suite of solutions precisely for making use of massive data bases collected using varying technologies and techniques, and onboarding them to the next process. Today, data is created from the moment an execution is rolled out. Who responded in what way? Did they become a customer? What happened after that…? “It is a waste not to leverage this key marketing data in your strategies. Sei-katsu-sha DATA WORKS enables advanced marketing that closely interweaves strategy and executions, rather than simply going one way from upstream to downstream as has been the case until now,” said Ando.

Hakuhodo DY Group’s Sei-katsu-sha Data-Driven Marketing aims to create value for sei-katsu-sha by supporting companies’ marketing activities. “We hope to help create a new marketing world with the experience and knowledge we have amassed, and our passion,” concluded Ando.

Using identity resolution to expand data resources

The Sei-katsu-sha DMP has at its heart AudienceOne, one of Japan’s largest DMPs, which is run by Hakuhodo DY Group company DAC. DAC had just announced a collaboration with LiveRamp the day before the seminar. It plans to expand AudienceOne’s data resources with omnichannel identity resolution using LiveRamp, an identity resolution solution adopted by numerous brands globally.

In the presentation following Ando’s, LiveRamp’s Managing Director of International, Dennis Ellis, and D.A.Consortium Holdings and DAC Senior Managing Director Akihiko Tokuhisa discussed this next-gen identity platform. LiveRamp currently collaborates with over 550 partners and holds 2.5 billion consumer analysis data records globally. These data resources are thought to be the largest in the world.

Ellis showed LiveRamp survey data indicating that 92% of marketers intend to invest in identity-resolved people-based marketing. He described the company’s ambitions thus: “We have strengths in scale, accuracy and speed, and pursue security and data ethics. Through our partnership with DAC, we look forward to providing even higher quality integrated marketing.”

AudienceOne has 480 million unique browsers and 90 million mobile identity data per month. Tokuhisa touched on companies’ need to understand people who are not yet customers. “By bringing together AudienceOne and LiveRamp, we aim to make the faces of those latent customers clearly discernible,” he said.

Society adopting cyber physical systems

Following a detailed explanation of Sei-katsu-sha DATA WORKS and data resources, the next topic was social and corporate collaboration using data. Yoichi Motomura, Chairman of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science’s Artificial Intelligence Technology Consortium, and Masato Aoki, General Manager of Hakuhodo DY Holdings’ Marketing Technology Development Division shared a dialog.

The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science launched the Artificial Intelligence Technology Consortium to coincide with the establishment of its Artificial Intelligence Research Center in 2015. With around 180 member companies, the Consortium matches seeds, data and needs toward societal implementation of AI technology. As a member of the Consortium, Hakuhodo DY Holdings heads the Data Platform Working Group, which works to develop technologies and know-how for circulating data securely and beneficially. The data exchange platform being readied for launch mentioned earlier will also link with the Institute and Consortium.

Today, a society is emerging in which real world data generated with smartphones and IoT devices as sensors flows into the digitized internet space. This process is known as the “adoption of cyber physical systems in society.”

“As the adoption of cyber physical systems in society progresses, big data in the real world and advances in the artificial intelligence to process it will see the times shift, enabling the creation of new services and industries,” Motomura said. “The advance of adoption of cyber physical systems in society will enable the collection of multifaceted sei-katsu-sha data, and integrating all this data will lead to the development of new services,” continued Aoki, as he pointed out the importance of utilizing data to demand creation.

Data about people is the most important

Following sessions on TV and digital integration, sales promotion, customer relationship management and creative, the final presentation in the evening was a panel discussion where representatives of digital platforms were welcomed onto the stage. Titled “Revolutionary Marketing Opened Up in Partnership with Digital Platforms,” and moderated by Hirotake Yajima, President and CEO of Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, this session saw an exchange of various opinions.

Platforms have powerful data on users’ behavior and purchasing. In terms of advancing the Sei-katsu-sha Data-Driven Marketing discussed at the seminar, the starting point would have to be thinking about what kinds of data will be key for your company and for creating new value for users. On this subject, it was pointed out that, as you would expect, data about people—how they felt and how they behaved—is the most important.

Additionally, the reliability and security of digital advertising were presented as major issues for the marketing industry and for society at large. Recently, the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) released its Global Media Charter, which calls on advertisers, ad agencies, ad tech companies, the media and platforms to work together to solve such issues as ad fraud and ensuring brand safety. In response, the platforms present voiced their ideas about the sound use of data, including the handling of personal information.

Efforts toward sound digital advertising

Finally, Hirotake Yajima stressed two matters he wanted to share with participating companies. The first was that the Hakuhodo DY Group is working as one to boost its Sei-katsu-sha Data-Driven Marketing response capabilities. Through the internet of things, not only are existing media but all kinds of other elements, including things, towns and sei-katsu-sha themselves, being connected via digital infrastructure and turned into media. Given this environment, the aim should be to increase the advertising value of media by leveraging data, creative, technology and content.

Countless data is generated from existing media and new media that are connected via digital networks. The idea is that in addition to these data, tapping in a sophisticated manner into sei-katsu-sha data collected until now and data owned by companies will pay dividends in advertising and marketing activities.

The second matter was that, likewise, the entire company is striving to improve the soundness of digital advertising and the use of data. In line with the previously mentioned WFA Charter, as an advertising company the Group is collaborating with various parties to come up with measures to maintain and increase the soundness of digital advertising.

Yajima, who was Representative of DAC for 21 years until last year, declared that the Group would continue to make efforts to further improve the soundness of data utilization its environment, saying, “Advertising is not just communication; I have a strong sense that its role is shifting to encompass all marketing activities that utilize dynamic data.” The Seminar will be held again next year.

End article

Read article at: https://digiday.jp/agencies/hakuhodo_seikatsusya_data-driven-marketing_seminar/ (in Japanese)