Strategy

Japan business 4Communication Design

Entering the Solutions Industry

The challenges faced by companies and brands are becoming increasingly complicated, and cannot be solved by marketing alone. In fact, the key to solving many of the challenges lies in uncovering and addressing overarching social issues. As such, Dentsu’s role has expanded from advertising communication to the larger area of solutions.

The solutions industry is one of the fastest growing industries. The world is full of problems, with few who can solve them. I believe that Dentsu has a large advantage in this field for the following three reasons.

The first is that Dentsu has experience. Japan is one of the first countries to experience many of the social issues that the world is, or will be, coming up against. Dentsu has over 20 years of experience helping its roughly 6,000 clients respond to many of these challenges, and can apply this experience globally.

Discovering Opportunities

The second reason is our approach. Many companies, and even countries and regions, are not leveraging their full potential. In other words, potential assets are often treated as liabilities. While many merely shrink from criticism, Dentsu takes the opposite approach. We fully respect true potential and create conditions to uncover that potential. Instead of taking a negative approach and focusing on the problem, we look for opportunities.

People want to participate in positive solutions, so we create a space where such people gather. Emotional involvement—that maintains and increases the motivation of groups of companies, employees and consumers that want to participate—is the key to ensuring the sustainability of an activity. I believe that this will become even more important in the future.

Deeper Insight Leads to Good Ideas

The third reason Dentsu has an advantage in the solutions industry is its ideas. Good ideas are one’s drill down into the depths of human consciousness and behavior to generate true solutions. Dentsu leverages the insights it has cultivated in the advertising industry to create real solutions that look at the issue on a deeper level. For example, what may look like problems due to education or sluggish business activities may actually be due to a lack of community, and involvement in sports is one effective way to address the issue. If the approach to every problem is one-dimensional, then the solution will be limited.

We work to come to grips with an issue’s underlying essence, and never stop thinking about how to unleash its true potential. As a result, the target of our brainstorming may change, as one issue aligns with other issues or as we are able to see more deeply into a problem. I believe this is a substantial opportunity for Dentsu.