Dentsu Group AI integration and training initiatives

Dentsu Group has initiated several AI-driven strategic developments in Japan. The company first launched ‘Dentsu Future Finder for AI’, a tool designed to help businesses identify future opportunities and risks by analyzing social changes projected through 2040. This tool utilizes artificial intelligence to facilitate collaborative scenario planning and ‘backcasting’ across various sectors, including food, health, and climate change.

Following this, the group expanded its AI focus toward human capital by launching a large-scale skill development program. Targeting approximately 3,000 employees, the initiative uses Google Cloud’s ‘Gemini Enterprise’ platform to train specialized ‘Forward Deployed Engineers’ and ‘Forward Deployed Marketers’. These professionals are intended to work directly within client environments to drive business and marketing transformations through generative AI.

Expanding its service offerings, Dentsu Digital and Dentsu have introduced ‘Purchasing Market OneID Marketing’. This service integrates customer analysis, hypothesis generation, and execution via a unified ID system. The initial phase utilizes Amazon Marketing Cloud to analyze purchasing and behavioral signals, combining these with proprietary panel survey data. Generative AI is employed within this service to organize multi-dimensional insights and formulate marketing hypotheses, such as defining target audiences.

Additionally, research conducted by Dentsu Digital and Dentsu PR Consulting identified a strong correlation between media exposure and generative AI responses. Analyzing 39 products, the study found a high positive correlation (0.80 overall) between the frequency of product mentions in web news and the frequency of mentions by major generative AI platforms, suggesting that media presence is critical to how AI perceives and recommends brands.