Are you satisfied with your current team structure? – The Future of Advertising Agency Teams

Ⅰ The Birth of a New Team

The 1960s in the U.S. advertising industry are often called the "Creative Revolution Era," marked by the "art & copy" collaboration between art directors and copywriters to elevate ad quality. Similarly, on March 7, 2013, Google announced on its blog the experimental project "Art, Copy & Code," pursuing a new form of brand advertising. Thus, the advertising industry has consistently experimented with building optimal teams to meet the demands of each era. Today, client interest extends beyond advertising digitization to encompass the digital transformation of marketing itself. Advertising agencies are responding by building teams aligned with this growing focus. The digitalization of marketing creates an environment where consumer and customer behavioral data is easier to obtain. Consequently, the demand for "data scientists"—who analyze vast amounts of customer behavior data to identify promising new customers—will continue to grow significantly within advertising agencies. Even more crucially, "growth hackers" are needed: professionals who extract customer acquisition/retention challenges from data and outline brand growth scenarios.

In the US, growth hackers are often called the new marketing leaders. Currently, alongside data scientists, they are considered one of the sexiest jobs in Silicon Valley. They leverage data and ideas to hack (i.e., accelerate in new ways) the growth of products and services. They are sometimes called user acquisition engineers, responsible not only for gaining awareness but also for devising and executing strategies to convert prospects into customers and loyal customers. In fact, they are in high demand not only by startups but also by established companies. ※Note 1

Growth hackers don't necessarily need the same advanced analytical skills as data scientists. However, they must possess the analytical and conceptual abilities to understand "why so?" from data results and then think "so what?"—that is, determine what actions to take next based on those results. The key difference from traditional planners lies in basing decisions not just on brand image data, but on behavioral data that shows whether people actually "took action?" or "made a purchase?" At the same time, they must maintain a mindset that consistently grasps the fundamental challenges faced by both the brand and everyday consumers/customers, not just data. Furthermore, creative ideas that solve these core challenges are paramount. They need the ability to devise, execute, and refine various strategies unconstrained by conventional marketing methods.

Growth hackers must analyze and understand the 360-degree customer landscape (see diagram below), not just the movement of new customers from mass campaigns, but also the conversion of prospects into customers and the transformation of existing customers into high-value customers. They must consistently identify opportunities or challenges (what we call "Customer Growth Points") for increasing customers at every phase, not just acquiring new ones.

Growth hackers then commit to the client's overall marketing lead regarding acquiring and nurturing new customers and the brand's growth process. For example, they identify recently growing customer segments from CRM data and design scenarios to acquire more customers from that segment. Naturally, they also simulate factors like how many people can be acquired and when, and what the expected revenue will be, committing to revenue figures upfront.

As described above, in this era of digital marketing—including advertising—advertising agency teams need to add "Data Scientists & Growth Hackers" to their traditional members.

II. One Direction for Future Creativity

Specifically, in the 'Growth' phase of the Dentsu Inc. Brand Growth Hack service we provide, we employ a wide variety of methods tailored to the challenges of customer acquisition and nurturing. This involves implementing POEM (Paid, Owned, Earned Media) strategies—not limited to mass advertising—to engage and grow both general consumers and customers across a 360-degree approach, supported by efficient digital marketing tools. Furthermore, we introduce database construction and marketing automation for brand experience design, service development, and brand content editing to streamline these initiatives. What matters here is not just the effectiveness and efficiency of individual initiatives, but also consistent design and messaging direction that elevates brand value, and the design of integrated brand communication aligned with scenarios that drive brand growth. Particularly in mature markets like Japan, where product surplus is a given, the very purpose and value of a brand are being re-examined. Clarifying the essential purpose and value of the brand—how it will continuously engage with everyday consumers and customers moving forward—becomes crucial.

With this in mind, it is necessary to consider digital PR, owned media production and editing, SNS utilization, prototype creation (apps and others), digital promotions, etc., for each segmented target, and furthermore, direction that integrates the whole. Growth hackers are brand experience designers, brand content editors-in-chief, and brand prototype creators.

Ⅲ The Era of Learning Creatives

Furthermore, in this current "nurturing" phase, a methodology called "learning creative" is emerging—creating based on insights gained from data results. For example, "During video editing, show the video to test subjects and make further edits based on the analysis of their facial expressions," or "Prepare one-to-one creative content for site visitors based on their prior customer information." Creative production utilizing data is being implemented, marking an era where data influences even the creative domain. On the other hand, the media that delivers brand content is highly susceptible to being ultimately replaced by machines due to the impact of digitalization. When asked, "What will humans do?" in this near future, I believe that ultimately, in this era of marketing digitization, when we push data, digital, and systems to their limits, the domain left for humans will be ideas that surprise people—ideas that go beyond common sense and are difficult to derive from data—or creative production itself. In other words, "The ultimate destination of pushing data to its limits was creativity."

IV. Finally - What is Growth Going Forward?

Over these five installments, we've introduced Dentsu Inc. Brand Growth Hack—a methodology for acquiring and nurturing promising customers and building brands in the digital marketing era. To conclude, I'd like to discuss how the very definition of "growth hack," or growth itself, will change going forward.

In Japan's mature market, sustained upward growth will be difficult going forward. Rather than striving for continued upward growth, it's crucial for Japan—a nation facing challenges like market saturation and an aging population—to lead the world in solving modern societal issues. Technology makes life increasingly convenient, and how brands market themselves has changed. Going forward, the question is whether encounters with brands truly contribute to people's fulfilling lives and happiness. While hacks (accelerating through novel approaches) remain important, contemplating and implementing "What does growth mean going forward?" becomes even more crucial. In this sense, Dentsu Inc. Brand Growth Hack aims to be a methodology that continuously evolves its definition of "growth" and its approach to "hacking" to align with future environmental changes.

Thank you for joining us over these five installments. While this series concludes for now, we hope to share case studies and evolved growth hacking techniques with you in the future. Thank you.