A New Form of Client Relations Seen at ADFEST

ADFEST, established in 1998, is one of the largest advertising festivals in the Asia-Pacific region. This year's event, themed "TMRRW.TDAY" (Tomorrow, Today), took place over four days from March 20 to 23 in Pattaya, Thailand, attracting 1,120 participants from 63 cities across 34 countries and regions. In addition to expanding the awards this year, a new initiative was launched: the "TMRRW BIZ SCHOOL." This four-day seminar aimed to integrate marketers' business perspectives with the essence of advertising—creativity—and featured industry experts with extensive award-winning experience as instructors.

Xiki Duan, a member of Dentsu Inc.'s Global Business Center involved in overseas collaboration and service design, introduces new perspectives required for the future advertising industry through a seminar report.

What is Tomorrow Biz School?

Scene from the seminar by Mitsutaka Nakamura, Global President of dentsu X

Tomorrow Biz School is a seminar designed to teach the creation of synergy between creativity and business. Participants include marketers on the client side and others involved in advertising; this session gathered 15 attendees.

The seminar was conducted by award-winning advertising professionals as instructors. A total of eight sessions were held, including a seminar by Christine Wang, Head of E-commerce at Publicis Groupe, an advertising group operating in over 100 countries worldwide, covering the forefront of Chinese e-commerce, and a seminar by Jack Yun of Cheil Worldwide, a Korean advertising group, on creative work that fuses technology and humanity.

Advertising Design from a Business Perspective Using the New "MAP" Framework

Mr. Mitsutaka Nakamura, Global President of dentsu X※1, also took the stage to discuss the future of briefings. Here, "briefing" refers to the client's explanation of their challenges. While many seminars focus primarily on showcasing creative work, Mr. Nakamura's seminar centered on closely aligning with the client and their business.

The theme was "A Brief for tomorrow" (Are clients truly able to provide briefings that drive business?). Using survey data from client marketing executives, he explained what kind of briefings clients should give agencies to receive marketing proposals that lead to business results. Here are some highlights:

"In the digital era, the types of content, the roles of media, and the ways data is used have diversified, and what clients seek from advertising is changing. What is now demanded are goals focused more on the relationship with consumers—such as providing experiences through advertising that allow consumers to feel a connection with the brand, or brand communication that leads to purchasing actions.

Furthermore, traditional approaches like superficial media exposure and differentiation from competitors are no longer effective. Consequently, clients want to engage with agencies possessing diverse expertise and utilize a variety of evaluation criteria and tools to measure the effectiveness of advertising and media.

"Rather than focusing on 'traditional' approaches, it's crucial to adopt strategies centered on clients' social significance and solving problems consumers face."

In this way, Mr. Nakamura introduced MAP (Motivation Attention Planning), dentsu X's planning framework, as the solution. MAP is a framework that focuses not only on the resulting consumer behavior but also on the underlying motivation, guiding the planning of timely and optimal communication. MAP clarifies the challenges and issues faced by companies and brands, not only through category and competitor analysis but also based on an examination of the ever-changing social and economic trends.

For example, the true challenge for a confectionery company might not be the content of mass media ads or competitors' initiatives, but rather how to change society's bias toward snack foods. MAP is a tool that identifies such challenges and shows how marketing can solve them.

Mr. Nakamura explained that what most distinguishes MAP from conventional approaches is its prioritization of ensuring communication objectives are firmly linked to the business growth of companies and brands.

Through the seminar, Mr. Nakamura discussed the need for a more proactive and new relationship between agencies and clients. He emphasized the importance for clients to have agencies provide consolidated proposals, particularly in an orientation focused on business growth as the primary goal, and introduced tools capable of achieving this.

The Vision for "Tomorrow Biz School" Connecting Clients and Advertising

Personally, my day-to-day work involves projects requiring close client partnerships. I sense clients increasingly demand results from advertising agencies that extend beyond marketing communications to contribute to business outcomes. Clients seek more than a simple one-to-one client-agency relationship; they want agencies to fully leverage their diverse corporate connections, act as intermediaries with stakeholders, and provide new business opportunities.

Meanwhile, at advertising award festivals, the works showcased predominantly reflect the strictly "one-to-one client-agency" relationship. There's little sense of interaction between clients and agencies, or even between clients themselves. In fact, client-side marketers attending AdFest expressed frustration about this very point.

Recognizing this as a challenge, Tomorrow Biz School launched as a new initiative to reimagine AdFest, an advertising festival, as a platform for building client relationships.

By gaining a clearer understanding of what clients truly seek from advertising, those creating ads can move beyond using advertising awards solely as a platform to showcase their presence within the industry. Instead, they can explore the new significance of advertising awards that engage clients and lead to tangible business opportunities.

A media agency within the Dentsu Group, operating in approximately 50 countries.