CREATIVITY ENGINE BLOOM, developed by Hakuhodo DY Holdings, is a new integrated marketing platform that formulates integrated marketing strategies, supports business development, and generates actions for solving social issues by combining data and tools conventionally tied to specific domains, such as marketing, creative, media or distribution.
This feature consists of a series of articles on the development background, significance, key functions and benefits of the modules and products offered by CREATIVITY ENGINE BLOOM. We hope to communicate the aims behind developing the platform, and the attractiveness and strengths of the products.

Yosuke Kinoshita
Corporate Officer &
General Manager, Marketing Business Promotion Division
Hakuhodo Technologies Inc.

Daisuke Yamazaki
General Manager, Growth Planning Division
Hakuhodo Inc.

Integrated marketing platform to change the conventional norms of marketing

―First of all, could you briefly explain what CREATIVITY ENGINE BLOOM is?

KINOSHITA
I'd like to start by noting that international agencies are actively investing in integrated marketing platforms to drive marketing for their clients by leveraging data and technologies. Today, we are required to develop data-based marketing communication strategies to help solve business challenges for clients, while improving the efficiency and sophistication of AI-powered marketing processes. To address these issues, we decided to develop our own integrated marketing platform.

Revolving around the Sei-katsu-sha Data Platform , which provides centralized management of Hakuhodo DY Group proprietary data as well as external data, we sought to link the customer data platforms (CDPs) of platform operators with those of our clients, and combine them with AI functions into five modules: Strategy, Media, Creative, Commerce and Engagement. That was the overarching concept of BLOOM. Three of the five product groups, namely Strategy, Media and Creative, were released in FY2024 for internal use. Now we are working hard toward the release of the remaining modules.

―What were the background and challenges in developing BLOOM?

YAMAZAKI
We were aware of the inefficiency of various data and marketing tools operating separately and the shortage of talent capable of using them effectively. Heavy dependence on personal knowledge and skillsets will reduce the business productivity of the whole organization. This also presented a formidable challenge for planners in terms of competitiveness.

Some planning tasks can be formalized and standardized, while others require planners' skills in customizing the tasks to the issue or environment in question. We felt we needed to undertake formalization and standardization to some extent with those tools, with a view to ensuring a certain level of planning quality.

―What are the features of each module?

KINOSHITA
BLOOM is composed mainly of five modules.
Strategy Bloom is a one-stop module to execute marketing strategy, leveraging the Hakuhodo DY Group's proprietary sei-katsu-sha data to understand the market structure and set relevant targets, values and KPIs. It also features generative AI-powered functions including support for concept-making and evaluation/analysis of commercials.

Media Bloom is designed to maximize the impact of media spending by linking the strategy developed in Strategy Bloom with Advertising as a service® (AaaS). We provide end-to-end support from media planning and allocation to PDCA.

Creative Bloom is an AI-powered module to help inspire creators through the evaluation, automatic generation and forecasting of creative. By enabling the generation of a huge volume of copy required for performance-based advertising, it can develop a highly effective PDCA cycle for advertising.

We have yet to release Commerce Bloom and Engagement Bloom. Commerce Bloom is designed to be a marketing service leveraging proprietary Hakuhodo DY Group purchase data and external purchase data, linked to e-commerce platforms and retail media, while Engagement Bloom will offer a service that supports one-to-one marketing by working with clients' CDPs to drive customer engagement.

Standardizing marketing operation processes to inspire creativity

―What kind of value do you think BLOOM can offer to clients and Hakuhodo DY Group companies?

YAMAZAKI
First, it can provide a quicker response to client needs. Things we used to have to do from scratch can now be achieved more quickly with uniform quality by using BLOOM. It is highly effective for solving client challenges, accelerating the decision-making process, and improving operational efficiency.

The Hakuhodo DY Group is an eclectic group of people with specialized skills and knowledge in marketing, creative, ATL and digital. We believe that accumulating and systematizing the skills and knowledge of those members gives us a great competitive edge. We hope to provide a big boost to clients wishing to create new businesses and meet the challenges of a new market by integrating the skills and knowledge of Hakuhodo DY Group people who have a wealth of various kinds of creativity.

KINOSHITA
BLOOM reduces the time required for routine tasks by standardizing marketing operation processes so that everyone may perform tasks with a certain level of quality. Using the time thus saved, we will inspire our people's creativity and provide products that help develop marketing communication initiatives that directly bring business results to clients. We are hoping to evolve BLOOM into the de facto next-generation standard for the marketing business, with people working as one team beyond the boundaries of job categories and disciplines.

Co-creation with AI to generate further value

―What are your expectations for the future?

YAMAZAKI
The use of BLOOM is still limited to the Hakuhodo DY Group but in the longer term, we are planning to develop a platform for tool provision services for clients.

KINOSHITA
We are working toward ID-based data aggregation on the Sei-katsu-sha Data Platform , on which BLOOM is based. When this process is complete, data clean room solutions and linkage with clients' CDPs will be much closer to reality. We ultimately hope to work with platform operators and media to develop unique advertising products and novel marketing services.

We are also aware of the high need to improve efficiency of AI-powered marketing operation processes, and receive calls daily from clients about this matter. With BLOOM, we are not only thinking about having AI do the tasks that it can perform more efficiently but also about providing products that support human creativity. In this way, we hope to introduce agent AI functions that help improve marketing skills across the Hakuhodo DY Group.

Finally, let me explain briefly the meaning of BLOOM's logo in the form of a flower. The colors of the five petals are designed to represent the five requirements for plants to grow--soil, wind, light, water and temperature. The primary aim of this platform is to promote the emergence of brand-new, unheard-of questions and ideas through interaction and chemistry among different personalities where the five petals converge--strategy, media, creative, commerce and engagement. We are generating methodologies to develop new markets and deliver business results, ultimately providing clients with unparalleled value. We are hoping to cultivate a big flower through the synergy of the five modules with different personalities. Please look forward to what's coming next in our CREATIVITY ENGINE BLOOM.