Driving the Emergence of New Value for Society with AI-Powered Creativity

I would like to extend my best wishes for a peaceful and prosperous New Year and to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude for your ongoing warm support of the Hakuhodo DY Group's activities.

AI and other technologies are evolving at speed, shifting the premises of society and industry. Regardless, we human beings continue to pose creative questions, as we have done through the ages. If AI derives answers from its vast stores of knowledge, it is we humans that assign meaning to these answers and generate new value from them. Being boundlessly questioning and able to generate systems and stories from our questions is a uniquely human form of intelligence and, I believe, the starting point of creativity.

The Hakuhodo DY Group is evolving beyond the framework of an integrated advertising company into a creativity platform that solves challenges for society and sei-katsu-sha (our term for the holistic person) based on creativity. AI-Powered Creativity, a core philosophy we announced last year, combines the knowledge of AI with the creativity of human beings to more deeply understand challenges faced by people and society and to navigate to creative solutions. Today, this thinking permeates every project undertaken within the Group and its full-scale implementation is now well underway.

The approach not only applies to marketing but across a wide array of social domains, including corporate transformation, regional revitalization, the upgrading of life infrastructure, and beyond. I believe that making dormant value visible, and connecting people, technology and culture to generate new value, is precisely the social role of creativity that the Group should commit itself to.

The seeds of innovation emerge when diverse knowledge and sensibilities converge and influence one another. I want the Hakuhodo DY Group to be an entity that supports such "creative emergence." The force that drives this creative emergence is the internal motivation of individuals. By posing creative questions, assigning meaning and continuing to learn, organizations and society gradually evolve forward.

The Hakuhodo DY Group believes in human creativity. Our mission, I believe, is to create stories that give sei-katsu-sha and society hope for the future--that is, to create narratives of hope.

I hope and pray that 2026 will be a year brimming with new challenges and growth for all of you and look forward to your continued support again this year.

Yasuo Nishiyama
Representative Director & President
Hakuhodo DY Holdings