Hakuhodo forms a capital and business partnership with AI experts Laboro.AI

Hakuhodo Inc., a leading integrated marketing and innovation company headquartered in Tokyo, is pleased to announce that it has formed a capital and business partnership with Tokyo-based Laboro.AI Inc., through a stock acquisition. Laboro.AI possesses a high level of expertise in artificial intelligence (AI), including supplying custom AI systems. The partnership will enable Hakuhodo to offer faster support to clients seeking to grow their business through digital transformation (DX).

Thanks to advances in digital technology, sei-katsu-sha* now constantly interact with everything around them. That has led to an increase in the types and volume of sei-katsu-sha data. Companies are starting to leverage the resulting big data. Marketers too need to take their marketing to a new level by using new technologies like AI to better understand sei-katsu-sha insights and enhance the value of the customer experience.

Hakuhodo has a track record of helping clients grow their business by applying full-funnel, data-driven marketing to deliver one-stop solutions, from identifying marketing challenges to finding answers to them.

Laboro.AI develops custom AI systems in a wide range of technical fields, including image recognition, natural language processing, and voice recognition. It also offers consulting on AI rollout and implementation. By leveraging its technical knowledge of AI, coupled with its understanding of how business is actually done, it has built a track record of supporting clients in transforming their business across the value chain. It helps them with problem-solving, developing new business ventures, and more.

Under the new partnership, the two companies will organize a team dedicated to delivering made-to-order AI solutions to marketing challenges confronting clients in many different industries. By combining Hakuhodo’s marketing prowess with Laboro.AI’s AI expertise, this team will offer a full range of services, from using AI to identify and define challenges and recommend solutions, to development, commercial implementation, and operation of AI systems matching each company’s requirements. It will deliver made-to-order solutions tailored to the individual client’s challenges and sei-katsu-sha’s needs. One example: developing and implementing a preference-based recommendation algorithm. Another example: upgrading CRM using a predictive model of customer behavior.

In the future, besides helping clients take their marketing to a new level, the two companies intend to deliver made-to-order AI systems across the value chain. They will also deliver advanced AI services designed to support business growth across all sections of the supply chain. These include, for example, production planning support using demand forecasts, new product development support based on VOC analytics, and customer behavior analysis using AI cameras.