“Content Isn’t for Humans Anymore”? dentsu Unveils Future Vision at Seichō 2025

At Seichō 2025, dentsu brought together industry leaders, innovators, and visionaries to explore how brands can harness innovation to drive meaningful change.

The event for the agency’s clients, hosted at Outernet in London on Wednesday March 26th, focused on transforming ambition into action, with sessions covering AI-driven brand building, redefining consumer experiences, and the future of marketing in an ever-evolving landscape.

Through insightful talks and collaborative discussions, figures from dentsu’s agencies and clients unpicked and debated strategies to navigate the complexities of today's market and create lasting impact, with ideas shared on how to move forward.

Above: the Seichō Forest

In her opening address, Annette Male, chief executive officer of dentsu UK & Ireland, spoke about the forces reshaping marketing: how AI, shifting consumer expectations and economic uncertainty are redefining success.

The UK&I chief addressed the welcoming experience that guests had witnessed in the preceding breakfast reception, which made the most of Outernet’s incredible technology to showcase the Seichō Forest – a breathtaking animated immersive scene of Japanese cherry blossoms, as well as the deep roots that power them.

“This isn't just a stunning visual,” she elaborated. “It's a powerful symbol of who we are and what we aspire to be. The Seichō Forest draws inspiration from the beauty of the Japanese cherry blossom. It's a symbol of renewal and transformation. At its core, the forest embodies the cultural roots that we have here at dentsu and the key aspirations that define us. They are interconnectedness, the power of collaboration to build something greater than the sum of its parts; innovation, a relentless drive to make sure that we are pushing boundaries using creativity and technology to transform brands; and also impact, ensuring that everything that we do drives positive outcomes – not just for businesses, but for people and society as a whole. This forest is a story of potential progress and purpose. But the real challenge that we face today is not just imagining the future – it's shaping it, turning possibility into reality, balancing dreaming with actually doing something.” 

UK consumer confidence has plummeted, and Annette shared – speaking in the week of chancellor Rachel Reeves’ bleak Spring Statement – that consumers are more discerning than ever about where they spend, how they engage, and what they expect from the brands they buy from.

At the same time, there are significant levels of change in organisations, with Annette explaining that according to dentsu’s CMO Navigator research, over the next five years, chief marketing officers estimate that over 70% of revenue will come from products, services or businesses that don’t yet exist. In this time of evolution and change, trust, transparency, and a bold vision for the future are essential for brands looking to lead.

That’s something that dentsu is already seeing in its research into CMO perspectives and their investment choices. Annette highlighted a noted shift of spend from lead generation towards brand awareness and credibility building. “There is a recognition that reputation and authenticity will continue to be critical for building that consumer trust,” she said, before turning back to the symbolic metaphor of the day. “And just as the forest reaches upwards, adapting with each passing season, the brands that will lead the future are those that embrace this change.”

The day’s first external speaker gave the broadest possible context in a speech on the business and market implications of geopolitical developments from Tina Fordham, a trailblazer in the field of political risk.

Forces Reshaping Marketing

As Tina’s keynote indicated, the world is changing rapidly – potentially more rapidly than ever, according to upcoming research she alluded to. So-called ‘black swan events’ such as recessions, pandemics and wars seem to be coming more frequently than ever before… But they don’t come out of nowhere. As Tina noted, people were speaking at conferences like Davos about the threat of a pandemic way before covid-19 hit, even if their talks were under-attended by C-suite figures. With that in mind, her advice to business leaders was to “listen to the people with depressing stories.”

AI-Driven Brand Building: Creating Immersive Realities

The world of brand marketing is evolving beyond campaigns and into immersive, ever-adapting realities. In this compelling session, Kulvinder Hari (senior director solution engineering at Salesforce) and Christopher Schyma (chief transformation officer at dentsu CXM) spoke about transforming brands into world-builders – creating experiences that seamlessly blend the physical, virtual, and even dream worlds. The leading brands of the future will enhance human capabilities, craft environments that help people achieve their goals, and build a North Star vision rooted in long-term success, staying ahead, and thriving in an ever-changing world of possibilities.

In a world beyond brand experiences, into brand systems, Chris envisioned brands as “the concierge and the gatekeeper between people and the world around you. Just like Isabella in ‘Encanto’, where the flowers pave the way to new opportunities. ‘What else can I do?’. This will demand that brands empathically anticipate unimagined needs, dynamically responding and adapting to the world around them and creating seamless pathways for consumers as they go about their day-to-day lives, doing the heavy lifting to free them up for what matters most.

“This will be a world where different agents get together and network, creating opportunities for brands[...] to reinvent themselves, bring that world together, think beyond the boundaries.”

Deeper into the future, Chris delved beyond brand systems into brand realities, imagining the futures that your brand could make possible. “Create a North Star that helps us to build that vision for the next three to five years,” he said. “A brand vision that's built for a future world – [one] that creates a roadmap for us to make decisions as we transition in the short term. In doing so, what we will get is something that is radically better today and developed towards an aspirational vision, all with a clear development roadmap. At the beginning, I said that your brand is your superpower. But in the future world, your brand will need to give people superpowers. Let's imagine together how we can build a brand fit for that future.”

Content Isn’t for Humans Anymore

Considering AI and the brands of the future led the room to become a little more heated, as two groups of experts hotly debated the role of humans versus AI in tomorrow’s content and digital experiences, answering the question of whether content of the future should be created with humans or AI in mind. In an age of agentic AI making purchasing decisions for consumers, marketers will need to consider that research ahead of purchases will increasingly be done by AI. The discussion highlighted a sharp rise in the interconnectedness of people, organisations and objects: a shift that’s transforming the role of the marketer.

However, it was also pointed out that humans will still crave emotional connection no matter how augmented our lives become, so brands will still do well to deliver that. As Dentsu Creative editorial director Matilda Egere-Cooper put it, “There is no culture without humans at the heart of it.” So, unless brands want to give up hope on being part of culture, considering humans and creating for them will never get old. In a gentle moment of audience participation, the crowd voted in favour of continuing to make content for humans – a relief for all the homo sapiens in the room.

Harnessing Innovation for Progress

Innovation isn’t just about disruption – it’s about progress. In this session, Alex Hamilton (head of innovation at dentsu) and Ashley Knight (head of strategy at Dentsu Lab) encouraged guests to imagine how brands can harness emerging technologies to drive meaningful change. From AI-powered accessibility solutions to mixed-reality experiences, the Dentsu Lab team demonstrated how innovation, when designed with intention, can enhance human potential, transform industries, and create lasting positive impact for businesses and society.

Ashley warned against the “race to short term value creation where technology is often misinterpreted as innovation.” The dentsu’s innovation team finds that the human need is often being overlooked when brands take this approach. “Which is a challenge because CMOs are telling us that that broader societal and human need is a really big motivation for their innovation efforts,” she continued. “That is something that needs to change in the way they think about innovation, change the processes, and the techniques they use to innovate and reframe how they can do so – putting the human need at the centre.”

Seichō 2025 Is Just the Beginning

Throughout the event, attendees were encouraged to dream of the future, but didn’t lose sight of the doing. Showing the practical outcomes of transforming ambition into action, the day’s insights were brought alive through two inspirational case studies:

With sleep quality declining and media consumption a major culprit, IKEA set out to transform perceptions of its beds and mattresses by making media part of the solution. In partnership with dentsu, IKEA turned bedtime media moments into sleep-inducing experiences: hijacking TV continuity announcements, launching a podcast designed to be unfinished, and even persuading gamers to power down. The result? A major shift in brand perception and a surge in mattress sales, delivering 75 million extra nights of quality sleep.

In the second example, it was observed that talking about death is one of life’s biggest taboos, yet avoiding the conversation can make things harder for loved ones. To this end, Co-op Funeralcare, in partnership with Carat, used bold media strategies to spark national conversations about end-of-life wishes. From heartfelt obituaries during covid-19 to the groundbreaking ‘Celebrity Send-Off’ series featuring stars like Shaun Ryder and Kriss Akabusi, the campaign drove millions of views and transformed perceptions.