Hakuhodo DY Group continues to expand its presence across the Asia-Pacific region, strengthening its position as a full-service marketing and innovation network. The Group’s growth has been driven by increasing demand for integrated, data-led solutions that blend creativity with digital transformation, analytics, and commerce. Central to this evolution is H+, a regional practice co-led by Hakuhodo Inc. and Hakuhodo DY ONE that unifies the Group’s capabilities under a single strategic network.
Together, Hakuhodo DY’s regional expansion and the H+ practice reflect a vision to create growth through innovation, collaboration, and deeper human understanding across Asia’s fast-changing marketing landscape.
In our latest Agency Leadership Decoded feature, we recently spoke with Michihiko Suganuma, who holds various concurrent roles for the agency: general manager of H+, general manager of Asia DX Strategy Division, senior executive officer of Global Business Group; and board member of HDY One and DAC Asia, to learn more how he juggles multiple leadership roles for the agency across Asia-Pacific, and how he uses his diverse leadership philosophy to not only better understand his team’s unique perspectives across the region but also fostering a culture where both transparency and growth are key to the success of Hakuhodo DY Group in APAC.
Keeping up with multiple agency roles
It is worth noting that Michihiko himself juggles multiple roles within the Hakuhodo DY Group. First off, he responsible for the global division of Hakuhodo DY ONE, a Tokyo-headquartered company within the Hakuhodo DY Group specialising in the digital domain.
Building on this role, they also established H+ in 2022 as the Hakuhodo DY Group’s strategic network for APAC. Said network focuses on expanding the agency’s business through new regional client acquisition and strengthening its capabilities.
“With the launch of H+, we have accelerated the recruitment of multi-disciplinary, digitally-native talent across APAC, enhancing our capabilities in marketing, media, creative, technology, and data management,” he explained.
To achieve this, Michihiko explained that they also strengthened partnerships with many external companies, treating them as part of our extended family, working seamlessly and with a clear mutual learning agenda. Through H+, the Hakuhodo DY Group collectively supports global companies in their communications endeavors, contributing to the creation of new bonds between companies and sei-katsu-sha from a global perspective.
“My leadership philosophy for such diverse teams is built on fostering transparency, trust, and a growth mindset. I prioritise being transparent about our goals and challenges, which helps align everyone towards a common objective. Trust is paramount; empowering team members with ownership and decision-making capabilities is essential for diverse teams to succeed,” he further explained.
Championing a human-centric ethos
For Michihiko, Hakuhodo DY group’s “sei-katsu-sha” philosophy—understanding people’s essential needs from multiple perspectives—is their DNA and guiding compass for mentoring leaders across diverse cultures. Moreover, the core principle of “deeply understanding sei-katsu-sha” is a universal leadership quality.
This ethos influences their leadership development in these main ways:
- Prioritising Local Insights: Encouraging leaders to actively listen to local sei-katsu-sha and deeply explore their insights, moving beyond top-down directives to create locally relevant value. This is not only applicable to how we look at our clients’ briefs, but also how we manage our people in every market.
- Fostering Diverse Problem-Solving: Guiding leaders to collaborate across regions and with partners, leveraging diverse perspectives to solve complex global challenges creatively.
- Building Sustainable Relationships: Mentoring leaders to build long-term, trust-based relationships with clients, partners, and teams, extending value creation beyond immediate business goals to include community contribution.
“Above all, being Sei-katsu-sha focused means that we constantly nurture a spirit of curiosity within our people…there’s no such thing as a bad question! Sei-katsu-sha is a powerful framework for cultivating insightful, adaptable, and ethical leaders for diverse global environments,” he explained.
Consistent success beyond profitability
When asked about how he reconciles the need for global consistency with the hyper-local insights critical to APAC’s fragmented markets, Michihiko noted that their strategy is focused on “global framework, local flexibility”, and is is supported by bidirectional data sharing—global KPIs and local consumer insights—to refine strategy.
“We maintain a consistent global ‘Why’ (brand values, strategy) but empower local teams with maximum autonomy for the ‘How’ (tactics, creative) based on hyper-local insights,” he stated.
He added, “Crucially, H+’s ‘Sei-katsu-sha‘ philosophy guides us to understand people as holistic individuals, allowing us to create resonant communication that respects local nuances while maintaining global brand appeal. This ensures optimal growth across APAC’s diverse markets.”
When asked about how the agency measures its success, Michihiko stated that beyond market share and profitability, true success for H+ lies in ‘creating value that enriches people’s lives and positively impacts society.
“For H+, this means growing client businesses through our ‘Sei-katsu-sha‘ philosophy, and developing communications strategies which can also try to improve daily lives and solve societal issues for long-term trust,” he explained.
Michihiko also added that for next-generation Asian advertising leaders, success is their ability to deeply understand diverse cultures, create optimal solutions, and fulfill social responsibilities to contribute to a sustainable future.
“Ultimately, our shared definition of success is achieving the larger purpose of ‘making people’s lives and society better’ beyond economic gains. At the same time it is crucial that we achieve this while simultaneously growing our business and consistently generating profits as a sustainable and responsible organisation,” he noted.
Career reflection, distillation of leadership philosophy
Asked about on reflecting his career journey with Hakuhodo DY Group, Michiko said that his most enduring contribution to the agency’s global story would be the ‘establishment of a global ecosystem where diverse talents and assets organically co-create new value.’
“This means building a culture and mechanisms for cross-border collaboration, leveraging data and technology for continuous innovation. The rapid adoption of AI and AI Agents has dramatically accelerated this, enabling seamless global data sharing and freeing up teams for creative co-creation,” he stated.
Said vision is actively being pursued, with the agency’s Japan headquarters developing the ‘Creativity Engine Bloom’ platform, and H+ building ‘H+Intelligence,’ a next-generation agency OS.
“I envision this AI-integrated ecosystem, powered by such initiatives, driving the group’s sustainable growth long into the future,” he added.
In terms of distilling his leadership philosophy into one principle, he stated that their principle for the next generation of APAC advertising executives would be: “Always deeply empathise with Sei-katsu-sha,” and that never want to see the human fall out of the loop.
Speaking of said principle, the agency group has a think tank called HILL ASEAN, where they constantly conduct consumer research. They then take this research and knowledge and combine it with the work that H+ is currently doing with ‘AI Sei-katsu-sha’, a key component of H+ Intelligence, and a critical part of tomorrow’s H+ product suite.
With this, the solution allows agency leaders and thought-leaders to “speak” with and learn from Sei-katsu-sha, and to provide clients not only with rear-view mirror learnings, but also heads-up display anticipation.
“This is why whatever new AI initiatives we may take, we always ensure that Sei-katsu-sha is at its heart. In the diverse markets of APAC, no matter how advanced data and AI become, what ultimately moves people’s hearts is the ability to understand and genuinely respond to the emotions, culture, and fundamental needs of the local consumers through empathy. This is the universal and most powerful key to success,” he concluded.
