Developing new digital B2C services and Artificial Intelligence Computer Vision Engine with Dentsu and Gigster

Background

One our largest clients, a Japanese imaging manufacturer, was encountering a dramatic decline in existing business. For this client, the sudden ubiquity of smartphone cameras and paperless business operations posed an existential threat. Dentsu Group was engaged by the client's regional headquarter in New York, to navigate the company through the digital transformation vision, road map, and execution planning process. 

Challenge/Issue

The client possessed a wealth of customer data but faced various digital challenges. “How do we understand customers’ behavior through data?”  “How do we leverage customer data to enhance existing business and create new business of the future?” Dentsu and DENTSU SOKEN worked closely with the client across multiple departments to propose a holistic vision to address their short to long term digital needs.

Solutions

One of the goals of the DX effort was to create an Artificial Intelligence Computer Vision (AI CV) Engine to serve as the foundation for new future businesses. In order to achieve this goal, customer engagement centric data acquisition strategy lay at the core of the initiative. Dentsu, DENTSU SOKEN and Gigster* worked together to deliver with the front end customer facing online community for professional photographers and the back end AI CV engine.

Online Photographer Community: A platform where photographers organize, explore, challenge and share their images with their clients. This platform enables the client to acquire insights into customer’s preferences and behavior. It also gathers imaging data to train the AI engine and continuously enhance the community’s user experience.

Imaging AI Computer Vision Engine: Some of the CV modules include object and emotion detection, quality identification, and photography composition analysis.

*From ideation to implementation of both solutions, DENTSU SOKEN and Dentsu teamed up with Gigster, a San Francisco based custom software development company made up of top global talent leveraging latest advanced technology. DENTSU SOKEN team was responsible for managing the account and Gigster development team, client expectation, and unblocking client side challenges to execute Agile development in a Waterfall environment.

Result

The community features have evolved since its first launch and now has over 15K+ active users on the platform.  Imaging AI has gained traction with the client’s headquarters in Japan which has expanded the project beyond the US and beyond the initial scope. These projects not only delivered new products. They became the catalyst for enabling a mindself shift for the client to truly embrace a company wide transformation.