Exclusive interview with Hakuhodo Keithly CEO Toshinori Shigematsu: To make web3 popular with the masses

We spoke to Hakuhodo Keithly's CEO, Shigematsu, who is promoting web3 projects with a variety of client and partner companies and hosting global hackathons, about trends in the web3 field and his company's future prospects.

Resolving various issues, from team building to development

Please tell us about Hakuhodo Key3’s business.

Toshinori Shigematsu (hereinafter Shigematsu): We are an independent subsidiary, but we are also in a position like Hakuhodo's web3 specialist unit. Sota Watanabe of Aster Network is also a board member, and we are a joint venture that Hakuhodo and he co-founded.

Hakuhodo's business originally started from solving social and corporate problems.

We have strengths in "sei-katsu-sha insight," a philosophy that provides deep insight into consumers, and in creativity, so we are a company that uses these to solve problems that could not be solved by Web 2.0 until now using new web3 technology.

We are working on things like using web3 technology to launch new businesses for companies, and whether web3 can increase engagement between fans and brands. We also help companies solve challenges that have been difficult to solve as a company through global hackathons.

Last year, we held several hackathons in cooperation with Toyota, Mazda, Mitsubishi Estate, and others.

You were originally the Shanghai branch manager of Yomiuri Advertising, but how did you come to be appointed CEO of Hakuhodo Keithly?

Shigematsu: I joined Yomiuri Advertising as a new graduate and was in charge of real estate advertising for four years. I think I was very lucky to start in this field. That's because real estate advertising has a very wide range of work to be involved in.

For example, in addition to producing and distributing inserts, we also produce websites, pamphlets, and blueprints. TV commercials, sales center models, and videos to be shown in theaters are also produced by advertising companies. I was involved in everything from small to big things at once, so I'm grateful that I was able to get off to a good start as an advertising man.

One particularly memorable experience was when I was in charge of a new apartment building in the Bay Area with my senior colleague in 2001, 23 years ago. We put tempered glass on the walls and floors of the sales center and laid out TVs all over the place, and when people stood on them, they flew over the sea and arrived at the property. Looking back, I think that was VR.

Around 2005, the importance of the Chinese market increased, and Yomiuri Advertising also discussed entering the Chinese market. There was only room for one person to be a start-up member, but for some reason I, who had been with the company for five years, was chosen and ended up being stationed in Shanghai.

Before I went, I thought I would come back in about three years, but I found it interesting to learn Chinese and use it to work locally, and before I knew it, I had been there for 12 years.

One memorable job was working for a Japanese sports drink in 2013. At the time, there was a Guinness World Record of people from 80 countries in one sauna, so we tried to surpass that record by cramming people from 99 countries into one sauna (laughs), and when they came out, we filmed a video of them drinking the sports drink with gusto, and used that as a PR promotion.

We were successfully certified by Guinness, and it was also broadcast on Chinese news programs. We also installed a lot of interactive content using projection mapping and Kinect in the production factory, and had it certified as a factory tour route for nearby elementary schools.

Tens of thousands of people have participated in this factory tour so far, and it was a very rewarding job. By the way, the Guinness World Record for saunas was broken in Finland in 2019 with the participation of 103 countries (laughs).

The feeling of fighting a guerilla war in China was very appealing, but at the same time, I had a small anxiety about whether I would be able to work properly with large companies in Japan in the future.

I've always liked new technology, so after returning to Japan, I joined a metaverse-related subsidiary of a large company as a director. It was just during the COVID-19 pandemic, and there was a time when business exhibitions could not be held at all, so I tried to hold them in the metaverse space.

You can exhibit and participate in business exhibitions from home, and you can collect data on which PDFs of which products visitors are looking at. At the time, it was a big topic that you could get business cards for new sales even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Around the same time, I happened to have the opportunity to come into contact with blockchain. I bought cryptocurrency for the first time in 2017, but I think I really started to get involved around 2021. After studying it, I came to understand the idea that "the condition for the establishment of the metaverse is web3."

I thought that true metaverse life would only be possible when it became possible to prove my identity in the metaverse, prove that the clothes I put on my avatar are my own, or do work and get paid and convert that into legal tender, and other such proof and economic activity could take place within the metaverse.

Around the time I was tweeting about this on social media, Hakuhodo heard about starting a new blockchain company and contacted me to join. Just as I sensed a big trend in 2005 and moved to China at the time, I felt that web3 would definitely be coming in 2023, and so I jumped into this industry.