Hakuhodo has taken a majority stake in a new joint-venture, BrandXing ('Brandcrossing'), set to open for business in June with over 50 staff on the payroll. Masahiko Hara, currently deputy GM in one of Hakuhodo's account service units, will be president.
Three other partners are also involved in the venture: Toppan Printing, Digital Advertising Consortium (DAC) and IBM Business Consulting. Each provides a different area of expertise: branding from Hakuhodo; marketing execution from Toppan, which also runs its own call centres; interactive media solutions from DAC; and consulting from IBM.
Meanwhile, Dentsu will shortly launch a company offering cross media planning and content production, in preparation for increasing take-up of digital broadcasts and internet TV in Japan. The country's first mobile phone broadcasts started earlier this month. The new venture, Cross Wind, will be a JV between Dentsu and cyber communications inc (cci), in which Dentsu has majority ownership, with five staff at launch and run by a cci executive whom Dentsu said could not be named at presstime.