[SUNNY SIDE UP × BILCOM] Logical and Emotional! A Future Vision of PR from a Business Development Perspective

It has been nearly six months since March 2024, when BILCOM, Inc., a pioneer in PR Tech®, became a member of the SUNNY SIDE UP GROUP.

BILCOM, which launched a management transformation into an AI-native PR company in July 2024 with the mission to “Evolve PR with AI,” and SUNNY SIDE UP, which “creates a fun stir with overwhelming planning power.” While the two companies seem to have contrasting approaches at first glance, a new chemical reaction is already beginning on the ground with unprecedented speed.

How do the key figures accelerating group synergy on the front lines feel now, and what kind of future vision are they drawing? We will uncover the reality through a cross-talk between Arai from SUNNY SIDE UP Inc., and Asano and Wada from BILCOM, Inc.

From left: Asano (BILCOM), Arai (SUNNY SIDE UP), Wada (BILCOM)

Synergies Born from Each Other’s Cultures Months After Joining the Group

— First, please tell us about your current roles and missions.

Asano, BILCOM (hereafter Asano): I am responsible for introducing BILCOM’s cloud-based PR effectiveness measurement tool, “PR Analyzer®,” to clients and seeing them through to implementation. My previous job was at a systems company, and I changed jobs because I was attracted to BILCOM’s business of providing SaaS products and working alongside customers using that framework. Currently, I am running projects together with Arai-san, whose overwhelming driving force helps me every day.

Wada, BILCOM (hereafter Wada): I have been with BILCOM for 10 years. Initially, I was involved in a wide range of tasks such as consulting, but when PR Analyzer® was released, I was deeply impressed by the product and have since experienced every role related to it. Based on that experience, I currently play the role of proposing specific measures in this team. I see myself as a “brain” working alongside Arai-san to help her race forward.

Arai, SUNNY SIDE UP (hereafter Arai): As a business development manager, I act as the front-facing lead to rapidly integrate BILCOM’s “PR Analyzer®” within the SUNNY SIDE UP GROUP and expand it to our clients. Simply put, I am the internal salesperson and the driver of the project. I wanted to do work that finds needs for things that don’t yet exist in the world and expands the business from there, so I requested a transfer from sales to my current department. I am working on “zero to one” projects that create new value from SUNNY SIDE UP.

— It has been nearly six months since you started working on the business together. Do you feel any gaps in corporate climate or culture?

Arai: At first, I felt quite a difference in culture. Everyone at BILCOM is very logical and serious. Many parts of their work are “systematized,” and I feel a strong sense of discipline and thoroughness from everyone. At Sunny, things often move forward with a focus on speed.

Wada: SUNNY SIDE UP has a frank atmosphere and is very bright, isn’t it?

Arai: Basically, we’re always making a lot of noise (laughs).

Wada: BILCOM used to have a culture of using “-san” and a company-wide understanding not to use nicknames or omit honorifics. However, to create an environment where opinions can be exchanged regardless of department or hierarchy, we recently made it a rule to use respectful ways of addressing each other. I call her Arai-san now, but in the future, I’d like to call her “Arai-chan” more casually (laughs).

Arai: I was hoping you would! (laughs)

Asano: I often go to the SUNNY SIDE UP office to talk, and I am amazed by Arai-san’s ability to take action—or rather, her “ability to involve others.” Even during meetings, she will proactively call out to members and bring them in, saying, “If that’s the case…” and everyone is happy to talk. I felt that the free-address seating also creates an environment where it’s easy to have small talk. I go to the SUNNY SIDE UP office once a week, and they prepare a seat for me, setting it up with handmade items to make it easy to use, which I really appreciate.

Arai: I really like this team, and it’s very fun that everyone is moving forward positively toward the same goal. Working with BILCOM, I’ve realized that having solid logic and established rules makes work much easier.

Wada: At BILCOM, there is a lot of movement toward “systematizing rather than relying on individuals” for various tasks, so you might feel a difference there. My impression is that at SUNNY SIDE UP, many things are decided by a person’s enthusiasm and passion. Regarding business development ideas, Arai-san looks at PR Analyzer® objectively and constantly comes up with ideas without hesitation, such as “Maybe we can do this” or “I want to try holding a seminar next term based on this data,” regardless of whether it’s immediately feasible. I’m sure SUNNY SIDE UP has a culture that makes it very easy to keep putting out ideas like that.

Arai: I do have some hesitation about putting out ideas (laughs). However, there is a culture at SUNNY SIDE UP of making sure to communicate what you’ve thought of. The BILCOM side also doesn’t start from a negative stance like “that’s impossible,” but accepts it properly, so it’s an atmosphere where it’s easy to speak up.

Wada: BILCOM has several “BILCOM Principles” that we call “BIL-GEN,” and one of them is “The future is something to be created, not discussed.” Since our base awareness is to have discussions that lead to the future rather than denying ideas, I want to keep doing that. Perhaps our cultures are similar in the way we accept various opinions.

Arai: Even with wild ideas, the conversation always turns into a constructive discussion like “We could use this part,” so I always feel that’s great.

Asano: SUNNY SIDE UP takes those initial ideas and uses that momentum to create them at incredible speed, bringing proposals one after another. That’s exactly where our culture of “frameworks” comes into play. And in terms of driving force, I feel it strongly not only from Arai-san but also from Xiqiao Liu, who is the President and Representative Director of SSU and also a Director of BILCOM. When we held a study session, Arai-san called out to various people and many gathered, but just before it started, Xiqiao also called out “We’re starting!” and even more people came.

Arai: I’m happy to hear that. I do think we have speed and solidarity when moving forward. Regarding a certain regional festival held recently, a casual comment led to rapid realization, and the event was completed at an incredible speed of about three months. While professional work is the prerequisite, I felt like we were all working hard to create it with a sense of a “school festival.” At SUNNY SIDE UP, as the phrase “creating a fun stir” suggests, we find value in things that are “emotional” (emoi), and the desire to do something emotional and wonderful is our driving force. On the other hand, for an event of this scale, we also have calm discussions like “labor costs will be about this much, and to pay it off…” Because we have both emotional passion and proven know-how, we can bring a project to fruition in about three months after it officially starts, as we did with this festival.

Asano: I think it’s a great strength of SUNNY SIDE UP that their organizational structure allows them to move even for an event of that scale. I feel from both the members and Xiqiao that they find value in things that are fun.

Arai: I strongly feel the strength of BILCOM’s ability to identify issues and make data-based proposals stemming from their logical culture, and I am working to permeate that into SUNNY SIDE UP as well. At SUNNY SIDE UP, we used to mostly make proposals for measures or issues that clients already had, but by using PR Analyzer®, we can now identify issues based on data more than ever before and make new proposals from an objective perspective. Even for the results of events, which used to be based only on exposure volume and advertising equivalent value, we can now analyze results using many other indicators, which has significantly improved accuracy.

Logically Analyzing Client Issues with Data and Proposing with High Driving Force

— What is the current status of actual client work?

Asano: Currently, there are about 30 ongoing projects. As Arai-san mentioned earlier regarding data, PR Analyzer® has made it possible to provide indicators that couldn’t be shown before, and there are many cases where clients were actually looking for those indicators. Sometimes the issues haven’t been articulated yet, but they become visible through measurement, and there have been cases where SUNNY SIDE UP has dug deeper from an angle we wouldn’t have thought of.

Arai: While there is the aspect of having client companies sign up for PR Analyzer®, using it as an entry point has also allowed us to expand our target clients. In fact, the number of projects is increasing through that approach. First, using PR Analyzer® before a proposal improves the quality of the proposal, and by looking at past exposure results, we can see what is needed for future measures. There is great value in being able to analyze and propose from various perspectives.

PR Analyzer®

Wada: A major point that resonates with clients is operational efficiency. Many client companies outsource to multiple parties to collect various data and indicators and then manually aggregate them. One of our clients is a major IT platform company that used to spend 20 to 30 hours a month manually aggregating clippings from various media to create reports. With PR Analyzer®, articles are collected automatically and categorized automatically, reducing the man-hours for selection and other tasks to just 1 or 2 hours. The labor-saving and manpower-reduction aspects of PR Analyzer® are things we want people who don’t know about it yet to discover. In large companies, data is often collected separately for each brand they own, but with PR Analyzer®, it can be collected all at once, allowing brand managers to compare data from the same perspective.

Asano: In the case of a long-established edible oil manufacturer centered on sesame oil, we showed them a demo environment of data that could be obtained using many tags, including competitors, and they liked it so much they signed a contract immediately. They had been doing their own measurements internally, but I had heard from the sales representative that they weren’t getting good accuracy, so we had them check the numbers of data obtained from recent TV and web exposure and initiatives. In addition, we made proposals while referring to data on other companies’ movements. The SUNNY SIDE UP sales representative really liked the reporting function, as the ability to easily convert graphed data into PDFs significantly reduces man-hours. I heard that the manufacturer’s reaction was also very positive.

Arai: We were able to make a proposal in a similar way for a major medical services company, right?

Asano: That’s right. It was our first attempt to include PR Analyzer® within SUNNY SIDE UP’s retainer PR proposal, and we created materials with a structure that we thought would hit the mark.

Arai: When measuring effectiveness from a corporate perspective, there is a limit to how much you can see with just the total number of exposures or advertising equivalent costs. Therefore, we emphasized that by using the “tag function” of PR Analyzer®, you can instantly split and analyze whether the exposure is an “IR-related topic” or “what genre of topic” it is. This allows a company to objectively analyze whether the topics they want to put out are actually being released. This logic really resonated, and we successfully received approval for implementation.

Asano: From a perspective unique to SUNNY SIDE UP sales representatives, they are approaching clients with new ideas that BILCOM didn’t have, such as “If we have this weapon, we might be able to support that client’s PR activities.”

Arai: We conducted an internal survey at SUNNY SIDE UP to identify the concerns sales representatives have regarding effectiveness measurement and the challenges of collecting and summarizing indicators, and we are approaching companies that match. My impression is that there are many cases where companies have many brands or are foreign-affiliated and are looking for reach. We are currently shaping our approach to match real-world PR concerns.

Maximizing the Potential of Data — Toward a Future Where Essential PR Becomes Mainstream

— Finally, please tell us about the future of the PR industry as you see it and the visions you would like to challenge in the future.

Asano: I’m not in a position to speak about such big things, but as Wada mentioned earlier, I want to firmly propose that PR Analyzer® is not just a tool to reduce man-hours, but that the accumulated data and indicators can be utilized for the next measures. PR work has a strong image of being busy. In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for improvements in work-life balance, and I believe we can contribute to that as well. While the use of AI is progressing in various aspects, I think a good form of PR will eventually emerge where tasks that don’t need to be done by humans are left to AI and systems to streamline, allowing people to focus on what only humans can do.

Wada: I have been with BILCOM for a long time, and regarding effectiveness measurement, I make a conscious effort to update information and knowledge within the company every year. In that process, it has become standard for us not to use advertising equivalent costs for effectiveness measurement, but in making proposals to various clients, I feel that many still use advertising equivalent costs as their primary indicator. If you chase advertising equivalent costs too much, you get exhausted. It ends up being about just getting on one TV show, which becomes non-essential PR. I think it will be difficult to change that, but we are proposing and delivering in a way that uses reach as a KPI (Key Performance Indicator). We released PR Analyzer® as a tool for essential PR, so I hope to promote better PR together with SUNNY SIDE UP.

Arai: This might be a bit of a big topic, but I’d like to speak from a business development perspective. The business BILCOM is doing, including PR Analyzer®, is a “data-handling business.” In the coming AI era, data will become extremely important, and I feel there is still plenty of room for how that data is segmented and utilized. The reason I’m constantly asking the team if we can use data in certain ways is because I feel a great potential there. While utilizing various data, I first want to further expand the foundation of PR itself.

— It’s precisely because of the AI era that the value of accumulated data will increase even further.

Arai: I believe so. And as Asano-san said, we want to use data to refine the strategic part—the part before “creating a fun stir” that SUNNY is good at—to figure out how to move things to make that stir successful. I want to further strengthen that with this team. By enhancing each other’s strengths and creating a new, beautiful form, the company should become even stronger.

Asano: I really think this is a great team. Wada has the experience and understanding of systems to constantly come up with proposals for transitioning from current clipping to tools. And we have Arai-san, who has overwhelming driving force and action, doing internal sales and immediately going to find the right person for things others might hesitate on. I think the results are because of this team, and I want to continue building this synergy.

Wada: I also hope we can change together to promote essential PR while sharing each other’s knowledge.

BILCOM, which systematizes data and technology as “logic,” and SUNNY SIDE UP, which moves the world with overwhelming passion and “emotional resonance.” This cross-talk revealed the real current situation where each other’s strengths are fused at a high level on the ground, leading to concrete results.

As the importance of data in the AI era grows, the “logical and emotional” challenge launched by this team is sure to significantly rewrite the way PR works and the standards of the PR industry. The synergy between the two companies has only just begun; please look forward to the proposals that BILCOM and SUNNY SIDE UP will launch in the future.