Dentsu turns 125, and Sano says thank you for the ride

TOKYO: Dentsu just hit a birthday most agencies only dream of. The Japanese advertising and marketing behemoth turned 125 on Wednesday, and its top boss, Takeshi Sano, marked the occasion not with balloons and confetti but with a heartfelt note on LinkedIn, part victory lap, part love letter to everyone who helped the company get here.

Sano, who holds the dual charge of president and global ceo of dentsu, and ceo of dentsu japan, opened his post by calling the milestone a moment to pause rather than pop champagne. In his words, it is “certainly a moment to celebrate, but above all, it is a moment to reflect with gratitude.” No prizes for guessing where the emphasis lay.

He was quick to note that no business writes its own success story solo. Dentsu’s 125 years, he said, have been built on the trust of clients, the partnership of countless organisations, and the graft of its own people across generations.

The story, as Sano told it, began in 1901 when founder Hoshio Mitsunaga set up a news agency in Japan, banking on the simple idea that communication could bring people, businesses and society closer together. That modest start has since snowballed into a global network of roughly 67,000 people spread across some 120 markets, a rather tidy return on a founder’s hunch.

But Sano was careful to point out that scale isn’t the real headline. The bigger story, he reckons, is the generations of people who built the company alongside the clients and partners who pushed it to do better.

Running dentsu at this particular juncture, Sano wrote, is an honour, and he sees the company’s founding spirit, curiosity, creativity and innovation, alive in the “One Team” ethos his people bring to solving client problems and chasing new opportunities every single day.

The world, Sano conceded, has changed beyond recognition since 1901. What hasn’t budged, he insisted, is dentsu’s commitment to client growth and to building lasting value for society alongside its partners. Looking ahead, he said the plan is refreshingly unglamorous: put clients first, keep innovating, and keep delivering outcomes that matter, for clients, for people, and for society at large. That, in his view, is the only way to keep earning trust with the next generation coming up.

Sano signed off with gratitude squarely at the centre, thanking clients, partners, colleagues and friends worldwide for 125 years of backing. As he put it, “the first 125 years were only possible because of you.”

A hundred and twenty-five years, one Tokyo news wire, and 67,000 people later, dentsu isn’t just counting candles, it’s counting the company it kept along the way. Here’s to the next chapter, One Team at a time.