[Interview with Yoichi Obata, Director & COO, and Noriko Kobayashi, Executive Officer, of UNCOVER TRUTH Inc.] Creating the “Reason to be Chosen” Through Data and AI: The Pride of a Boutique Firm Tackling LTV Maximization

UNCOVER TRUTH Inc. supports corporate marketing activities from a customer perspective — from data collection and integration through to strategic utilization. Centered on large corporations, the company handles everything end-to-end, from CDP (Customer Data Platform) construction to advanced marketing initiatives leveraging AI.

What the company is aiming for is not mere tool implementation. By deeply understanding each customer’s attributes and the context at each touchpoint, it supports “hyper-personalization” — realizing 1-to-1 marketing at unprecedented scale and granularity — and the realization of a new customer communication that supports LTV management for companies.

Every Friday is positioned as “a day to invest in organizational strengthening rather than client work” — the unique culture of investing in the organization’s future and individual growth is all in service of maximizing performance as professionals.

Two leaders with unconventional careers speak about the form of consulting that bridges the gap between technology and literacy, and the future of “a happy relationship with customers” that data utilization brings. We asked COO and Director Yoichi Obata and Executive Officer Noriko Kobayashi about the vision the company holds and the kind of talent it is seeking.

From Strategy to Implementation, Including AI Utilization — Accompanying Support for the Structural Transformation Needed to Realize Corporate LTV Management

— Could you tell us about the current business?

Obata: We provide end-to-end support from customer data collection and integration through to utilization. The “monozukuri (product creation)” phase — covering CDP requirements definition, design, and construction — and the “CRM and accompanying support” phase — strategically leveraging that data to accelerate business — are collectively called the consulting business.

On the other hand, separate from the consulting business, we also operate a stock business handling our own developed products — such as “Content Analytics,” an analytics platform that uses AI to automatically analyze website user data and propose specific initiatives. Revenue is approximately split 50-50 between the stock model and consulting model.

Kobayashi oversees the overall consulting business, while I oversee the marketing and sales that bring our services to society.

Kobayashi: The axis of supporting everything from data collection through to utilization has not changed since our founding. The content we cover spans the entire marketing funnel, and with a deep data analytics capability for customer understanding at our core, we provide accompanying support for the structural transformation needed to realize corporate LTV management.

— What kinds of clients do you most often work with?

Obata: The majority of our clients are major enterprises leading diverse industries — retail, sports, entertainment, food, apparel, financial, and more. Rather than packaged, one-size-fits-all solutions, we carefully listen to each company’s challenges and phase, and provide everything from requirements definition through CDP construction and CRM support in an end-to-end fashion, taking each company’s market environment, business challenges, and data environment into account. Our highly flexible support structure is a strength.

— Could you tell us more about the roles that consultants play?

Kobayashi: The consulting unit supporting the field has approximately 50 members, structured across three roles: PM (Project Manager), data analyst, and data engineer.

The minimum structure for supporting a single company is one person from each role — a team of three. But when handling the initial phase of large-scale CDP construction, it is not unusual to approach it with a six- or seven-person structure and spend approximately one year for thorough requirements definition.

On average, a single PM handles four to five projects. Rather than acting as “external consultants,” we thoroughly commit to a style of embedding deeply as a member of the client’s team.

Long-term relationships are the norm with clients receiving consulting support. CDP is not something you build and call done — it’s important to continue correctly analyzing the collected data and applying it to marketing. We provide continuous accompanying support so that the strategy and tactics designed from the upstream don’t end up as “a plan that was never meant to be executed,” and so that the execution team can keep running PDCA cycles based on data.

— Does this often lead to spin-off projects in response to each client’s phase?

Obata: Yes. As collected data increases after CDP construction, many clients naturally want to visualize the “context” of their business — what kinds of customers with what kinds of needs are using their products and services, and what kinds of customer segments are purchasing. By finding this context from data and understanding customers’ true intentions, effective marketing initiatives can be launched. So it’s not unusual for CDP construction to be the springboard to developing new initiative planning and building a customer communication foundation.

For example, apparel and retail companies that operate both stores and EC often face the challenge of “online and offline data being fragmented.” For these clients, we may take on OMO (Online Merges with Offline) — working to seamlessly integrate online and offline data and improve the customer experience on both sides.

Kobayashi: In terms of deeply understanding each customer’s attributes and the context at each touchpoint, AI utilization is also an important tool — not just enriching the data foundation. So we also work to align what kind of data infrastructure AI needs to function well. The fusion of online and offline as a method has long been established, while cases where it has not necessarily translated into improved satisfaction and value for the end consumer — the user — stand out. We want to thoroughly support clients in establishing marketing initiatives that use data and AI in combination to create new value for both end users and clients.

Every Friday Is “a Day to Invest in Organizational Strengthening” — The Unique Culture That Nurtures Professionalism

— You mentioned that many of your clients are BtoC companies. What kinds of roles and positions do you most often engage with in providing support?

Obata: Most commonly, division heads and CxO-level individuals in marketing and digital divisions. In regular meetings, we engage with a wide range of people from division head level through to member level.

Being able to engage with major enterprises and people in central leadership roles is a significant source of learning and growth for our employees.

— Is the day-to-day working style primarily on-site at clients, or primarily online? Could you tell us about the normal work style?

Obata: Basically, 80 to 90% is online, but we also value periodic in-person conversations depending on the client’s situation.

In terms of our working style: once we switched to full remote during COVID, in 2020 a system of “gathering once a week” was launched, and to this day only Fridays are a day when everyone comes into the office. We analyzed all employees’ workloads by classifying work into “work that can be driven remotely” and “work that is more effective when gathered together” using a two-axis matrix of importance and urgency. The analysis showed that work that is more effective when gathered was around 17 to 18% of total workload at the time, which provided the rationale that gathering once a week was efficient.

— Do members who are on-site at client locations also come back to the office on that day?

Obata: Yes. Clients have understood our thinking of four days on-site and the remaining day dedicated to member development, and we have built a strong relationship of trust on that basis.

Where Unconventional Careers Intersect — Where “Lovers of New Things” Ended Up

— Could you tell us about your career backgrounds? Mr. Obata, could you go first?

Obata: I’m a bit unusual — in my teens I was drawn to the craftsmen in the field and entered the world of construction, and then transitioned to the IT industry around the same time my peers were graduating from university.

— That’s a fascinating background! What kind of business did you handle at the IT company you moved to?

Obata: I experienced the subscription billing model of the feature phone era — “one ringtone for 100 yen” and so on — and in a BtoB SaaS business I later launched, it grew to become one of Japan’s largest BtoB solution businesses, adopted by over 50 of the top 100 companies in the EC industry by revenue. It was at that point that I met our current Representative Director, Ishikawa. It was still a company that had just been founded, but I wanted to take on the challenge — also encouraged by Ishikawa’s invitation — and joined the company very soon after its founding.

— Thank you. Ms. Kobayashi, could you tell us about your career as well?

Kobayashi: My career started joining a construction company in an administrative role as a new graduate. I had originally loved hardware — to the point of building my own PC — and used that experience to teach PC operation to senior colleagues and managers within the construction company. That experience was the catalyst for transitioning into an instructor role and stepping into the digital world.

About three years into working as an instructor, Yahoo! and Google and other internet players began to emerge. To ride that wave, I moved to an email marketing company — one of the major internet advertising methods of the time — and worked in consulting sales.

— An unconventional career change from administrative work as well, Ms. Kobayashi.

Kobayashi: Yes. The email marketing company was later acquired by an internet advertising agency, and I transferred there and experienced launching new businesses in adtech tools and SEO. I also built business schemes for international business development. After that, I studied in the United States for a year, and then moved to another company to be involved in a big data utilization project — always placing myself at the forefront of new technology and also launching new businesses using the latest technology of the time.

— Why did both of you choose UNCOVER TRUTH as your environment?

Kobayashi: I had the opportunity to work on a project together with our current Representative Director Ishikawa at my previous employer, and I found that UNCOVER TRUTH’s culture and atmosphere suited me. I became convinced that at UNCOVER TRUTH, I could take on genuine challenge resolution using the latest technology.

Obata: I had about ten offers at the time, but what made the difference was being persistently wooed by Ishikawa at a coffee shop in Roppongi. The feeling of great potential in the vision of “bridging the gap between technology and literacy through consulting” also pushed me to join.

Seeking People Who “Make Clients Their Own” and Can Become Immersed

— What kind of mindset do you want in the people who join as colleagues?

Kobayashi: Someone who has passion for their work and works while feeling that their own growth connects to the company’s growth. We are looking for people who can hold appropriate accountability for significant autonomy and work comfortably.

Obata: I would add — someone who can “make clients’ situations their own concern.” Looking at members within the company, many of them visit clients’ brand stores and buy products, deepening their understanding through firsthand experience — and the impression is of people who are genuinely immersed in and focused on the brands they handle. For people who have the passion to want to deeply know their clients, the work at our company is a highly rewarding environment. With that stance, by going deep into the field and accumulating knowledge at the implementation level, and with the aspiration to eventually handle upstream business and management strategy design — it is with people like that that I want to create new markets together.

— What level of skill set and experience do you look for?

Obata: It varies significantly by position, and there are of course positions where we hire without experience. For PM slots, however, a certain level of industry understanding and practical marketing experience is required. For those who might be hired without experience — for example, people who have driven marketing at operating companies, or people who have accumulated deep client understanding through BtoB support — I believe they would be able to bring their abilities to full expression.

— Going forward, are there any domains you are particularly focused on?

Kobayashi: Through full-scale utilization of generative AI, we are aiming for the realization of “a user-led world” — the vision we have held since our founding.
By “user-led” here, we mean a society where consumers “can get the information they want, at the timing they want it, without hesitation.”

As one of the steps toward that realization, at the end of March 2026 we launched “AXUA,” an AI-driven marketing infrastructure service leveraging next-generation AI.

AXUA merges data and AI, and leverages AI agents designed based on our proprietary know-how to deeply understand each customer’s attributes and the context at each touchpoint. We believe this will enable us to support “hyper-personalization” — realizing 1-to-1 marketing at unprecedented scale and granularity.

Obata: When “means” such as MA or CDP implementation come up as agenda items in the marketing domain, they tend to become goals in themselves. But what BtoC companies should truly be aiming for is a state of “always being chosen” by users — building engagement and managing toward maximizing LTV (lifetime customer value). As populations decline and markets shrink, the importance of each individual customer is greater than ever. Getting users who have begun a relationship with you to keep using your company’s products and services, and even becoming fans who introduce people they know — building this kind of relationship with users is a shared challenge for every company in the modern era. I hope to put out support that helps even one more company fulfill this purpose.

Kobayashi: Product quality, customer service, and other factors are of course important for becoming a company that is loved by each individual. But we want to use digital infrastructure and technology to co-create with clients the “reasons to be chosen.” The ultimate means to that is “hyper-personalization.” What is important is identifying the right level of closeness — so that customers feel “I’m glad to be recommended this product at this timing.”

Obata: The realization of this “hyper-personalization” is the most cutting-edge domain being pursued globally right now — and is the main battleground going forward. With consulting capability and technology in tandem, we want UNCOVER TRUTH to take the lead in this challenge.

※ Press Release ※
UNCOVER TRUTH Launches “AXUA,” a Data Infrastructure Service Realizing Enterprise Marketing AX with Next-Generation AI
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000062.000012096.html

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【Post-Interview Note】

UNCOVER TRUTH Inc. — Company Information

Address	Shibuya Infoss Tower 13F, 20-1 Sakuragaoka-cho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0031
Representative	Representative Director: Keizo Ishikawa
Founded	April 24, 2013
Capital	¥10,000,000
Business Activities	・Marketing and consulting for web and mobile devices ・Consulting on user interface and user experience for websites and mobile sites ・System development and production for websites ・Advertising-related business ・Marketing research-related business ・All businesses incidental or related to the foregoing