Spice Up Your PowerPoint Presentation With PptPlex

PowerPoint presentations are great tools in order to promote your business, ideas or products. This software provides great features, and creating a powerpoint presentation sometimes becomes an art. When you master the software, you could expect great successes for your oral presentation.

But what about if I was telling you that you could do even better, enhance your presentations and get something new? Found on PPC's blog, here is pptPlex. ppt allows you to get some zooming effects to your PowerPoints and hence to have more dynamic presentations.

Here is a video showing you how it works.


I haven't tried yet PptPlex, but I think this is a great application, that could spce up a little bit your presentations

The New Citroen Concept Car on Gran Turismo 5

French car manufacturer Citroen has been the main sensation of the Paris Motor Show. They presented their new concept car, the Citroen Gran Turismo, a futurist car that reminds a little bit some Lamborghini's models. You can check out this magnificent model herein.

Citroen had a great idea in order to create a buzz around this car and get it popular to the teenager population. Indeed, if you own GT5 Prologue, a famous racing video game, you could drive with this model, as it has been added up to the game.
Not all players will have the opportunity to test the car as to unlock it you need to have tons of credits (to earn while racing). But as the car is beautiful, I think it is worthwhile.

That is a great idea to communicate with the GT car lovers via a game they love to use.

Here are some images of the car in the game, racing vs a Ferrari F2007.

Email Appending: a great way to enhance your data base

Do you know what email appending is? This is a great way to expand your data base in order to set multi channels campaigns.

Indeed, some companies are still in a one channel system, where they for example send mails. However, they don't own the email addresses of their customers. In order to get them, they could process to an email appending.

Email appending definition
The idea is simple: you have a part of the data base, teh names and the addresses of your customers. In order to send them some emails, you are going to find a third party (specialized in data renting). You will provide them your data, they will merge them with theirs, and then check which one matches. When they recognize those, they will provide you the email and, for example, the cell phone numbers you were lacking.

The challenge: get your customer's agreement
Now there are best practices in order not to be intrusive. That is the reason why the opt-in system has been adopted by most of the e-commerce protagonists. Thus, this is important that once you get the information of your customers for data they did not give you, and moreover they did not agree for you to use it, you get their agreements. You should then the first time you get in contact with them with the new medium get a message asking them their agreement. That is very important for permissive marketing purposes.

My opinion about email appending
I think the idea is great. Now that marketing campaigns are all turning multi channels, this is important for a company to adapt its data base to its needs, and sometimes doing that by themselves might be difficult and long. By this simple easy step, which is actually not that expensive (depending on your data base size, but the cost per people is very low), you could then get new opportunities to interact with your customers, and probably increase your business.


This is a great way to enhance your customer experience by diversifying your media to get in contact with your clientele.

Correspondance via blog

Le concept de correspondance
Je ne connaissais que très peu le concept de correspondance avant ces derniers temps. Je le trouve très intéressant, et particulièrement adapté au format du blog.
Cette discipline est devenu d'actualité avec la sortie du livre de Bernard-Henri Lévy et Michel Houellebecq intitulé "Ennemis publics", correspondance entre deux auteurs français à succès aux avis divergents.

L'idée n'est pas de créer un register d'injures ou autres critiques ouvertes, mais plutôt d'ouvrir le débat et de partager un sentiment personnel divergent de celui de son interlocuteur.

La correspondance et les blogs
En écrivant cette note, je me suis aussi souvenu que Danone avait utilisé un système de blogs pour tester un de ces nouveaux produits. C'était fin 2006. Chaque personne faisant partie du panel de testeurs devait tenir à jour un blog, où il devait décrire son utilisation et son opinion sur le produit. Le blog était l'occasion de raconter pour les testeurs leurs expériences consommateurs, et ainsi partager autour de celui-ci sur ses qualités et améliorations potentielles. Le principal atout de cette solution est que le consommateur consomme et teste le produit dans ces conditions de vie de tous les jours, et on arrive ainsi à avoir des retours d'expérience proche de la réalité.

Ouvrir la correspondance aux lecteurs
Ce qui est particulièrement intéressant avec cette idée de correspondance entre deux ou peut être plus de blogger, c'est qu'il permettrait aux lecteurs de participer à cette correspondance en la commentant. Aussi, certainement le déroulement de cette correspondance serait certainement affecté par cette réaction du léctorat. Ainsi, le blog devient réellement participatif.

On peut aussi imaginer dans le cadre d'un lancement de produit une conversation ouverte des directeurs marketing et/ou produits, en phase de création du produit:

• Afin d'une part de récolter les avis de consommateurs,
• De communiquer et débuter un buzz sur le produit,
• Aussi de pouvoir exposer les nouvelles idées et tenir informé du bon déroulement des opérations

Bien sûr des problématiques de confidentialité et la peur de se voir doubler par un concurrent sont de gros risques, néanmoins la transparence en entreprise montre de plus en plus d'exemple de réussites.

Des idées de corrspondance entre bloggueurs
Maintenant, l'idée est d'établir une correspondance entre deux bloggueurs influents, ayant des intérêts, des avis différents, ou bien venant de deux univers (ou industrie) opposés. Ainsi, ce blog serait un lieu de rendez-vous, de partage, mais aussi de polémiques et de débat. Reste à trouver des noms, qui pour l'instant ne me viennent pas à l'esprit.

Je veux bien par exemple débattre de l'intérêt d'une relation client humanisée, avec plus de service humain contre un partisan de la relation client automatisée, à travers des centres d'appels et autres FAQ pour réduire les coûts. Ou bien pourquoi il est plus intéressant de s'intéresser au web 2.0 vs une communication télévisée par exemple.

Et vous qu'en pensez vous? Est-ce que vous pensez à des bloggers qui pourrait établir une correspondance poussée via blogging?

How CRM Software Could Help Banks To Survive During The Crisis

This issue has been inspired by one of my blog visitor comment on my article about my financial crisis solutions. Actually, I have already written a similar post on how a strong customer relationship management could help French bank La Societe Generale to go through the crisis.

As the financial market system is questioned and people are seeking for alternative way of doing business, customer oriented business and an approach based on customer equity are attractive.
But here, the question is more precise, and is about CRM softwares. Therefore, I will provide you some examples on how owning a great CRM software with the proper customer relationship management strategy could help banks during the crisis.

• Communicating with your customers: As your customers are more and more concerned about the financial health of financial institutions, thanks to a great data base + the proper tool, you could send alerts (whether via emails, RSS feeds, Twitts and/or text messages) to your customers to give them updates with your status.
• Checking unusual movements on your account: If your customers are getting nervous about a potential bankruptcy of the bank, you could see people taking their money out of their accounts, which could drive the bank to big problems of liquidity. Therefore, you could configure your CRM tool in order to get some alerts when people are taking big amounts of money out, in order to get in contact with them (emails or phone calls) in order to calm them down and try to convince them to keep the money where it belongs.
• Providing tremendous opportunities to your clients: As the crisis continues to unfold, some people can see great opportunities coming up in the market. Let's not forget that the biggest fortunes have been made during crisis. If stocks are low right now, they'll increase very fast when the crisis will be over. Therefore, you could use the CRM tools to shape targeted marketing campaings (emailing, phoning, + mailing). That could actually be a great opportunity ton convince prospects that don't trust their banks anymore to join you.
• Managing customer's questions flow: During crisis times, people tend to need information to feel more secure. Therefore you should expect an increase in the amount of in calls for your call center or customer service. A great customer relationship management could help you managing the flow with ease and limit the waiting time and thus increase customers' satisfaction.
• Secure the banks business models: Banks are under attack. They have financial problems due to the financial market meltdown. Banks have invested their money in the market and now see these investments getting lower. But banks should also consider that they have some great assets that did not depreciate: Their clientele. That is where they get their money from. Therefore, having developed a great customer relationship strategy means they can get business out of their data base. As a bank, for your institutional communication, you should communicate on your ability to generate business out of your customers, and therefore limit the depreciation of your market shares.
  

Do you have any other ideas or example where a great CRM software could help banks to manage the financial crisis? What do you think about this article? Let's discuss.

Customer Relationship Management Starts With The Packaging

The packaging: an innovative customer relationship management tool
Most of the time, while you are thinking about customer relationship management and customer relationship strategies in general, you are mainly thinking about sales persons, call centers, emailing and websites.

Customer relationship is about a conversation. This is very true, and you expect hence to establish an interaction, whether if it is via a person (call center, salesperson, or on a website thanks to a chat or an emailing system). But what is very true, especially in the retailing business, is that the customer relationship management effort starts with the packaging.

Packaging is one of the first contact with the brand
Let's not forget that the packaging is most of the time the first eye-contact making tool prior the shopper becomes a buyer. Most of the time it achieves the decision making process, or even influence it deeply.

Also the package by its shapes, colors and composure expresses the core values of the brand. By simply looking at it, you should be able to have a clear view of what the product is about, its main strengths, and sometimes its main target.


Packaging to promote the interaction with the brand.
But also the packaging is what the customer will see every single time it will use your product if you are brands like Nestle or Dannon. That means if you get it the proper way, you could start your conversation or incentive the customer to the conversation by explaining why he should call, give his opinion or visit your website.

Therefore packagings should think more about establishing a first contact, and get the customer to start a relationship with the brand.

Ikea Commercial In France

This is a great commercial in France for Ikea, the famous Swedish retailer. The lady is checking her receipt, and is running to her car, shouting at her husband to start the car. The tagline: "this is not a mistake, prices are low all year around at Ikea". Funny and strong message, easy to understand.

Smart Stores

LSA, French magazine specialized in retailing, issued an article on February 14 2008 about how new technologies will be implemented into retails, and how they will enhance the shopper experience. Thanks to these technologies, stores will tend to become smarter, offering a better service to their customers.
Tactile information screens: Tactile screens are getting more and more commons in stores. They propose for example ideas for your wine and meal (or cheese) combination, also some recipes ideas. Also it could give you information to get a proper diet and with advices on how to lower your carb consumption.

Smart fitting room: This is a great cross selling tool. The fitting room proposes you items that would match with the cloth you are trying on: a pair of boots for your skirt, a nice shirt that will suits you with your new pants. It will instantly dress you up with the new proposed items in the reflection of the mirror. You can also send pictures via MMS to your friends of your new clothes to get their comments and reactions.

RFID tags: these products tagged with such a technology will give access to the customer to some more information. For example, when a shopper will take out of the shelves a product, a screen will tell him the different options he has for this product (size, color, etc...). European wholesaler Metro is already using this kind of RFID tags for his clothing section.

Smart carts: Microsoft and MediaCart have developed a new type of cart, equipped with a screen. This new product will be tested at Shope-Rite on the East coast in a short time. The shopper types in his shopping list, and then the cart will guide him through the store. Products are scanned right when the shopper places them in the cart.

Drive Thru Supermarket

This is a new retail concept that has just appeared in France. It has been launched by Auchan, and is called Auchan Drive. The concept is basic, and I am surprise it has not been developed in the US: You order your grocery shopping online, you set a pick up date and time, and you go to the drive thru to get your food.

And it seems to work... What I have been also a little bit surprised, is the reason why people like the concept. Indeed, prices with this drive thru system is exactly the same than the regular supermarket. However, people believe they are saving money, because they are not distracted by the different sales and promotions that are in the store. That means that actually they are not really saving money, but that they are so afraid to get tempted to buy other products that they spend less.
It is actually pretty true, as the large amount of references in a supermarket might be the cause of waste of time and stress due to the complexity of the decision making process for every day life products.

Also, I don't believe it makes the shopping process any faster, as ordering online so many items could be pretty long.

I think also it is strange that retailers want to develop such a concept. Indeed, it requires a lot of employees to pack up the groceries into the customer's kart. Also, one of the key idea of category management is to sell additional products to get better margins. By doing that, they therefore on purpose get rid of one of their tool to increase sales.

Also, one more thing: Why in the US, the country which is specialist in drive-thrus, the concept has not become popular? I would like someone to explain me why.

And you, what do you think? Is this a good idea? What is for sure is that the concept is innovative, original, and time will bring answers to my concerns.

Santa Claus might not come this christmas: Heading to the worst holiday season since 1991

As the financial crisis is still being unfold, specialists start to predict us major trouble for the holiday seasons. Indeed, Chris Keating from Emarketer warns us it will be the "Weakest Holiday Since '91".

I actually believe that this christmas season will be the moment where we'll be able to measure the impact of the crisis on the population, affecting for a fact the overall consumption. It will also be pretty bad for retailers, that most of the time gets profitable around this date.

The State Of The Blogosphere

Technorati, the leading browser dedicated to blogs, have published recently on its website a study on blogging called "The State Of The Blogosphere". Every year it is the opportunity to check out how the blogging activities are expanding.
The study has been published for five days:

• Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers?
• Day 2: The What And Why of Blogging
• Day 3: The How of Blogging
• Day 4: Blogging For Profit
• Day 5: Brands Enter The Blogosphere

L'évolution de la grande distribution (3): Les hypermarchés

Après une longue période d'interruption, voici la suite de ma liste d'articles consacrés à l'évolution de la grande distribution

• Après L'évolution de la grande distribution (1): les grands magasins
• Après L'évolution de la grande distribution (2): L'exemple de Monoprix

Voici la troisième partie, où je vais parlé de l'évolution des hypermarchés.

L'arrivée des hypermarchés
De même que les grands magasins, les hypermarchés sont arrivés sur le marché de la distribution avec une image justifiée d'enseigne à bas prix. C'est d'ailleurs pour cela, plus que n'importe quel concept de distribution alimentaire, que l'état à décidé de réguler le développement de ce type de magasin, avec notamment la loi Royer, afin de "proteger le petit commerce", qui était alors incapable de lutter contre les prix pratiqués par les Leclerc, Auchan ou autres Carrefour.

Tout comme les grands magasins au XIXème siècle avant eux, les hypermarchés ont développé leurs concepts grâce à leur capacité à acheter en gros chez le fournisseur, et ainsi négocier des remises importantes et faire baisser leurs prix. Cependant, depuis une dizaine d'année, alors que l'hypermarché s'est développer, une nouvelle menace arrive, avec là aussi, des prix encore plus bas.

L'évolution du concept
En effet, l'hypermarché à développer de nouvelles gammes de produits (électronique, meubles, voyages et spectacles, station-services...) ainsi que de nouveaux services (services de crédit à la consommation, livraison des courses). Aussi, on a vu l'arrivée de marques de distributeurs de qualité, permettant de différencier un peu plus les différentes enseignes. Je pense notamment à Reflet de France de Carrefour, reprenant des plats typiques des régions françaises. Cette marque sponsorise des émissions télévisées et ne répond plus forcément à la définition classique des MDD classiques.

A force de proposer des services et des produits de qualité, de plus en plus marketés, les hypermarchés doivent faire face maintenant a une nouvelle concurrence.

L'arrivée du hard discount
Aujourd'hui,  c'est au tour des hypermarchés de voir leur leadership sur les prix menacés par l'arrivée de nouveaux magasins encore plus aggréssifs: les hard discounters. Ces enseignes proposent des assortiments réduits et des prix cassés. Le concept magasin et le service sont réduits à leur minimum. Pas de publicité, pas de promotions: les prix sont bas toute l'année. Le concept connait un fort succès et attire une clientèle de plus en plus hétérogène. "Everybody shops at Walmart".

L'hypermarché développe son image de marque
De même qu'on a vu par le passé les grands magasins changer leurs concepts vers le luxe, Monoprix développé des MDD haut de gamme, aujourd'hui les hypermarchés doivent changer leur communication et leurs stratégies marketing. On voit ainsi le développement de nouveaux concepts mareketing ainsi que d'une vrai stratégie de développement de marque. Depuis 2006, les grandes enseignes ont recours à des campagnes de communication institutionnels afin de développer l'image de marque. On assiste ainsi à une transformation semblable que celle qu'on a vu dans les épisodes différents: les hypermarchés se faisant attaquer sur leurs prix, ils apprécient leur marque et concept grâce à plus de marketing et de services.

Warioland on WII and Youtube: a Great Buzz Marketing Campaign

Have you seen the commercial on Youtube for the Wii version of Warioland? It has already been watched 3.57 million times on Youtube.

I think this is a great commercial, because you have all the good ingredients:

• The whole website shaking expresses well the advantages of the Wii and the sensation you could get with the game
• The ad is broadcasted on one of the hypest online video community service, youtube. It helps the word of mouth to spread out
• The blogosphere has responded favorably to the campaign by communicating on it.

What do you think about the ad?

PS: @Henri, thank you for your blog post where you talk about this campaign.

Looneo, ou comment créer et gérer une communauté 2.0

J'ai assisté il y a déjà quelques semaines à une conférence très intéressante lors du salon du Ecommerce 2008 à Paris. Cette conférence était présentée par Alban Pelletier; fondateur de loonéo, aussi je voulais partagé avec vous ma découverte de cette entreprise intéressante sur beaucoup de plans, mais aussi l'intervention de son président expliquant les ressorts des communautés sur Internet.

Le consommateur: premier influenceur de l'acte d'achat
L'idée derrière Loonéo est simple: le consommateur est le premier influenceur de l'acte d'achat. Ainsi le site Internet regroupe une communauté de consommateurs, qui réalise des fiches techniques et comparatifs, et expriment leurs opinions sur les produits et services qu'ils ont achetés ou testés.

Selon une étude Sofres datant de janvier 2008, 75% des français ont consulté des avis de consommateurs. Cela renforce d'une part l'importance du média Internet dans le processus de recherche d'information, et d'autre part l'importance attaché aux consommateurs sur les avis d'autres consommateurs, encore plus que sur les descriptifs techniques de produit.

Par ailleurs, voici le top 3 des médias les plus influents dans la décision d'achat:

• Internet: 46%
• TV: 33%
• Radio: 14%
  

Le cas Spore
Vous connaissez Spore? C'est le nouveau jeu vidéo du créateur des Sim's. Il vous permet de recréez un écosystème avec plantes et créatures. Spore avait crée la polémique en disposant ses jeux de DRM de protection contre le piratage. Résultat, il y a eu une grosse campagne de protestation des consommateurs du jeu, ui se sont lancé à envahir le web d'avis négatifs. Ces avis étaient tellement nombreux et virulant qu'Amazon décida de supprimé les avis pour ce jeu, ce qui a conduit à transformé Spore en le jeu le plus piraté de tout les temps.

Cet exemple montre bien qu'il est plus que difficile, voir impossible, de contrôler les avis de consommateur, et qu'il vaut mieux les utiliser positivement que de vouloir jouer au censeur.

Typologie de l'utilisateur du web 2.0
Il existe ainsi trois grands groupe d'utilisateur dans le web 2.0, mais aussi pour Looneo:

1. Je m'informe: Je cherche de l'information et l'utilise dans mon processus d'achat
2. Je m'exprime: Je donne mon avis sur un produit, je partage ma vision sur un sujet.
   
3. Je m'implique: je créer des groupes et les animent, je passe du temps à créer de la valeur ajoutée à la communauté.
   

Cela se traduit ainsi par ce découpage des utilisateurs de Looneo:

• 6 000 contributeurs
• 35 000 membres
• 400 000 visiteurs uniques/mois

Ainsi les contributeurs, passant du temps à tester les produits, à éditer des guides d'achats, sont d'une part sélectionné, mais aussi rémunéré pour leur travail. Ces contributeurs sont identifiés, on a la possibilité de les joindre et de leurs poser des questions.

La création de la communauté
Ce qui est fascinant avec Looneo, c'est que le site est parti de rien: aucun utilisateur, aucune communauté. Ainsi le processus de recrutement pour développer une communauté en ligne digne de ce nom prend la plus part du temps entre 6 à 9 mois. Looneo a ainsi contacter des bloggers influent sélectionnés, qui ont été rémunérés pour leurs contributions.
Aujourd'hui, la communauté continue de grandir, et Looneo pense à des possibilités d'implémenter leur solution de gestion de commentaires produits sur des plateformes de ecommerce.

Les produits
Looneo a une vaste gamme de produits testés. Cela va de l'électronique grand public aux services financiers. Peut être un petit bémol sur les achats impulsifs, tel que le textile par exemple, Alban Pelletier nous explique qu'il est difficile de faire vivre une communauté autour des achats impulsifs, puisque le processus de recherche d'informations pour ceux-ci est très court voire souvent inexistant.

Speed testing
 Les évènements de speed testing sont des rencontres entre des contributeurs de Looneo et des fabricants qui offrent des démonstrations de leurs produits, avec comme objectif de stimuler la rédaction d'article sur le site. Ainsi, les contributeurs ont aussi bien des échanges réels qu'interactifs avec la marque.


Bref, cette conférence était remarquable et riche d'enseignement. Une grande leçon sur la création et le management de communauté en ligne.

Twitter Influence And Social Score

I am working a lot right now on the social score concept, to understand better how it could work. Basically, the social score aims to measure the equity of a customer by evaluating its network.

Twinfluence is a service that gives you stats about your Twitter influence. Basically, it analyzes your contacts.

What is interesting, is what they call the "Social Capital", which is the average follower's first order network size. "OK, I'm abusing the academic term "social capital" a little to indicate the average first-order network of a Twitterer's followers. A high value indicates that most of that Twitterer's followers have a lot of followers themselves."

A person that have a big network, but with people owning a few contacts have less influence that somebody that knows influent personalities. This is actually what the social score is all about. I would probably use this example furthermore while I'll talk in details about the principles of the social score.

PS: Thanks @PPC for the information.

Amazon.fr innove en proposant un programme de fidélité, Amazon Premium

Voici la lettre que les utilisateurs du site Internet peuvent trouver lorsqu'ils se connectent à amazon.fr. Amazon.fr a identifié que l'un de ses facteurs clés de son succès repose sur sa logistique, et propose ainsi de fidéliser ses clients grâce à des avantages dans ce domaine en lançant Amazon Premium. Voici ce que j'aime par rapport à cette idée:

• L'avantage client: Amazon a bien identifié que les conditions de livraison représentaient l'une des préoccupations principales des consommateurs en ligne.
  
• La cotisation: Je pense qu' afin d'avoir effectivement un programme adapté à une clientèle fidèle, il est important de payer un ticket d'entrée. Un programme où quiconque peut s'inscrire n'est pas un gage de réussite. Il faut en effet que le client, tout comme le distributeur, s'engage dans une relation fidélisante.
  

La neuf box de SFR

Voici la nouvelle publicité pour la "neuf box de sfr", issu du rapprochement entre neuf télécom et SFR. On garde la même musique que les pubs SFR, la même box que neuf avec le nouveau logo, et on propose aussi une meilleure assistance technique pour compléter le tout.

Is Facebook Doing OK?

I was reading French Newspaper LeMonde announcing that Facebook had a gun on his head. The article suggests that Facebook should be worried to see some of his employees are leaving the society, including co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who is creating a new social website.

Facebook announced they will allow employees to sell up to 20% of their stock options starting November,1, in order to calm down the situation.

I really hate to read these kinds of craps. Facebook might be affected by the financial crisis as advertising budgets are experiencing sever cuts right now. Nevertheless, Facebook has succeeded in creating a product that allow people to interact with their friends, and also used by millions of people around the world. I don't see any other social community websites having such a success. Facebook might be global, not targeted as LinkedIn would be with the professional world, but this is also what makes it so valuable.

I believe that Facebook might be struggling with their development. They are turning from a young start up to a great global company. That requires to have different management skills and probably to adapt their communication. It might take a while, but I believe Mark Zuckerberg is smart enough to find great partners to help him moving forward.

Facebook is still a great company with a great future ahead. The hype around it might light off, which is good for a company that will start generate large revenues soon. But nobody should doubt that Facebook will become a great company.

Edgar Dales' Cone Of Experience

Here is a very interesting work of Edgar Dales, best known as the Dales' Cone Of Experience. It explains how people remember information. It also shows out that when people are involved, meaning that they say as they do a thing, they keep the information better.

This is actually why web 2.0 and online communities fascinate marketers, by their ability to have people acting and spreading the information around about a product or a brand.

Seesmic is laying off people

Tough times. Tough decisions.also read my blog post http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2008/10/tough-times-tou.html

I was saying on this blog that Loic Lemeur's lack of new posts on his blog might be a sign of problems, and I might have been right... Today Loic Lemeur has announced he was laying off 7 people of the Seesmic's staff.  Some other blogs are now speaking publicly about the difficulties to raise funds for start ups.

First of all, I want to wish good luck for the people that have been laid off. I know it might be hard. Their expertise, their skills should not be questioned, and I am sure this experience building up Seesmic will help them a lot.

Secondly, I am very sorry to hear that Seesmic will be affected by the crisis. I want to encourage you Loic, to tell you that a lot of people are supporting your business. As a Chinese proverb says: "In order to overcome adversity you need to face it". Keep faith! You can't always have the market supporting your growth! And actually, on the long term, it might help you out as some of your competitors might get out of business. I am sure you have the experience to go through this crisis smoothly.

I strongly believe Seesmic has a great future in front of it, and will become a major service on the Internet.

Mon profil commercial

Je viens de remplir le test en ligne d'un cabinet de recrutement spécialisé dans les métiers commerciaux. Voici le diagramme explicatif de mes résultats. Selon ceux-ci, je serai fortement adapté aux postes de chargé grand compte.

Traits caractéristiques du candidat : dimension Force de vente "Chasseur".
	>	[Jeu commercial] Spontané et audacieux, Nicolas aborde le processus de vente comme un jeu au cours duquel chaque étape constitue une « manche » à remporter. Traitant les objections avec aisance, il met l'accent sur sa capacité à convaincre et son sens de la répartie. Il est tout simplement attiré par la vente.
Traits caractéristiques du candidat : dimension Force de vente "Éleveur".
	>>	[Réseau] Nicolas est sociable et aime tisser son réseau relationnel. Il a l’art de repérer les personnes influentes, décideurs ou prescripteurs, et sait s'en faire des alliés en créant un véritable climat de confiance. Cela s'avèrera très payant pour réussir des ventes ou des partenariats stratégiques. Il n'hésite pas à faire appel à ses contacts tant personnels que professionnels pour initier une négociation.
	>>	[Négociations stratégiques] Avec de bonnes dispositions sur le plan stratégique, Nicolas aime les négociations de haut niveau qu'il considère comme un challenge. Il se positionne en partenaire du client et prend le temps d'étudier la situation et les besoins de son interlocuteur pour conclure une vente importante.
Traits caractéristiques du candidat : dimension Relation Client.
	>>	[Contrôle de soi] Nicolas se présente généralement comme une personne calme et posée, capable de gérer ses émotions. Il demeure enthousiaste malgré les revers et les événements hors de son contrôle. Il présente une bonne capacité de réflexion et exprimera ses vues avec pondération, même en situation de stress. Les refus, plaintes et récriminations, retards ou changements d’horaire de dernière minute le déstabilisent rarement.
	>>	[Sens du service] Nicolas s’affirme comme étant désireux de fidéliser sa clientèle en assurant une présence constante auprès de celle-ci. Il aimera effectuer des suivis réguliers auprès de ses interlocuteurs et démontrera sa volonté de maintenir et d’améliorer le service offert. Pour lui, la satisfaction du client compte par-dessus tout. Cependant, Nicolas peut être porté à oublier ses objectifs propres et ceux de son entreprise, au profit des seuls intérêts du client.
	>>	[Technicité - Expertise] Nicolas apprécie particulièrement les aspects techniques de son travail. Il se sent à l’aise avec les outils technologiques. Il préfère vendre des produits d'une certaine complexité et démontre un intérêt marqué pour l’analyse. Cette personne aime apprendre et transmettre ses connaissances. Cependant, son besoin de perfectionnement pourrait prendre le pas sur sa tâche principale, celle de vendre.
Points faibles et axes d’amélioration (dans le cadre d'une formation commerciale) :
	>	[Prospection] Pour Nicolas, le premier contact peut constituer une épreuve, il est bien plus à l’aise avec les personnes qu’il connaît déjà. Son approche peut parfois être timorée, par manque de confiance en lui. Une formation ou les conseils d'un coach pourraient lui permettre d'améliorer ses techniques de prise de contact.
	>	[Combativité] Il est possible que Nicolas abandonne un peu facilement lorsque les choses tournent à son désavantage. Il peut aussi négocier indéfiniment, sans chercher à s’imposer. Sa combativité peut être améliorée par des primes d'intéressement ou par le travail d'équipe avec un commercial senior. Je suis plutôt d'accord avec ces résultats, hormis peut être la partie sur les premiers contacts, étant quelqu'un qui n'a pas forcément de timidité au premier contact.

Facebook Developer Garage in Paris with Mark Zuckerberg

I attended yesterday night the Facebook Developer Garage event in Paris, and had the opportunity to see Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. That was the first time Mark was coming to Paris, and of course the first time I had the chance to meet with him. I have to thank a lot Phil Jeudy for having sent me the invitation. It has been actually a great occasion to meet some of the French people I met in San Francisco last year while they were on their Geek trip. I also think about Francois Xavier Tanguy, a great person who launched Dreamshake.com, a web 2.0 services which help you to fulfill your dreams.

First of all, I want to  speak a little bit about the venue: La Cantine. The location is very hard to find, in a very small street of Paris. But actually, the venue was very nice, and was well adapted to the mixer that happened after the speech of Mark. Prior to the Facebook's boss presentation, there were couple of people that introduced their Facebook application, including netvibes. I'll talk about them some other times.

I would like to speak mainly about the "star" of the night, Mark Zuckerberg. I did not really know what to expect as I don't think I have ever seen any videos of him. He is a very young person. He might have the same age than me (maybe even older), but I look like I have 10 years more, especially with my beard know. To be totally honest with you, I have been a little bit disappointed. Mark did not have prepared any kind of presentations, he talked briefly about Facebook, and then  dedicate time to questions.  Mark is for sure not Steve Jobs. He doesn't have much charisma. So added to the fact there was no real presentation, I did not find what I was looking for.

However, the great plus is that he is very easy to talk with. He spent hours to talk to different French developers, and was very friendly with them. I have highly appreciated his availability.

What's up with Facebook? Thanks to questions we still have been able to get valuable information. Especially, the fact that Facebook is working on geolocation for mobile devices, which will help you to know where your friends are at and interact better with them. I think this is a good news. However, this work is difficult as Facebook did not develop any kind of mobile platform, since it is third parties that developed the cell phones and mobile versions of Facebook.

Also, some news about how they have created the New Facebook. They have noticed (and most of the users too I believe) that most of the widgets that people have installed on their pages weren't used, and that it made it difficult to get the information of someone out of the page because of it. With the new version, they are focusing on information feeds of your community, and show up more about the activities of your friends than their widgets that most of the time people don't use after a week or two. The main idea is to highlight people's actions.

PS:@Kate, I am sorry, you see, I wrote this one in English...

Movo: la Caisse d'Epargne innove dans le m-banking

Crée par la Caisse d'Epargne, mais aussi ouvert aux autres banques, Movo est un système de transfert d'argent sur mobile par SMS. Cela vous permet par exemple de remboursez un ami qui aurait payé pour vous au restaurant alors que vous auriez oublié votre porte monnaie. Le transfert s'effectue soit par SMS, soit par Imode ou bien par Wap. Il vous faudra débourser entre 0.5 et 0.57€ par transactions, qui doivent être comprises entre 5 et 150€ dans la limite de 600€ sur 7 jours glissant.
En attendant la démocratisation des paiements par mobile, qui le sont déjà en Corée et au Japon notamment, on voit que les banques commencent à inventer des services utiles sur mobiles.

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century 's On-line Pioneers

I have recently read this book.
The author, Tom Standage, tells us the fantastic story of the expansion of the Telegraph in the XIXth century. The Telegraph, far more than the Internet nowadays, has been the most important information technology of its time, changing fundamentally the communications and the business world.

What is also very interesting is the parallelism you can get from comparing the development of the telegraph and the Internet. You can see that users' expectations where quite similar, thinking it would bring peace between nations, and also that at this time you already had examples of spamming and criminal uses of the network.

I highly recommend you to read this book to know better the incredible success of the first information technology.


You can get this book at my store, The Nicolas Schriver Store.

Ipag Puissance 3: un concept très intéressant

Je viens de me rendre à l'association des anciens de l'Ipag, et suis tombé sur le nouveau numéro de l'Ipag mag. En couverture, je vois un article qui m'interpelle: "Nom de code: puissance 3".

Puissance 3 est une nouvelle idée. L'Ipag, école de commerce, l'Esag, une école de desin, et l'ISEP, une école d'ingénieur, font dans ce cadre collaborer leurs élèves sur des projets communs. Ainsi, les étudiants de l'Ipag devront identifier les opportunités du marché potentiel et évaluer les réspons en terme de bien ou de service, les designers de l'ESag devront concevoir un design innovant pour le produit et les ingénieurs de l'ISEP devront concevoir et réaliser sur le plan technique le produit répondant au cahier des charges du projet.

C'est une très bonne initiative qui permet aux étudiants des diverses écoles de se confronter à la réalité des projets complexes d'une entreprise, où différents services doivent collaborer ensemble.

Une offre commerciale en phase avec une logique de relation client : la carte des prem's en viande d'hippopotamus

J'ai en ma possession une carte promotionnelle de l'enseigne de restauration Hippopotamus. Cette carte, appelée carte des prem's en viande d'Hippopotamus proposent des réductions:

• Pour la première visite, vous recevez -10% sur votre addition
• Pour la deuxième visite, vous recevez -15% sur votre addition
• Pour la troisième visite, vous recevez -20% sur votre addition.
  

La carte a une durée de validité d'environ 27 aout au 30 septembre et n'est utilisable que du lundi au vendredi.

Je trouve cette offre en phase avec la valorisation du capital client. En effet, on incite la fidélité du client, mais aussi la récompense, puisque la part de récompense est proportionnelle à la fréquentation du consommateur. Aussi, ce que je trouve remarquable dans le procédé, c'est que le consommateur connait sa "valeur" pour l'enseigne.

Que pensez vous de cette formule?

Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) Workshop Video Of Christopher Carfi

Christopher Carfi is the author of the Social Customer Manifesto blog, which is one of my favorites. He did recently a workshop where he introduced the vendor relationship management concept. This video has been taped and you can watch it here or access it on Christopher's Carfi.

I believe Vendor Relationship Management has great chances to become one of the next revolution of the commerce within the very next few years. The video is a little bit long and the sound so-so, but you should defenitely watch it, especially to see the open-discussion around the technical issue about such a project.

Is BtoB Marketing Dead?

Forrester has released on its blog an article questioning if btob marketing will become obsolete. The marketing profession is experiencing great changes with the arrival of the Internet, which offered customers new way to interact with each others, with the brand, and also modified clearly the landscape of traditional media (especially TV).

Here is the detail of why BtoB marketing might disappear, according to the author.

"First of all, I see four macro trends working against increasing marketing's future value. In brief they are:

1) Commoditization: software as a service, open source, service-oriented architectures and a number of similar trends make it easier to enter a market and more difficult to differentiate products on features and capabilities alone. As a result, marketers need to work harder to understand, attract, and engage an audience. And it takes multiple touches to involve prospects in conversation and figure out if they are ready for sales to contact.

2) Consumerism and the social groundswell: Buyers are more likely to use information from associates than from institutional sources, like marketing messages and sales people, when purchasing. We found proof of this recently at Forrester when we surveyed business decision makers this year and found 36% of the 2187 who buy networking products and 34% of the 2148 who buy security solutions turn to peers (word of mouth) when researching what to buy. Peers were the #1information source picked in both survey samples. Social computing also establishes more open and authentic communication that will fundamentally change how marketing works – no longer will marketers be able to “spin” product problems or customers concerns away. Look at Dell or Comcast for examples of this.

3) Ad avoidance translates to sales call avoidance. Consumers are really good at avoiding ads. Technology only helps them do this. Tivo lets prospects skip commercials, spam blockers keep email clean, and pop-up blockers keep online ads away. This behavior spills over into the business world where busy buyers turn to the Web to get information while avoiding phone and sales calls until they are further in the buying process.

4) Globalization: Besides needing to address customers in fragmented regional markets, marketers are beginning to face offshore skill competition. Not only do marketers outsource their brains to interactive, ad, and PR agencies, but now outsourcing practices like lead generation and telemarketing are starting to bleed over into core campaign design and execution functions.

Unfortunately, I see marketers focus take a narrow view that causes them to miss seeing the impact of these trends looming ahead. When I ask B2B marketers, “What is marketing’s charter or mission at your company?,” most often I hear “We generate demand.” This goal is very hard to measure. Why? Because most B2B products are highly-considered sales involving a sales force or indirect channel where marketing gets caught in the middle or brushed to the side. Marketers who simply want to know which tactics work best and which statistics matter fail to see beyond the front of the funnel. Without this broader perspective, marketing will become obsolete as the Web, blogosphere, and social networks let businesses connect buyers directly with product development and bypass marketing all together. "

My opinion
I don't really agreee with these conclusions. Indeed, btob marketing has been impacted by the develpment of new technologies, a new btob customer culture, that are more experimented, and old techniques might have shown their limits. However, the new landscape of media and marketing strategies to apply is great, and there are a lot of ways btob marketers could take advantage out of them.

• Social media and web 2.0: They are great tool to communicate, but also to enhance your level of service, which is actually the first leverage of differenciation in btob marketing. I must recognized that btob marketers lack of knowledge in this field, and that is probably the reason why they are struggling with it.
• Referral marketing: This is true that executives would rather seek for information from associates than trust marketing brochures. But referral marketing exists, and is a very mature technique, that has been used for years in the real estate marketing. I believe that referral marketing is actually the best way to do btob marketing. These techniques must be applied in a btob environment.
• Customer relationship management: executives are looking for great customer service, and access to information or after sales service at all time. This is another field where btob marketing should focus on. Develop a great and easy to use intranet service to access easily to the information and so on.

What do you think about it? BtoB marketing is not dead, it just struggles to adapt to the transformation of marketing.

Ask.com Is Advertising on Google!

That is what I have just found while I was searching something on Google. Isn't that very weird? Do you imagine a CNN commercial on Fox news? Or maybe on Expedia an ad for Orbitz?
This is very weird that Google allow competitors to use its Adwords...
But it also shows out that Google is dominating the market, and that it doesn't even need to be bothered by Ask.com, one of the very few competition it has to face.

Une bonne publicité

Voici une très bonne publicité trouvée sur le blog d'Henir Kaufman. Une publicité sans photos ni réalisations graphiques poussées. D'ailleurs c'est certainement pour cette raison que la publicité est remarquable, car différente de ce que l'on voit d'habitude. Cela rappelle les basiques de la communication: avoir un message clair, différenciant et innovant.

How to pitch VCs

Here is a great video found on David Spark's blog, a good friend of mine. It gives you Great advice on pitching to VCs, introduced to you by David Rose, a serial entrepreneur and serial investor. Therefore he knows what he is talking about.

Indeed, even though you might not use these advices to start your company, you should consider them for any kind of Powerpoint presentations you will present.

4 Kinds of business models based on "Free"

This was found on Altaide's blog but come originally from David Armano. This shows you out the 4 kinds of business models that you could use with the web 2.0.

• Paid products subsidizing free products: You provide a free product, which should incentive the customer to purchase another one. For example, you propose some free songs, and hopefully the user will purchase some other ones. This is the vistaprint idea, that provides you free business cards, and expect you to purchase some high quality ones in order to get a benefit.
  
• Advertising based model: The revenues come from the advertisement on your site. This is the model of Google, Facebook, or Youtube.
  
• Paying people subsidizing free people: The service is free, but in order to get all the different features, you need to access a paid version. The subscribers to this paid version are the one who makes the site profitable. Somehow, they pay for others. This is the system of Viadeo, Remember the Milk among others.
  
• The "gift economy": this is a little bit more complicated. You give something for non-monetary rewards. You are expecting a reward, but it could be more complex. I think we can add in this category for example Radiohead or Wikipedia that is financed with donations. You could also benefits out of it by getting in contacts with prospects that later on will become customers.
  

Here is another scheme explaining the concept found on Chris Anderson's blog.

CV Internet: Doyoubuzz propose un service de qualité

Beaucoup d'entre vous désirerez avoir un CV Internet, ou tout du moins devrez avoir un CV Internet. Il existe pour cela plusieurs services et solutions qui existent déjà, chacunes possédant des avantages ainsi que des inconvénients:

• Créer son propre site Internet: cette solution peut s'avérer chère si vous faite appel à un prestataire de création de site Internet. Sinon, si vous avez certaines connaissances en html et autres codes Internet (comme moi), vous avez peut être envie de vous lancer dans la création de votre propre CV Internet. Le problème est que souvent ces sites sont peu dynamiques, difficiles à actualiser, et tombe souvent à la poubelle. Je possède un site Internet me servant de CV en ligne, et pour être honnête, je considère sérieusement l'enlever, car il me prend beaucoup trop de temps à actualiser.
  
• Créer son profil sur un réseau professionnel: LinkedIn, Viadéo, Xing, ainsi que d'autres sites de réseaux sociaux professionnels proposent la création d'un profil public où apparaîtront vos compétences, expériences et formations. C'est un très bon moyen d'avoir un CV Internet, puisqu'ils contiennent toutes les informations (voir souvent plus) d'un CV normal. De plus on peut voir vos connections, ce qui est assez sympa pour avoir une vue d'ensemble de votre profil. Néanmoins la mise en page est très simplifiée, peu différenciant, et on est cantonné à la présentation des mêmes données que celles d'un CV classique, alors q'un CV Internet pourrait être multimédia, avec des photos, des vidéos et des liens externes.
• Des services spécialisés dans la création de CV Internet: Il en existe plusieurs, que j'ai utilisé ou testé (au moins trois ou quatre), qui vous permettent de créer votre CV Internet. Cependant, la plupart ont une prise en main peu facile. De plus, la plupart des designs que j'ai vu à ce jour étaient peu attirant.

Etaient, car maintenant vient d'apparaître Doyoubuzz.com, un nouveau service de CV Internet. Je l'ai découvert hier en surfant sur le blog d'Altaide. Ce que j'apprécie, c'est le design, le fait que l'on puisse mettre des vidéos et des photos, la rapidité ainsi que la facilité d'utilisation. Cependant, j'ai certains commentaire à faire dessus:

• L'impossibilité de rajouter des photos aux entreprises: Je voudrais rajouter des photos des logos des entreprises que j'ai fréquenté.
• Le manque d'une partie description pour présenter le parcours du candidat: un petit encart pour présenter son parcours et ses aspirations.
• Une partie multilinguistique: à l'instar de ce qu'a fait Viadéo, offrir la possibilité de créer des CV en plusieurs langues, notamment pour les profils de manager internationaux.
  

Le site vient juste d'être crée et je vous conseille d'y jeter un oeil, car il est assez bien fait.

Google 2001

In honor of the 10th birthday of Google, they brought back their oldest available index. Take a look back at Google in January 2001. This is great even though you are not able to go onto the pages that right now have disappeared... But still, gives you a good outlook of what the Internet and contemporary discussions were about:

• You can first see that the precision of the results have enhanced a lot. This is due to the Google search engine which is better, but also due to the growth of the web, with better contents, especially with the blogosphere and the 2.0 trends (wikis, and so on). Try to check Jacques Chirac results... Very poor, whereas he is French president at this time.
• Facebook was a small Harvard online community, far from what we know right now. Myspace did not seem to exist at this time though, neither youtube nor dailymotion.
  
• Indeed, in 2001 I did not launch neither my blog nor my website. Therefore, you can't find any information on me at this time. This have changed a lot...
• You find very few information on Barrack Obama, some concerning a bill about child support.
  
• About the subprime crisis. If you type in "subprime" or "subprime crisis" you can already see that some people where alarming about the high concentraction of such loans in the poor populations of the US.
• No traces of the World Trade Center attacks. However, if you key "Bin Laden" you could see that he was already hunted down by the United States for some other terrorist affairs, including Kenya. They are also speaking about Al Qaeda and their Afghan camps. By curiosity, also you should type Bin Laden 911.

And you, what kind of interesting information did you find on it?

This information was found on Loic Lemeur's blog.

My financial crisis solutions

I wanted to share with you my opinion about what is going on with the financial crisis. The past few days, we have seen that the crisis has grown big time, with banks nationalized on both sides of the Atlantic ocean, and with some new job cuts from big banks like UBS.

First of all I wanted to tell you that I am totally against the Paulson's plan. I think this is silly to get $700 billion in the crisis, without even solving the biggest problems of the crisis.

• Find a global solution: This is a global crisis, affecting all the economies of the world. the United States started the crisis, but now it blossomed in Japan, Spain, Belgium, and without any doubt it should affect China soon, as Chinese companies have invested a lot in US funds. Therefore, it is important to find a global solution. the greatest economical powers, including the US, France, Germany, England among others, should meet up and discuss potential solutions to the problem. These discussions should also includes a potential budget, that would be used to insure the financial health of main institutions.
  
  
• What is going with the IMF? Aren't they suppose to react during financial crisis? There is a liquidity crisis and they have the biggest reserve in the world. I think they should act as soon as possible in order to limit the crisis, and participate to the solving. Actually, I have just checked their websites and they are both preparing a meeting with finance ministers, and raised $1 trillion to inject in the financial markets.
  
  
• Focus on how to help the US real estate market: The crisis started there, and there are still much trouble there. About 2 million houses went on foreclosure the past year. I think this is one of the key of the problem. That is a place where you have potential value. I think that the US government should spend their $700 billion dollars in the housing market buying foreclosed houses instead of spending it into a market that anyway have much chance to waste it. When the US government will own houses, they could have specific plans to lend these apartments for small amounts of money, and after a while (10 years?), as a leasing system, the renter could have an option to buy the house. That would help a lot of US citizens, stop the foreclosure crisis, and secure some of the loans that are still going in limbo.

These would be my main focus to solve this crisis. We are not at the end of it, but this is not the beginning either. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end.

What do you think about it. What would you do?