Je blogue donc je suis

J'ai lu avec très grand intérêt l'article du 23 décembre 2010 du Nouvel économiste: "Je blogue donc je suis".

L'objectif de cet article est d'une part de démontrer l'intérêt du blog pour un usage professionel, et d'autre part, de démontrer que ce mode d'expression était loin d'être obsolète. Il est vrai qu'en cette période de "hype" autour des médias sociaux, notamment Facebook et Twitter, on ne parle plus guère de blogs. D'ailleurs, beaucoup de personnes ont arrêté de publier sur leurs blogs, et beaucoup se sont intérrogés sur l'intérêt de continuer l'activité de blogging.

J'ai commencé à blogger il y a près de 6 ans, au tout départ, pour avoir de la visibilité sur Internet. J'avais entendu que cela pourrait m'aider à trouver des stages lors de mes études, en démontrant mon expertise sur les sujets du marketing et de la relation client. A l'époque, je ne connaissais rien sur le blogging: C'était vraiment le début des blogs, et je n'avais jamais lu un blog avant. Puis, au fil du temps, j'ai pris goût à cette activité, et au fil des rencontres, j'ai commencé à comprendre le fonctionnement et l'intérêt du blog.

A l'heure actuelle, je vais être honnête, je ne publie plus sur ce blog pour avoir de la visibilité. J'ai déjà réussi à développer un certains réseaux autour de mes sujets, mais surtout j'ai pu démontrer mon expertise.

Mon blog reste pour moi le meilleur moyen de continuer à m'informer sur mon sujet de prédilection, et de continuer à mener des réflexions et à construire au jour le jour mon savoir faire.

Je pense que l'activité de blog reste une activité plus que saine, et je la recommande à tout ceux qui auraient une passion, et qui souhaite la développer.

J'ai par ailleurs décourt le blog de Françoise Gri, PDG de Manpower France, grâce à cet article. Il est toujours intéressant de voir des dirigeants utiliser ce média, car ces blogs restent des sources d'informations de fortes qualités.

Noël 2010 marque l'ère du multiformat pour le Ecommerce

La FEVAD a publié fin janvier les résultats du E-commerce en France durant la période de Noël. Une nouvelle fois, comme aux Etats-Unis, l'Ecommerce a connu un fort succès, puisque les français ont dépensés plus de 6 milliards € sur Internet. Mais l'un des points vraiment intéressant de ces résultats, c'est l'émergence attendue et inévitable des nouveaux formats de l'Internet. Ainsi:

• 16% des achats de Noël sur Internet se sont faits via mobiles.
• 6% des achats de Noël sur Internet se sont faits via des tablettes.

Ces chiffres montrent bien l'importances de ces nouveaux médias. Il va devenir donc important de développer des outils E-commerce qui correspondent à la consommation de ces nouveaux canaux. Il faudra ainsi prendre en compte:

• Les attributs de ces canaux: Pour le mobile, l'obligation de faire simple, et de proposer un système de check out rapide. Pour les tablettes, permettre une visualisation améliorée des produits.
• Les usages des consommateurs: certainement que ces terminaux seront utilisés à des moments spécifiques du processus d'achat, et ainsi, cela impactera la manière dont les consommateurs vont les utiliser.

Il est important de prendre ces questions sérieusement, car nul doute que la part du chiffre d'affaires réalisé sur ces formats va s'accroître très rapidement ces prochaines années, voire mois.

Facebook Launches Facebook Deals: Foursquare In Trouble?

Geolocation market is one of the hottest topic in marketing right now. The benefits you may get from it are very promising. This is the reason why Facebook has been keen to launch its service named “Facebook Place”, in order to counterattack Foursquare.

Facebook has recently released its Facebook Deals feature in Europe, which will allow companies to propose coupons and discounts when a user check in a venue. The strength of Facebook is of course its community: Facebook is far bigger than Foursquare, which remains a young start up. Also, one of the advantage of Facebook upon Foursquare is that they already generate high revenues from strong partners. Hence it will be easy for them to promote this new feature.

Now is Foursquare in trouble? I like Foursquare, and I really believe in them. Now, about geolocation, it is exactly the same than Twitter to me: I am not really bonding with the service, and I may use it from another provider if a great occasion shows up.

Foursquare now needs to innovate and fast, to keep its competitive advantage.

What do you think about it?

Promising Start Up To Take Advantage To The M-Payment hype

A lot of hope is based on m-payment in Western countries. Even though in Asia (both Japan and South Korea) mobile payment has been a reality for years, in Europe and the US, it is struggling to settle. Why? Because a lot of actors are eager to benefit from this new business:

• Mobile network companies, which provides the network needed to permit mobile transactions.
• Banks, which are experts in finance transaction and dealing with large amount of transactions.
• Mobile devices manufacturer. The next Iphone is expected to have a technology which will enable mobile payment. Also, we all know that Google is working also on M payment with Android.
• Retailers, which have strong interests in the level of commissions they may have to pay.
  Credit card company like Visa, which business model would go in limbo in case they don’t enter the market.
• Start ups, which are more flexible and that own the technology.
  
  

This is the case of a start up called Jumio. Jumio might be a young company, but its staff has very impressive resumes. Former executives of Google and Amazon are running the operations.

I believe Jumio needs to set partnerships with financial institutions to make m payment real.

It remains unknown which of these actors will win the market, but there is one main question which needs to be asked if we want to see m payment blossoming: What is the advantage for customers? A lot needs to be done to educate customers.

Jumio from Jumio Inc. on Vimeo.

What do you think about it?

Global Companies Thrive On Social Media

Social media is becoming mainstream, and global companies thrive on it. At the beginning, when the whole web 2.0 started, a lot of experts, including myself were wondering how global companies, which are control freak most of the times, could adapt to start conversing with customers thanks to these media. But it seems that actually they quite understood how to leverage those tools.

This is what is explained in a very interesting report I found, about how Fortune 100 companies use the four main social media platforms which are Facebook Twitter, Youtube and blogs, as a marketing tool.

Burson-Marsteller 2011 Global Social Media Check-up

View more presentations from Burson-Marsteller

And the results are quite impressive:

• An increase of 25% of the number of companies who are using all four social media tools versus last year.
• 25% of Fortune 100 companies combines the 4 social media in their strategies.
• 67% of companies using Twitter use the “@replies” feature to converse with users.
• An impressive 84% of those companies use at least one of the platform
• 80% of Fortune 100 companies are talked about on Twitter.This is the main reason why it is important to look after what is going on Twitter…
  

Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement:

• In Twitter, the average followers per account figure is 5 076: This is very few compare to the millions of customers those company have over the world, and compared to the millions of people using Twitter. Nevertheless, the number of followers grown in average of +241% last year.
• 84% of Facebook pages are posts in last week. It may seem a lot, but I believe that a good fan page should at least be posted 5 times a week…
  
  

Also, I liked in this report a very interesting point: Having multiple accounts allow one company to reach different stakeholder groups. I believe this is a very interesting point, because as a global company, you may have very different customer groups, but also very different products.

This is one of the basics of customer relationship management: Being able to adapt to your audience. And if you are really planning on discussing with your customers, it is way much easier to have accounts related to a specific topic.

For example, if I take as an example Microsoft:

• They have business to business activities, with their CRM products, Microsoft offices licenses, maybe we may even add in this category the Surface products.
• They are in the video game market with the Xbox
• They are in the cell phone market
• Of course they have softwares and operating systems for PC
• They are all over the world, and you may not interact the same way with US customers and Asian ones.
  

Therefore this is a great advice you should consider: Think glocal: You need to have a strong global brand, to use in the social media, but also several accounts allowing to adapt upon the typology of stakeholders you have.

How to Bond With Customers Thanks To Digital Marketing: Pepsi’s Case Study

It might not be the newest social media marketing campaign, but it is working, and it is still on. But let’s face it: Pepsi with its Pepsi Refresh Project has made a great job.
Pepsi, thanks to its website http://www.refresheverything.com/ is offering the opportunity to visitors to submit on idea. Then the community votes for the ideas it prefers, and every month, the best ones are financed by Pepsi.



The concept has two great advantages:
It boosts Pepsi’s presence in social media. It helps the company to bond with its customers. Pepsi now counts 3 millions Fans on Facebook and 60 000 followers on Twitter.
Brand equity: Pepsi acts as a responsible brand, which helps the community. I am sure that it has been very powerful.

What do you think about it?

Foursquare For Retailers: Managing The Last Mile

I am a Foursquare evangelist. I love the service and I can clearly envision what kind of usage people might have, and what interest companies might have.
I read a very interesting article about Foursquare, and how it could potentially influence shoppers.

The idea is that Foursquare is the best tool to trigger the decision of a shopper to come into a store. Foursquare has a lot of feature which helps customers making a decision:

• Of course discounts
• Tips and to-dos
  

Mobile is the only device that has ever been empowered to do so. This is the reason why it is very interesting to see the rise of Foursquare, and to see how it will work. Also, what would be very interesting would be to get data from Foursquare. I don’t know if the company has a lot of them, but it would be very interesting for a company to know how the check in process happen, and also the search approach of customers while checking in.

What do you think about it?

Ebay Loyalty Reward Program: Bucks

Summer 2010 Ebay launched its loyalty reward program named bucks. The concept is simple, but has an interesting feature: You earn 2% of your purchases in dollars which you can use for your next purchase.

What is new is that you have 3 weeks to spend it. And this is what is interesting in terms of CRM. Indeed, it aims customers to come back, and to buy more often. Hence it is totally completing its customer relationship management goal.

Now it is not sure it will work: If customers tend to buy a product in more than three months on average, maybe they would be reluctant to actually pay attention to their money. I don’t actually now what is the average frequency of purchase on Eay.

What do you think about it?

Social Media vs Email: Ben & Jerry’s Case Study

Couple of weeks ago I visited the Foum E-Marking in Paris. As I have said in a previous post, I have been pretty deceived about the fair, as I did not see much innovation whereas the market is constantly evolving, toward more social media. @joelbirch said on Twitter it was both funny and scary, and I must agree.

I found this very interesting article on social media.

It is very interesting for 2 reasons:

• It explains the reasons why Ben & Jerry’s shifted from email to social media strategy.


• It is an example of a food company using social media, which remains rare.

Ben & Jerry’s decided to stop their emailing program, and to switch its effort onto social media.

Now Ben & Jerry’s count 1,3 million fans on Facebook. Nevertheless, some customers are not happy as they would rather receive offers via email than logging in Facebook.

In terms of customer relationship management, social media offers a great opportunity to bond with customers. But in this specific case, it is bad the fact that Ben & Jerry’s is ignoring a large part of its customers.

On the company’s side, there is one thing which needs to be seen: Emailing are pushed marketing campaign, while social media is pull: That means it does not exactly respond to the same problematic…


Now, does it mean that emailing is dead?
Some people are really thinking it might. In a rea with other media of communication like Facebook, Twitter, Instant messaging, it is difficult to picture the future of emailing. Now, of course, I know that a lot of people will say that over time no communication media disappeared, they tend to add up. But emailing might be considered as a part of microblogging activities (this is just a thought).

Emailing, on the company’s side has great strengths: It is easy to get data and measure the return on investment it might get.

Social media may also be a “push marketing” tool, as updates are getting inside fan’s data feed.

I believe that Ben & Jerry’s decision might be a little bit extreme, and emailing still has a bright future ahead of him, for at least couple of things. But it is very interesting to see how Ben & Jerry’s are using this new medium.

La Caisse D’Epargne: Nouveau positionnement, nouvelle identité

La Caisse d’Epargne vient récemment de lancer une nouvelle campagne de communication. J’ai d’ailleurs été invité à l’événement, il y a quelques semaines de cela, mais je n’ai malheureusement pas eu le temps de poster quelque chose à ce sujet (sniff).

C’est la raison pour laquelle j’ai décidé, une fois n’est pas coutume, de faire une série de trois articles afin d’exposer les grandes nouveautés que nous avons pu voir lors de cette événement.

Et l’événement est de taille. En effet, la Caisse d’Epargne avait basé depuis plusieurs dizaines d’années sa communication sur l’effigie de l’Ecureuil, animal attachant et symbolisant la mission d’épargne qu’avait la société. D’ailleurs, les différentes campagnes de la Caisse d’Epargne ont reçu de nombreux prix de publicité pour leur qualité.

Mais alors, pourquoi changer ?

• Parque qu’après plus de 10 ans de saga animalière, le temps du changement était venu. Il fallait retrouver du sang neuf alors qu’on avait fait le tour du sujet.
• La Caisse d’Epargne a changé : De nouvelles activités ont été rajoutées, notamment dans le btob, et ainsi, le discours de la saga animalière était devenu trop loin des attentes de ces nouveaux publics.
  

Objectif:

• Regarder avec un oeil neuf la Caisse d'Epargne
• Pouvoir segmenter la nouvelle identité en fonction des typologies de clients: Grands groupes, pros, particuliers, etc...
• Créer du silence du calme et de la sereinite pour faire passer le message.
  
  
  

De plus, la Caisse d'Epargne va aussi revoir sa stratégie dans le hors média, en s'impliquant dans le mécénat culturel, en misant plus sur la musique que sur le sport (domaine où elle était très présente).

Be Careful About Facebook Terms of Use For Your Marketing Campaigns

Setting Up marketing campaigns on Facebook is becoming more and more popular. The obvious advantage of the solution is that you can bond with your customers thanks to Facebook like never before. In terms of customer relationship management, that implies conversing with them, but also benefit from the fast spread potential of the platform.

But this medium remains for a lot of marketing departments a land to explore, and misuse is common. I was reading the great blog of Mickael Guillois, French expert in digital marketing, which was writing about the issues French retailer Kiabi experienced with its Fanpage.

Kiabi owned at this time 130 000 fans on its fan pages. Due to a marketing campaign based on a game which did not respect the terms of use of Facebook, Kiabi saw its page shut down by Facebook. Kiabi probably spent a lot of effort building this community, and losing all its followers due to a bad campaign is pretty disappointing.

Hence, Mickael, in order to avoid these kinds of trouble, gave us 3 great advices to prevent it to happen:

• Don’t use your wall to create a campaign/game. You should rather create a specific tab to display it.


• Specify clearly on this page that Facebook is not participating in the game.


• Respect the country’s legislation.
  
  Hope it will help you…
  

SEO Strategies In 2011

I have attended a conference about the new trends of SEO in 2011 during the E marketing Forum in Paris in January. Unfortunately I have not written the name of the speaker, but it was very interesting to see those trends. Indeed, even tough social media gets more and more important in search, Google still rules the Internet world, and its influence is constantly getting bigger by adding new features, like Google shop, or Android for mobile devices (both tablets and phones).

Here are the main ones I have got:

• SEO benchmarking: One of the main trend in managing SEO will be to look after your competition. Now that the market is getting mature, strategy will have a key role. Some companies may hence focus on flushing the keywords, in order to get a lot of traffic and drive sales, but some others are focusing on having a high return on investment. Depending on your competition’s strategy, you should adapt yours in order to be more efficient.
• Google Speedy: I did not know much about Google Speedy prior to the conference. Speedy aims to run faster search for Google. And it will change the way Google approach web pages, and therefore, it will have an impact on the way you will conceive your codes, to be well ranked. Speedy is at an early stage, but like always with Google, it should move fast.
• Google Preview: Google preview is a new feature of Google, which I actually use a lot, especially on my chrome navigator. It allows you type a keyword and instantly you can see propositions of keywords. It speeds up the way you search. And hence, it influences how searchers are looking for information. Therefore, the value of keywords will change, because it will be influenced by the new results Google Preview is going to provide.
  Google Products: Google products aim to ease the searching process of e-buyers, by providing a large outlook of which e-merchant propose what product.
• Devices: A lot of devices are now equipped with the Internet. Of course, the mobile Internet is going to rocket within the next few years, but also TVs and tablets are empowered with the Internet. And those new devices, and the way we interact with them is going to change the way we are surfing the Internet. And hence, we may see new results showing up, different from the ones we have right now. It may also change the query, with the need of more local information than right now. Maybe Google is going to integrate Foursquare results in its results, as it did with Twitter?
  
  What is sure is that SEO remains an art, and 2011 will see a lot of new things showing up.
  
  What do you think about it?
  

The Future of Advertizing Companies

I had a very interesting chat with the director of a French advertizing company, especially about all the new technologies which allow one company to create its own communication tools. Hence, anybody can create a website, an emailing campaign or even a brochure by its own, without asking for any advices to those companies.

Moreover, the results are most of the time high quality and low costs. Actually, it is this CEO which came to the conclusion that soon companies will no longer need advertising and/or communication companies.

I found couple of months ago this very funny movie which tells the story of the last advertising company, as if it was an en danger specie.



As a blogger, added to my entrepreneur mentality, I like to create things by my own, and I master all those tools which allows you, for free or for cheap, to design great communication tools. But I must disagree with this person. I don’t think that we will see the end of those agencies soon. Sure that those of them which are not able to manage the great shift which is occurring to the Internet sphere, on mobile phones, social networks, geolocalization, augmented reality, they will disappear without any question. But our world is ruled by communication. And more and more we’ll need to have experts to advice us on how to do.

I remember Henri Kaufman in one of his class used to say that it was important to have external advices instead of inside expertise, because those people which works on several different clients and different industries, may provide you with open minds, and new ways to see your business. It is very important sometimes to step aside, and seek for outside insights and advices, to move forward.

Hence, one of the key added values of those companies is the department of media planning, which helps define the new consumption trends, identify the strategy of competitions and so on. This department will become more and more important as the communication will become difficult as the number of communication channel is multiplying.

Therefore I don’t think advertising companies will die, if they succeed in thriving on social media and new communication tools. They should focus their expertise on communication in overall.

Also, one of the thing they should change, is the way their pricing method: They should be more focus oriented, now that communication channels metrics are getting sharper and sharper.

What do you think about it?

Apparition de cyvercollèges dans le Val de Marne

A partir de 2013, les 12 500 élèves du Val de Marne entrant en 6ème se verront remettre un ordinateur portable afin de pouvoir étudier. L'idée est d'utiliser l'ordinateur comme support essentiel et central de l'éducation de ces élèves. En effet, l'utilisation de l'ordinateur prend une place de plus en plus importante dans notre vie. Il est important de ne pas creuser la "fracture numérique", celle qui sépare les gens ayant un accès à l'informatique et ceux qui n'en ont pas.

Je trouve la démarche remarquable, car elle va aider les collégiens à utiliser au mieux l'ordinateur, qui reste le plus incroyable outil de connaissance que nous n'ayons jamais connu.

Et vous qu'en penses vous?

M-Commerce: Domino’s Pizza Iphone App Generates $1.3 million In Sales

M commerce remains a land that needs to be conquered. Now that smartphone sales are rocketing and the usage of mobile Internet is adopted by the mass market, now people are seeking for new ways to take advantage of this new main business trend. And one of the most promising one is the payment potential of mobile.

Not a lot of cases studies exist in mobile commerce sites which are actually profitable. But couple of days ago, I found this very interesting article. Domino's Pizza Iphone application generated $1.3 millions in sales!

The application, which was launched in September 2010 for the UK market, has been promoted on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and reached 400 000 downloads.

“The challenge was to create an app which made it easy and fast to order a pizza, but at the same time offered something more to engage users and reinforce the personality and key attributes of the Domino’s brand,” said James Millett, multimedia manager at Domino’s Pizza.

“Our Web site is already optimized for mobiles but we wanted to make it even quicker and easier for customers to get a piping hot pizza, wherever they are,” he said.

The applications lets users find the closest Domino’s locations and pizzas can be customized by pinching to resize the size of the pie and choosing from a variety of toppings.

Additionally, iPhone users can enter to win money off of their next order by popping their pizza in the oven and swiping or blowing away the steam to reveal a code.

While Domino’s is preparing the actual pizza, customers can keep tabs on its progress with the real-time pizza tracker (OK, in my opinion, this part might be a little bit too much...).

The application also includes a pizza slot machine that lets customers shake their phone and randomly choose from Domino’s 75 million combinations of base, sauce and toppings (it is a cool feature, but wouldn't it be awesome also if you could check what people are ordering at the same time on Twitter? Could turn the app a little bit more social!).

Here is a video showing you how the application actually works.

It is actually pretty new that Pizza makers are using the Internet to take orders. But Domino's Pizza went one step further with this new tool. And indeed, let's think about it, most of the time you order a pizza on your phone, and it would be pretty convenient to be able to pay the pizza right away, as you won't need to get crazy by seeking for money to give tips to the pizza guy...

It is also great for the company, which may now improve staff productivity as it does not need to deal with payments any longer, combined with the fact that the order is also automatically typed into the system.

Now this shows well how a m commerce website may work: It is improving the customer experience by improving the payment process. And what gives also value to the m commerce platform is that you may customize your product thanks to the same application. It reinforce my opinion that mobile marketing will help generate foot visits in store, and hence generate more business to traditional retail.

What do you think about it?

Ipad Success Story : Disney Delivered 1 Million Book Apps

A lot of hope is based on the Ipad format, in order to give a lift to newspapers and books
sales. The Ipad has all the features required to improve a lot reader experience.

And some companies already seem to take advantage of it. Disney recently announced it
sold 1 million book apps on Ipad, Iphone and Ipod Touch. Disney have 9 book applications
available on the Apple’s App Store, and all of them have been in the top 10 of paid book apps
since the Ipad was released in April 2010.

You may click here to get further information.

It isinteresting to see success on the Ipad. It seems that what brought success to Disney’s
book is that it fully used the potential of Ipad: "This app was such a delightful surprise, full
of color, audio, songs and movie clips! It's easy to follow with a great voice that reads to you,
easy to flip pages, and a true delight that really engages the reader and keeps you entertained.
There are lots of little extras, including coloring pages and songs with lyrics to read-a-long,
and you can touch some of the pictures on the page to get an audio clip from the movie.”

What do you think about it?

Quelques réactions sur l'application Ipad de la Caisse d'Epargne

J'utilise depuis quelques temps régulièrement l'application pour Ipad de la Caisse d'Epargne. Depuis un an, la Caisse d'Epargne (qui est par ailleurs ma banque de référence) a beaucoup évolué afin de se rapprocher de ses clients:

• Site mobile pour consulter ses comptes
• Application Iphone, puis Android
• Nouvelles campagnes de communication, avec une nouvelle charte, mais aussi l'abandon de la figure populaire de l'écurueil.
• La possibilité d'avoir un numéro de téléphone non surtaxé pour accéder à son agence (oui cela parait irréel, mais ce n'était pas le cas avant).

Et donc depuis quelques temps une application Ipad. Ce que je trouve super sur cette application, c'est le module gestion de budget. Je suis très friand de ce type d'outil, car, il faut bien l'avouer, j'aime gérer mon budget de manière très précise.

Maintenant, tout n'est pas parfait avec cette application, mais on est sur la bonne voie. Voici quelques points vraiment intéressant:

• Il est très facile de mettre des catégories aux différents achats. Par contre, j'ai l'impression que le nombre de catégories est limité, ce qui est dommage: Pourquoi devrait on limiter le nombre de catégories?
• La partie analyse reste un point faible, mais le graphique sous forme de camembert est plutôt bien fait, et permet une lecture facile des postes de coûts.
• Il est vrai que le fait que ce soit un écran tactile permet une interaction facile avec l'application.

Maintenant, je souhaitais quand même partager avec vous certains points d'améliorations.

• Concernant les catégories: Ne pas limiter le nombres de catégories, laisser à l'utilisateur la liberté d'en créer autant qu'il en a besoin. Par ailleurs, il faudrait permettre de créer des familles au dessus des catégories, pour rendre plus facile la partie analyse.
• Concernant l'analyse:
• Au lieu de privilégier les graphiques sous formes de camembert, qui permet de voir une situation fixe, il vaut mieux y avoir des graphiques de types "courbes", qui permet d'identifier l'évolution dans le temps.
• Il faudrait avoir aussi une partie analyse sous tableau, qui permet de voir les évolutions en % et en valeurs. Cela permet de voir si sur le mois on est dans les clous.

Bref, il y a vraiment du bon et un futur sympa pour cette application, mais encore pas mal de travail pour vraiment rendre l'application vraiment utile.

Foursquare Educates Brands

When you have such an innovating product as Foursquare, it is obvious that you will need a strong evangelist effort to make in order to convince brands to use it. Personnaly, I can clearly see the interest of Foursquare, especially to boost in store foot traffic. But for marketing and customer relationship managers who might not be as much into new technologies, Foursquare’s success may remain an unanswered question.

Foursquare has released a new business section on its website. Its goal is to explain how Foursquare uses and how brands may use it, with detailed examples.

I invite you to visit it here.

From registering your point of sales, to creating badges and following people, everything is explained.

I find the section very interesting, clearly understandable. The only thing I regret is that they could have added up a forum for people to ask questions.

What do you think about it?

Google's BigQuery: Promising

I have recently been introduced to Bigquery. It is a service proposed by Google, which allows companies to process large amount of data thanks to Google's wonderful skills. Google indeed is used on a daily basis to scan through an incredibly huge amount of data, in order to propose the best search results to its users. Hence, they are now using this expertise to the corporate world.

Here is a good video showing how it works, and the strengths of Bigquery:

Now there is something that bugs me about it: It is the privacy issue. How Google may assure the privacy of the data it will process?

Also there is another correlated question: How is Google making money out of it? It doesn't seem clear if the service is free or not. But Google is used to propose free services in order to get from users' data to propose keywords.

What do you think about it?

Cars Empowered With Social Media: The Future Is Near

I think I found what my next car will be. It is called the Mini Cooper Connected and it seems very promising. You will find here a video showing you out why.

The Mini Copper has a social media feed from Facebook, check your Twitter account, you may connect to Google maps to find places to visit... We may imagine a Foursquare feature which would propose you to check in in a glance.

This is a very cool way to think how the car will be in the future. Actually, it has been years that car manufacturers are thinking about bringing the Internet inside the car. But nobody has really brought those projects to life. It is actually interesting to watch this new concept. Indeed CEO of Renault Carlos Ghosn was at Leweb this year, and was discussing with Loic Lemeur about how to incorporate Internet in cars. And as you will see in this video, is why quite pessimistic about setting up a car empowered with Internet. In his opinion, for security reasons, car manufacturers should not equip cars with Internet because it could distract drivers. Of course I understand that security must be the top priority for a car...

I believe that in the end, we will all have the Internet in our cars, and this will be great. As Mini Cooper is part of the BMW group, I can't wait to see what these "connected features" will be in premium BMW models.

What do you think about it?

Netvibes Is Missing The Ipad Revolution

I am the happy owner of an Ipad since this christmas. To be honest with you, I am very happy about it. I did not quite expect such a great experience navigating online with this new device. I am especially enjoying reading online newspapers, either on their websites or on applications they have set. I read mainly Le Figaro (French), and El Pais (Spanish). But there was one application that I was really eager to check: Flipboard.

When Flipboard was released, it made a lot of buzz on the Internet. It was a really cool way to use Twitter, and as I use Twitter as one of my primary source of information for my blog, I expected a lot about it. And to be honest with you, I really like it. It is really cool, and really look like an actual newspaper. It is easy to check interesting articles, and to read them thanks to it. Actually, Flipboard became one of my main tool to read news. I use it every morning.

Here is a video showing out the strengths of Flipboard.

Now there was another service that I used to check daily to get information for my blog, and overal information: Netvibes. Netvibes has been around for years now, and has been one of the leader in the Internet technology for quite a while. There RSS reader and organizer was a great product. You may get all the information you want, and organize it the way you wanted it.

But lately, especially as Twitter has become so huge, I have left my Netvibes on the side. So now that I am checking out all these new applications newspapers have released and Flipboard. I was wondering if Netvibes has created an application. Therefore I asked the question on my Twitter account, and CEO of Netvibes Freddy Mini responded to me that they did not, but instead, had a netvibes HTML5 version which was cool to use on Ipad.

But as I checked it, I did not find anything interesting. This is a pitty, because I have tons of RSS feeds on my Netvibes, and as I have checked Paper.li creating a lot of buzz, as they try to recreate a Newspaper from who you follow on Twitter (I believe it is very poor right now), Netvibes would be the best placed to do so. Netvibes has tons of informations about the things you read, and they even know how you have ranged it, in which sections.

I imagine clearly what a Netvibes Ipad version inspired by both Paper.li and Flipboard would be.

I really hope something is going to show up, because so far I have no intention to visit my Netvibes page.

What do you think about it?

Do You Really Believe In Mobile Commerce?

Mobile handhelds are becoming the center of a new hype. Smartphones sales are skyrocketing, new technologies allow the mass market to use the Internet at a high speed, and no one can possibly doubt mobile will be the next trend to watch.

Now what we have learned with the Iphone success, is that people like to interact with their smartphone for three main activities:

• To be informed: Read articles on the web, download some newspapers applications
• Useful applications: Find a restaurant nearby, consult a bank account, prepare a shopping list.
• To have Fun: all the video games which exist now.

What about paying with their mobile phones? A lot of companies have already invented new ways to use mobile as a payment terminal for in store purchases.

I read not so long ago (it was before Christmas time), that 44% of British people were ready to buy Christmas gifts via their mobile phones.

"A new study by UK-based smart buying clubGlamoo suggests that 44% of Brits will use their mobile phone to buy and send gifts this Christmas.

Sampling 4000 people, the survey found that a third of respondents would use their daily commute to complete a shop for goods and services on their mobile, whilst 42% said they would take advantage of being a passenger in the car to complete their shop."

What is interesting to see is the advantage mobile commerce would deliver: Being able to order in any situation, which is not yet the case of the Internet. But I believe that the main challenge for mobile commerce will be to provide a nice interface which will help the customer to find the products he wants with ease.

What do you think about it?

Employees Play A Key Role In Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management is a complex art which encompasses several different activities, and several different media. And most of the time there is a fundamental part which is left on the side, whereas in my opinion it is probably the most important one: employees.

There are a lot of cases where CRM is approached by CEOs as a way to improve salary costs, by replacing human experience by a "robot". But it doesn't seem in my opinion a proper way.

Hence, I wanted to quote two very interesting quotes said by CEOs of companies which excel in customer relationship management:

• "You can't expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don't exceed the employees' expectations of Management" Howard Schultz, Starbucks
• "Businesses often forget about the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can't deliver good service from unhappy employees". Tony Hsieh, Zappos.

These two statements place human resources and employees at the core of customer relationship management. Not database. Not top of the line direct marketing campaign. They believe that customer relationship management is about corporate culture and employees happiness. You can't pretend to feel for your customers while you don't even feel for the people you manage on a daily basis.

In the retail industry, whatever the company it is, employee turnover is very high. People switch from job very easily, which drives high cost for hiring new people and train them, but also inefficiency for the whole staffs, as they are often undermanned.

This is the reason why it is very important while creating a CRM strategy to take into consideration the human factor. CRM is not about taking the place of people, but actually being able to optimize employees time and knowledge to improve customer service, and in the end, customer satisfaction.

What do you think about it?

Le Master Distribution et Relation Client de Paris Dauphine gagne le concours Carrefour

Un petit peu de publicité pour mon ancien master. En effet, une équipe des étudiants de cette année ont remporté un concours organisé par Carrefour. De plus, faisant parti de cette équipe, Marie Cholet, va représenter les couleurs de la Carte Club DIA lors des trophées SCOPS cet avril.
Carrefour a invité les 30 étudiants du "Master Distribution et Relation Client" de l’Université Paris-Dauphine à la finale du « Match ». Les étudiants organisés en 6 équipes en compétition ont relevé le défi en proposant de réelles solutions autour de deux problématiques : l’une portant sur le marché des séniors, l’autre sur les produits du rayon surgelés.

L’objectif pour Carrefour est triple :
- Confronter les étudiants à la réalité professionnelle en les mettant face à un enjeu réel
- Travailler la marque employeur de Carrefour auprès de ce Mastère très spécialisé de l’université Paris Dauphine
- Identifier les talents qui se sont exprimés pour les recruter

Sur les produits surgelés, une équipe sur les 3 en compétition a été désignée vainqueur du « Match » par Carrefour.
Il s’agit de : Chloé Douville, Mélanie Le Parquic, Charles Falque-Pierrotin, Céline Maheu et Marine Lehobey

Sur le marché séniors l'équipe vainqueur du match : Flavie Barthel, Charlotte Ciboit, Elena Boric, Rathsamy Thirakul et Marie Cholet.

UK Study Puts Mobile Coupons Usage On Hold

Geolocalization will be for the next few years one of the main discussion of marketing and

customer relationship management managers. The idea to influence shoppers’ behaviors

thanks to appropriate promotions while in the point of sale is for sure interesting.

Nevertheless, Mobile marketing is a very touchy issue. For sure, pull mobile marketing

strategies have shown their efficiency, as the Iphone app store shows. When companies

propose some applications to download with interesting features, it is ok as long as the user

decide to get it. But push mobile marketing actions are quite difficult.

Hence, a recent study (UK) shown that. Only 8% of grocery shoppers wanted to receive

location based coupons. Indeed, privacy issues are key for this kind of usage. Therefore, it is

very disruptive for customers to get advertising on its mobile while shopping.

More information here.

It is important to not transform mobile advertizing into an intrusive medium. Push mobile marketing campaigns are very difficult to design, and to me, it should really not be consider, because of how disruptive it is.

What do you think about it?

Débrief du salon e-marketing 2011

Comme chaque année, je me suis rendu, bien que très rapidement cette année au salon du E-marketing, au palais des congrès.

Et cette année, mon sentiment reste mitigé... En effet, le monde du marketing en ligne a connu ces 2 dernières années de profonds changements. Notamment, pour ne citer qu'eux:

• Les réseaux sociaux: Twitter et Facebook en tête
• La mobilité, avec Foursquare, mais tout un arsenal de possibilité de communications sur mobile.
• La géolocalisation
• La réalité augmentée

Or, sur la plupart des sujets, je n'ai pas vu de société vraiment innovante, hormis certainement la réalité augmentée, où Total Immersion nous a fait une superbe présentation. La France est pourtant un pays qui maîtrise ces nouvelles tendances, et je trouve dommage de ne pas avoir eu de pôle pour ces starts ups, afin d'avoir plus de nouveauté.

Il faut aussi dire qu'il y a eu énormément, comme chaque année, de sociétés spécialisées dans l'emailing, alors que l'activité a profondément évolué, due aux réseaux sociaux et à la croissance de la consommation de l'Internet mobile. Il est bien dommage de voir que ces sociétés, qui sont maintenant bien développées, et qui pourraient investir dans des innovations liées aux réseaux sociaux, n'ont pas bougé...

Les conférences par contre sont toujours de très bonne qualité.

Et vous, qu'en avez vous pensé?

Mall Of America Excelling In Social Media Usage To Boost Traffic

Mall of America has set up several social media campaigns to boost in store traffic:

• Access for Twitter followers to special parking places on the busiest shopping day of the year: “OnDecember 18, tomorrow, the Mall of America will close its north surface parking lot, just steps away from the north entrance to the mall, reserving 96 spaces for its Twitter followers. To snag one of the coveted spots, Twitter followers needed to register on Eventbrite.”
• Special promotions for Foursquare and Facebook Places users: “the Mall of America will offer a $25 gift card to the first five people who check in on Foursquare each day from December 20 through December 23. And on Facebook Places, the Mall of America Youth Foundation will donate $1 for each check-in through December 24, up to $500 each to VEAP, or Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People, and One Heartland, which operates camps for children impacted by HIV/AIDS.”
  

The mall business is wondering right now how they may become more attractive to counter attack the Internet offensive. I actually attended last year a conference in France with most of the main mall business people on how to use new technologies to lead traffic in store. It was quite interesting; even though I saw that these people were far from understanding the new customer trends (those people are more real estate managers than marketing/customer relationship management experts).

I hope it will give some ideas to some mall managers in France, to incorporate technologies and/or social media to boost foot traffic in malls.

What do you think about it?

L’audience de Twitter stagnerait en France ?

Twitter reste pour moi l’un des services mobiles qui va exploser en cette année 2011, avec certainement Foursquare (même si je pense que Foursquare explosera plus en 2012, vu que le service est plus jeune). Twitter a eu une croissance impressionnante en 2010, et la société commence tout juste à générer ses premiers revenus.

Néanmoins, j’ai lu le mois dernier que l’audience de Twitter commencerait à stagner en France :
http://blog.lefigaro.fr/technotes/2010/12/laudience-de-twitter-stagne-en-france.html

« Le nombre de visiteurs uniques était passé de 78.000 en octobre 2008 à 1,5 million en octobre 2009.

En 2010, l'audience de Twitter a continué d'augmenter, mais pas dans les mêmes proportions, puisque l'on observe cette fois une hausse de 21%. Plus intéressant, un pic a été atteint au mois de mars. Depuis, le nombre de visiteurs uniques s'est stabilisé autour de 2 millions, et ne progresse plus vraiment. »

Pour moi, ces chiffres ne peuvent pas être pris sérieusement : les clients Twitter représente une source importante de traffic. Etant donné que Twitter est très utilisé en mobilité, il est logique qu’une grosse partie de l’utilisation ce fait via des applications comme Seesmic, ou encore le client Twitter. D’ailleurs, la baisse de l’utilisation de Twitter semblerait intervenir en juin, lorsque Twitter a commencé à créer ses propres clients sur les différentes plateformes mobiles.


Mais cet article soulève un autre point : La mesure des sites Internet. En effet, avec l’avènement de l’Internet mobile et surtout des applications mobiles, il va être de plus en plus difficile de suivre la fréquentation des sites Internet. De plus, il ne faut pas oublier qu’une grosse partie de la fréquentation des sites est en train de migrer vers les réseaux sociaux, notamment Facebook. Certains sites de marques ont des trafics plus fort sur leurs pages Facebook que sur leurs sites.


Il va donc falloir trouver un moyen d’intégrer les statistiques de visites sur mobile et sur les pages Facebook et Twitter (outils qui n’existent pas réellement à ma connaissance), pour pouvoir gérer des sites de marque à l’avenir.

Internet est devenu un média multi canal, complexe à gérer, comprenant comme composantes principales :

• Le site Internet
• L’activité mobile
• L’activité sur les réseaux sociaux
• Tout ce qui est push, notamment l’emailing, l’achat de mots clés.

Nous nous trouvons dans une situation proche de celle du début du CRM et de la gestion de la relation client. Ainsi, la multiplication des canaux de marketing direct (courrier, téléphone, emails, contact avec le vendeur, etc…) a obligé les sociétés à construire des programmes CRM importants, visant à coordonner ces différents canaux. Maintenant, sur Internet, cela va devenir la même chose.

Qu’en pensez-vous ?

Carrefour améliore ses relations avec les fournisseurs

La grande distribution a toujours eu une image négative de sa gestion des négociations. En effet, alors que cette activité représente l’une des plus importantes parties de son métier, les rapports que les distributeurs et les fournisseurs entretiennent sont très conflictuels.

Ce mal est très français. En effet, aux Etats-Unis, depuis de très longues années, distributeurs et fournisseurs travaillent ensemble afin de pouvoir optimiser leurs affaires mutuelles. Notamment, c’est de ces bonnes relations qu’est né le category management.

En France, le category management existe bien évidemment, et est très performant. Néanmoins, les rapports restent toujours basés la plupart du temps sur le rapport de force.

Lars Olofsson est le directeur général du groupe Carrefour, distributeur français, 2ème distributeur mondial et 7ème plus gros employeur privé dans le monde. L’une des particularités de Lars Olofsson est qu’il vient du monde du fournisseur. Ainsi, il connait bien l’envers du décor, mais surtout, a la réelle volonté d’améliorer les pratiques et relations que Carrefour entretien avec ses principaux partenaires.

C’est dans ce cadre d’ailleurs que Carrefour Planet est né, de la collaboration des leaders de chaque category afin de repenser la distribution et l’expérience client en magasin. De cette volonté est né en décembre 2010 un nouveau code de conduite pour les managers Carrefour.

« On apprend ainsi que, chez Carrefour, règle numéro 1, il faut « respecter strictement la légalité ». « Contribuer à un environnement de travail sûr et sain » vient de deuxième position des top priorités, suivi de « s’engager pour la diversité et des conditions de travail respectueuses », « garantir la confidentialité », « éviter les conflits d’intérêts », « refuser toute forme de corruption », « développer des pratiques commerciales loyales et transparentes », « fournir un reporting fiable et fidèle », et, dixième point, « être l’ambassadeur de la marque Carrefour. » »

J’apprécie beaucoup le travail que fait Lars Olofsson, car il a une réelle volonté de transformer Carrefour. Je suis aussi en accord sur cette vision de la négociation. La négociation n’est pas un rapport de force, mais plutôt un processus qui doit mener à obtenir les conditions désirées, tout en s’assurant de la pérennité de l’accord. Ainsi, il est important que les 2 parties ressortent un bénéfice de la négociation. Il est important de garder ainsi pour Carrefour des partenaires avec des revenus stables, qui sont le garant de la bonne continuation de la collaboration.

Google Facing Global Companies Problems

It has been a while that Google has become an Internet giant. It is dominating the search engine market, but is also the leader of several other markets. What is sure, is that the exceptional growth it experienced this past decade change its status from a promising start up to a dominant company. Such a fast growth is difficult to manage, as dealing with a small company does not imply neither the same structure nor the same discipline.

Google’s know how and market is mature now. And therefore they are starting to face the same problem global companies are experiencing: fewer and slower innovation, problems in making quick decisions…

The Business Insider gives us a good example of how it impacted some of their decisions. Google aimed to buy an actor in the Internet music distribution market. Nevertheless, due to its unappropriate structure, trying to work as a start up, but in a large company frame, it has not been able to make a decision.

Google places a lot of value on agility. Instead of having a strong dictatorial leader like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates sign off on every product decision, the company is organized in a collection of interdependent teams. This is supposed to let Google respond quickly to market conditions.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-wanted-to-buy-spotify-but-internal-fighting-stopped-it-2010-12#ixzz18eZ6frry

This example shows you how Google is not innovating anymore, but would rather by some existing company/projects, in order to grow. It is also adopting some methods which they were not accustomed to. For example, they have rationalized their customer relationship management for Adword clients to make it more profitable.

Somehow, Google is experiencing the same thing Microsoft has the past few years. They have not been able to innovate with their core products, the operating systems and the Microsoft office softwares. They also have struggled to enter new market.

Google is facing a very important era of its history. It needs to succeed in turning into a global companies, and to structure its business in such a way they will be able to make more consistent decisions.

What do you think about it?

Getting Outside The Promotion Loop

Promotion is a very effective and easy way to boost sales. Indeed, when you offer to customers some discounts on products, they tend to respond pretty well to the stimuli. Nevertheless, and that is what has been seen during this economic downturn, when you start increasing the number of promotions you deliver, the less effective they become, and you enter into a vicious spiral which is difficult to leave.

This vicious spiral is created when competitors start to grow their amount of promotions. The more they are offering vouchers, the less they are effective, but the more they tend to make, as they find it profitable, and the only way to convince shoppers to buy.

I read a very interesting article about Emmanuel Casabianca, which is the CEO of Telemarket, one of the most important grocery online retailer in France. Hence, they have set up a commercial strategy which prefers to offer products to customers rather than discounts and % off. Why? As he explains, when you offer a discount to some customers, they take it, but they forget about your gesture very fast, whereas when you offer something, it seems to remain in customers’ memory more permanently. Hence, they offer in some occasions for customers which spent over 80€ a basket of fruits, or a full breakfast.

That reminds me also something about a concept which is “always exceed your customers’ expectations”. If your customer expect a voucher to come to your store that means your business model is not reliable. Customers should come to your store because you deliver good service and/or a good product. Now, you should also always exceed their expectation, and by giving them a little extra, you may increase a lot customers’ satisfaction.

This reminds me also something else. In November, two of the largest retailers in France, Carrefour and Auchan, around the same period of time, proposed to customer to collect some cartoon cards, in order to boost the traffic in their store. A study showed that traffic has been high thanks to these cards, and that actually customers were basing the choice of the hypermarket they were going to due to the cards they were collecting.

If you really think about it, the marketing investment in cards is very low, compare to the price investment you may use to promote some of your products.

If you want to get out of the promotion loop, and strengthen your customer relationship, you should consider more offering gifts, presents to your customers, than the price.

What do you think about it?

Mobile Price Comparison: Will It Impact Customer Relationship Management?

Price comparison has changed a lot the way we consume. Now that customers are aware both of the quality of products and of prices in different stores, they are taking this information into consideration. It has been several years now that price comparators rule the ecommerce industry. Thanks to this tool, a website visitor is able to compare thousands of online retailer prices for the same product, and accordingly switch from one to another.

We are on the edge of the mobile revolution, and thanks to smartphones, price comparison will be possible in brick & mortar stores. People will be able to scan products and find the prices of the same product in local competitors. Some applications already exist, especial RedLaser which has been the first one.

It will for sure impact the way you deal with customer relationship management. It is somehow like one competitor being able to sell inside your own store! CRM has worked a lot on the way to create added value for customers not to only make its decision on prices, but on the overall experience and service one company can deliver.

What it will imply:

• A faster pricing management: You will need to check competition pricing on a regular basis to adjust your price, to avoid customer leaving the store only for price purpose.
• Propose a better service: As long as the customer feels it has a better service in your store, it won’t leave the store simply for a price difference (especially if it is minor). If your store allows him to gain points, or to leave faster the store thanks to fast cashier, it will stay.

What is sure is that these bar code scanning applications, which will compare prices, will change customer behavior in a way we don’t know. This is the topic of this very interesting article how mobile will effect on impulse purchase.

According to Nick Holland, senior analyst at the Yankee Group, smartphone-empowered consumers are growing in numbers and, as a consequence, the number of impulse purchases being made is decreasing.
Indeed, he believes those that compare prices via mobile, before succumbing to an emotional buy, show "intelligence and cunning when confronted by aggressive sales staff".
"Impulse purchases are the opposite," says Holland "showing personal weakness - they are a dirty little secret that probably isn't to be shared with others."
StorefrontBacktalk editor, Even Schuman, disagrees. He believes shoppers, even those armed with smartphones, won't be able to control their natural urges.
"Impulse purchases are indeed emotional, and rationality does not come nearly as naturally," he writes.
"For every in-aisle price- and feature-comparison that an Android or iPhone enables, there will be 20 purchases in the heat of the moment. And those impulse purchases will be enabled by mobile."

If the customer is already in store, then he has already made a great step toward purchasing. Maybe not now, but sooner or later. Therefore, an appropriate use of mobile technology may actually trigger the sales.

Procter & Gamble in the 2000s has spent a lot of money in optimizing the “First Moment of Truth”, this short period of 7 to 10 seconds when the customer make his decision on which products it will buy. Mobile usage will change this important period of the customers’ decision making process. It is still undetermined what will happen, and if, as the article proposes, mobile price comparison will kill the impulse purchase. I am still not convinced. I actually believe it will help customers to make its decision while in front of the aisle.

What do you think about it?

Groupon Case Study: How To Succeed Your Sales

Groupon is one of the fastest growing company in the ecommerce industry. The concept is simple: It proposes only flash sales, which allows the website to have attractive pricing. Nevertheless, as Groupon doesn’t seem that well organized, it seems some brands which have used the this retailing channel were not quite happy about the end, as they have been blown out by the success: They had not enough supply to please the generated crowd of buyers.
I read this great article for Business Insider about Amerian Apparel which flocks Groupon, thanks to a successful campaign. I like this article as it gives us a good case study on how to use Groupon.

But a source from American Apparel tells us he's seen sales numbers following his company's deal with Groupon "that disprove many of the ongoing doubts about Groupon."
He says customers who purchased the $25 Groupon – worth $50 – ended up spending an average of $70 once they cashed in the deal.
Our source says the best part of the deal, though, was how American Apparel was able to add a whole bunch of Groupon customers to its own email list.

"The killer was email address acquisition... We converted approximately 25% of in store redemptions into signing up for our email list... which is on track to generate an additional five to six figures in online revenue."

Groupon ended up selling 133,000 Groupons at $25 a deal in the US for a total revenue exceeding $3.3 million. Our source tells us Groupon came out of this deal with "much much less than half" of that $3.3 million figure.

But in my opinion, the main reason why it is experiencing such a success, it is probably because American Apparel prepared well the outcomes of the channel:

• It proposed a large enough supply to content the demand. In France, it is forbidden to advertise for products which you know you won’t have enough to please all the demand it will create (what we call “produit d’appel”). Because it creates dissatisfaction, and hence gives a bad image both to the brand and the retailer.


• It set up a system to boost its email data base thanks to the campaign. Therefore they were able to completely retain this customer data base to use it for further sales.
  

I believe Groupon is still a retailing channel that needs to be explored. The more retailers and/or brands will have experience with it, the better they will be able to manage it. Groupon is too big now to be used with amateurism.

What do you think about it?

Utopia: If France Decides To Create Its Own Facebook

I am always skeptikals when I see some web 2.0 companies valuation. Indeed, some of these companies have not sold anything yet, but investors spend billions into it. Most of the time these evaluations are based on the number of users one company have, as investors are counting on the audience to sell advertizing space, either it is keywords, banners, sponsored articles, or "promoted Tweets".

Here is some of the valuation I found:

LinkedIn is worth $2 billions

Facebook $33 billions

Twitter $4 billions, even though they are still loosing money

Myspace was bought in 2005 for $580 millions

These are some of the examples I found.

A lot of people are scared about how big Facebook is getting. Indeed, Facebook is the ultimate social network, which allows you to find all your friends, chat, share pictures... And people are affraid about losing the control of their private life on the web to a private company. I understand it may be scary. This is the reason why some projects like Diaspora emerged. They are willing to create an open source social network to compete with Facebook.

Now I wanted to share with you another idea of mine. Let's imagine for a moment that France decides to create his own social network, and to use the full potential of the long tail.

There are 60 millions of French persons in France, and about 40 millions have a regular access to the Internet. Let's imagine all of them decides to invest in a Facebook-like company, investing only 20€ in it. You will have a company with an equity of 800 millions €, and if you translate it into US dollards, it would be over $1 billions.

Now let's consider a ration between the number of users and potential advertizing revenues:

Facebook: 33 billions for 500 millions users: $66 by users

Twitter: 4 billions for 200 millions users: $20 by users

LinkedIn: 2 billions for 70 million users: $28 by users.

If we really think about it, with $20 invested by 40 million of French people, we would be able to have a tycoon of the Internet of our own.

Of course, this is pure utopia, but I just wanted to show two things:

• Valuation of companies just based on the number of users is dangerous. You may not sure that your website will turn into a highly efficient advertizing platform, Like Google accomplished.
• There is some money in France, and I don't understand why people complain we are not able to finance interesting start ups.

What do you think about it?

Interactive Advertizing Technology: Another Way To Interact With Customers

During this christmas celebration season, you have probably heard of the Microsoft's Xbox Kinnect system. This system allows you to play with a video game in a totally new way. If the Wii has let people be more interactive with games, by using body movements to control the game, Kinnect is using your whole body.

The Wii of course has been the pionneer in this technology. But we can see that people wants more and more human interaction with the machine. This has also been shown with the tactile technology, which helped making the Iphone and the Ipad successes.

I watched this video I found a long time ago, on a blog. It shows how these technologies using body recognition could be use to create interactive advertizing in point of sales.

Intelligent Multi-touch Display - Testing from Immersive Labs on Vimeo.

Customer interaction will become more and more important, and as sales are now made online, point of sales will become large show rooms which will propose a lot of room to these kinds of machines.

What do you think about it?

Myshopanion = Social Shopping

Social shopping is one of the hottest trend in the Internet world right now. It may be one of the most important one also to follow in 2011. As I would define it, social shopping encompasses all activities which will lead one shopper to use social media in his process to purchase a product or a service.

It can include several different features, among which:

• Checking in Foursquare or Gowalla to let his/her friends know what he/she is doing, or to access some vouchers.
• Visiting/asking questions/commenting on a blog/forum.
• Asking friends on Twitter or Facebook about the products.
• Simply reading comments and reviews either on Facebook, brand websites, ecommerce websites, blogs...

It appears that opinions of others online is very important in the decision making process. And hence, new social media are taking a very important part into this process.

Now, social media are migrating on mobile devices, and I found an interesting articloe about Myshopanion. It is a mobile application which aims to help shoppers to interact with peers. You may scan one product with your application to access several sources of information, such as comments of others.

I believe it is a good idea to launch such an app, in order to help the customers right before they purchase something, to make sure they are making the good choice.

In term of customer relationship management, it is a good thing those kinds of apps exist. Indeed, most of the new shopping tools emphasizes discounts and price comparaison, but when one company wants to show off its customer experience and customer service, what else than cusotmer reviews can be efficient? Indeed, I still believe that customers don't make their decision simply by comparing prices. They are also looking for a specific customer experience and customer service which they need and they feel they deserve.

Myshopanion is hence bringing social shopping onto mobile devices.

Lessons of Customer Relationship Management By Richard Branson

Famous business man Richard Branson has become famous thanks to his skills to innovate, and to bring new ideas on existing markets. I read this very good article about Richard Branson writting about customer relationship management.

Of course, Richard Branson consider customer service as very important, but what I liked, it is his idea of using its staff to find new ways to excel in customer service:

"A good first step would be to encourage everyone on your staff to take an active role in coming up with new ideas and solutions to improve your products and services. Ask your people to experiment and to offer suggestions, and make sure that they are able to do this without worrying about speaking out of turn or being embarrassed in front of their peers—they should be confident that managers will listen to what they have to say. There is no such thing as a bad idea in my book; there are just some that are harder to achieve and pay for! As a manager, I would rather have the chance to weed through those ideas than rely on the status quo."

Indeed, you don't need to be a CRM expert to have good ideas about how to treat customers. Furthermore, it is important your employees feel concern about customers, because they are the most important thing they should care about.

Mozilla Phone

Found on this blog, a video of a concept created by the Mozilla community. I like the idea we would be able to use the smartphone as a computer.

Best Buy: Innovating In The Pick Up Options For Optimizing Multichannel Advantages

Multichannel is becoming a norm nowadays. Either brick & mortar companies are going online, or pure players are finding ways to reach their customers in the real world thanks to pick up options. What is for sure is that multichannel is starting to become a norm.

But there is still room for improvement as the Internant and brick & mortar world are still struggling to click.

Best Buy hence has innovated:

• Customers may now pick up their products at the company's warehouses. For a national chain like Best Buy, it is very interesting to provide this service, as they may own several warehouses across country. Pick up at the warehouse may also decrease the logistic costs, as some part of the merchandise will not need to transit through the stores. The consumer electronics retailer also is letting customers pick up purchases directly from its warehouses to avoid delivery charges and scheduling conflicts for large items such as appliances, or to save time on orders that must be shipped to a store.

  Best Buy says it launched the new delivery options, which it calls Store Pickup Plus, to expand on the free shipping promotions it periodically offers online, as well as to allow consumers to avoid shipping fees, receive products more quickly, eliminate concerns about package delivery and increase confidence that products will be available.

• Thanks to a top of the line supply chain information system, they are able to tell to customers to pick up some of their orders 45 minutes after having ordered them online.

Now, I wanted to add something else about multichannel retailing. In France, drive ins are getting very popular for hypermarket chains. Some other type of retailers have started to use this system, like an optician in the north of France. But what about ecommerce? Wouldn't it be an efficient system to equip warehouses of these type of drive ins, in order to turn their warehouse into stores?

What do you think about it?

The Daily : Aiming To Define New Ways To Consume Magazines

Ruppert Murdoch has always been fighting in order to find a way to monetize information on the Internet. He is totally against the idea of free information on the Internet. Actually, I quite agree with him. The news companies market is plummeting, and even though Internet is growing fast, revenues from online activities has not turned out to be profitable.

Ruppert Murdoch is willing, as a lot of actors in the news market, to benefit from the Ipad to find a new reading experience which would be profitable. Hence The Daily, the first ever magazine to be designed for a tablet, has been released not so long ago. It costs $0,99 per issues, which makes it cheaper than any other magazines.


The Daily have great advantages:

• First, as I have said, the price, which is cheap.


• The reading experience: It has been designed in order to benefit from the great potential of the Ipad, and hence, provide more than a simple newspaper.
  

To be honest with you, I hope that Ruppert Murdoch succeeds. I consum tons of information online, and I actually contribute online, via my blog, where I post daily my thoughts and valuable information I found online about the topics I master. But it remains important to find professional magazines, profitable, in order to maintain a certain level of information.

Nespresso: Etude sur la guerre des capsules

Article trouvé sur le blog de l'excellent Yann Gourvenec au sujet de la guerre des capsules Nespresso.

En effet, la guerre des capsules a été l'un des principaux sujets de la grande distribution alimentaire en 2010. D'après ce que j'en sais, aussi bien pour Casino et L'Or, le lancement de leurs produits ont été plus que des réussites.

Ce qui est intéressant dans cet article, c'est la présentation de Vanksen sur l'impact qu'à joué les réseaux sociaux lors de cette bataille. En effet, Nespresso possède une forte présence sur les média sociaux, et l'événement du lancement des dosettes par des concurrents à créer un très gros buzz.

A voir.

Happy New Year!

I wish to all of you a happy new year! May 2011 brings you happiness, joy, laughs and success. I am sure 2011 will be better than 2010, as we are clearly leaving behind the financial crisis. I am sure we will still hear from it once in a while, and still some institution are going to struggle (I am betting on Spain, which in my opinion will mark the very end of the crisis).

What I am going to improve for 2011: Working on my wedding, that's for sure, but also my main goal will be to learn Spanish, in order to be perfectly fluent.

An ambitious goal, but I am pretty confident in myself.