Digital Interactif

French Youths Online - Forrester Study

I came across an interesting Forrester report on the French blog, Sortez du Cadre!. 

Forrester polled 1000 French youths, aged 12-24, and found that:

• 89% send email
• 72% read blogs
• 69% use search engines
• 57% utilize major web portals (ie. Yahoo!, MSN...)
• 55% research products online
• 51% comment of blogs
• 43% use chat rooms
• 40% use reference sites (ie. wikipedia)
• 37% look for news online
• 37% Maintain an online blog
• 29% look for sports results
• 29% download freeware
• 27% take part in discussions in forums and chats
• 26% prepare itineraries online (ie. directions, maps...)
• 24% use comparison sites (ie. Kelkoo)
• 24% use social networks
• 22% research/apply to jobs online
• 22% look at consumer reviews online (ie. Amazon, Ciao, DooYoo)

 

One small yawn for Yanks; One giant leap for Froggies

Monabanq, a subsidiary of 3 Suisses International Group and Groupe Cetelem, is a French bank that exists completely online and allows customers to manage all of their affairs through the Monabanq website.  Though this is a huge "yawn" for an American, this type of service is practically unheard of in France.  An interesting feature of this online bank is that they utilize Skype so that communications with the banking agents is free, essentially creating a cost-free operation.   

Whereas the typical French bank closes at 5pm on weekdays, Monabanq is geared towards the typical Internet user/full-time worker and offers live support until 10pm at night.   

The website itself offers a great interactive video that serves as a tutorial for new users.  If you want to test out your french skills, check it out.

Monabanq's main benefits include:

• No more paperwork : Digital copies of all your paper work
• No more mail : Interface for scanning and sending your documents to Monabanq via the Internet.
• No more pens : Electronic signature allows you to fill out bank requests without leaving your home.
• No more transfer delays (sort of...) : Transfer large sums of money in only 2-24 hours
• No more trips to the bank : Cash checks online (check must be sent to bank by mail though.  Once received, the account is credited to the date when the online form was initially filled out

Many of these features already exist in the American banking world but they are truly unheard of in France.  I lived in France for a year and learned to deal with a Bank (Banque Populaire) that closed it's doors for 2 hours during lunch time and closed at 12pm on Saturdays...I guess they never realized the beauty of running "lunch time" errands.  To see this type of change occurring within the French banking services industry is encouraging.  Hopefully, this level of consideration for customer service will spread like wild fire over there as the Internet forces the hand of traditional operating hours.   

Tous Les Rencontres Sont Possibles

There is a major national campaign taking place in France right now against Aids (or AIDES/SIDA en Francaise).  This campaign came to my attention thanks to the great work of X-Prime, a French interactive marketing agency.  X-Prime produced a flash sitelet entitled Tous Les Rencontres Sont Possibles as a supplement to the public awareness campaign.

The flash animation itself is a bit pornographic (I wouldn't recommend watching this at work!) but it is just emphasizing the importance of using protection during sex.  The website itself is www.touteslesrencontressontpossibles.com which translates into "All Encounters are Possible" as in you should always be careful.  The site's mission is primarily informative, seeking to educate people on how they can/cannot contract aids. 

One sweet feature about the website is that you can see all of the other people that are on the site with you.  The other users appear as floating symbols located above their name.  You can't interact with the other users that are on with you, but I like that.  I can think of about a million other places I'd rather meet someone than a site explaining how you can and can not contract aids.  So good call on leaving that feature out X-Prime!

All in all, the site is really well done. 

Nextedia - The Next Interactive Marketing Acquisition

 

France's Journal du Net is hinting at another big acquisition in the Interactive Marketing sector:

Nextedia is one of the last remaining independent French Interactive Marketing firms waiting to be bought up.  Following Publicis' acquisition of Business Interactif for 137 million euros, speculation is ripe that WPP, Havas, Omnicom and Aegis are all considering acquiring Nextedia in order to bolster their digital portfolios.

Created in 2005 by the merger of Addvise Media and Un77, Nextedia has enjoyed rapid growth within the online marketing industry.  Their revenue has increased from 4 million euros in 2005, 10 million euros in 2006, and is on track to reach 17 or 18 million euros by the end of this year.  Consisting of 270 employees, Nextedia is comprised of 6 different capabilities: search marketing, media planning and online ad buying, marketing analytics, email marketing, and advertising creation.  It is speculated that Nextedia currently has a 90 million euro pricetag ($125 million) a little less than business Interactif, but then again, the big Media Companies are rapidly becoming worse than the New York Yankees (think Roger Clemens) in terms of over paying for rapidly disappearing resources, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Nextedia go for 150 million euros.   

 

American Idol for Blogs

A french site, '30 minutes of glory' displays your blog for 30 minutes, people vote for their favorite blog, and I suspect it generates a crazy amount of traffic for your site.

What's interesting about the site is that to be the blog selected, all you have to do is be the first person to load your blog's URL into the form field in the title banner. 

The form field doesn't appear until the clock has stopped ticking though, so you probably won't see it when you first get to the page. 

I love this idea! A large Brand name, such as Coca-cola, could do something like this and host the blogs of individuals in a widget/sitelet on their main website property.  Not only would this gain a lot of traffic for Coca-cola, but it would also create value for Coca-cola website users. 

Say you just love CocaCola but you never go to their website.   Coca-cola could host a widget/sitelet on their main page that would do exactly what this site does: a) promote a blog and b)let people vote and rank the blogs they appreciate.  Bloggers would go to CocaCola in an attempt to promote their blog, thus increasing traffic to CocaCola's web properties, and as more and more people use the site the traffic generating affect for bloggers will become greater and greater.

It's a marketer's dream...though the legal issues surrounding the content posted on the widget/sitlet are a whole 'nother ballgame.