e-remediable

Publicis, the French advertising juggernaut, launched last summer a collaborative platform (Blogbang, still in public beta version for now), aiming to get into the online advertising market. The pitch: companies leave their ad specifications on the website, and members have to follow them to create an ad. Downstream, bloggers or website owners can choose to display Blogbang ads and earn money depending on their traffic.

Although it generated conscequent buzz in the French blogosphere, it did not yet convince many bloggers. Most criticism pointed at the mysterious payment mechanism: revenue is said to be much more fluctuant and lower than Ad-Words one’s. As far as I’m concerned I couldn’t try it because Wordpress doesn’t allow scripts on blogs, but I must admit that the idea of “crowdvertising” seduced me. Blogbang allows you to be an advertising agency, dealing with clients’ expectations, and earning money for your work. On top of that, the most creative ads I saw in the last few months were unofficial (see my previous post about the IPhone). Most creative people are not in advertising agencies, they are part of the huge community which made what we call Web 2.0, posting comments on blogs, videos on YouTube, songs on Jamendo or pictures on MySpace.

But the fact is advertising agencies are still here. Despite all the buzz on the web, Apple ordered an official campain for the IPhone release. A brand is too much a big deal for today companies to lose control over it. Marketing specifications are to complex (and confidential) to be delt with by amateur advertisers. For this reason, ads on Blogbang are moderated upstream by customer companies. That may be the reason why so few ads are online 3 months after the site opened (320 only, including many “official” ads made by agencies).

Companies advertising on Blogbang either don’t have enough money to hire an agency, or their marketers don’t have clear strategic vision to chose a specific segment and a tone to adress it. In any case, I would advice them to think again before releasing their brand open-source.

In this case, you can help me. I’m currently working on a project about musical videoclips and really need some feedback. Could you please fill in this very short survey?

I promise I can tell you more about this as soon as my own idea of it is crystal clear!

Thank you guys.

As I wrote in my previous post, I’m quite admirative of Apple’s marketers. The buzz paving the Iphone relase has no precedent in hi-tech landscape. You might know this fake TV ad broadcasted on Youtube, illustrating perfectly Apple’s Iphone launching strategy:

Note: the soundtrack is Young Folks by Peter, Bjorn & John

As you may know, I am currently in Morocco for my internship in a publishing company.

While surfing on the web yesterday, I got amazed by the breakdown of Youtube servers. For the very first time since I know this site, not a single Youtube videoclip was working (neither embedded videos, nor those on YouTube website). As a customer-care maniac, I was quite upset by this. I tried Dailymotion (which was perfectly working), but unfortunately, the videoclip I was looking for was not available on it.

Investigating the web for more information about this, I learnt that YouTube had been blocked by my ISP. Only Maroc Telecom (the historic telephone operating company in Morocco, subsidiary of Vivendi) customers were concerned, the two other ISPs kept granting access to the website and its videoclips . Resistance against this was organizing, many websites linking to proxies to access YouTube. The buzz around this case was so high (crossing borders to France), that Maroc Telecom brought back access to the website yesterday evening.

To protest against censorship, I show you the dissident video I was looking for, another excellent live performance of Ben Folds (during the concert he gave broadcasted live on his MySpace page):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9qa_c-UYSs]

I just posted an article on Tech IT Easy. Just take a tour and read it.

Don’t worry, I don’t change my blog another time! A friend of mine, Jeremy Fain, invited me to post some articles on his blog Tech IT Easy. If you still don’t know this website, you should visit it urgently. Jeremy is passionated (be sure I don’t exagerate writing this) in everything related to the IT economy. From software architecture to venture capital, he can’t refrain from writing about IT. He just graduated from HEC Paris (the same business school than me) and Ecole Centrale de Paris (a top-ranking French engineer school), and is now working at Microsoft (see his LinkedIn profile). His blog, one of my references on the web, inspires me a lot when I want to post on mine. It is an honour for me to be granted to reach his audience. Of course, I will keep blogging on e-remediable, which remains my main expression forum. I will put a link from this blog to all my future articles on Tech IT Easy.

“Imagine a world, one easily conceivable today, where governments, businesses, lobbyists, candidates, churches, and social movements deliver information directly to citizens on home computers. Journalism is momentarily abolished. Citizens tap into any information source they want on computer networks. They also send their own information and their own commentary; they are as easily disseminators as recipients of news.”

This accurate prediction looks like a definition of the so called “web 2.0” era. It has been formulated in 1995 (yes, 12 years ago!) by Michael Schudson in The Power of News. His point was that in such a world, professional journalism would necessarily reappear to give legitimacy to information sorting it among noisy environment.

The issue of the future of the press industry is even more rising in a French media landscape undergoing heavy reshuffling.

In May 14^th issue of L’Express, Jean Marie Colombani, the editor of the French daily Le Monde, explains his vision of the press future in the short-mid term. According to him, his fellow journalists should not worry that much about the expected decline of newspaper sales. The future lies in the web. That does not sound to be original piece of thought, but in France, coming from the editor of an established paper, it’s just revolutionary.

Web 2.0 challenges the current business model of most media industries, and especially the press. Since information is now a few clicks away from any laptop computer or cell-phone, there is no more point to spend money to get a newspaper. But when you buy a newspaper, are you paying for the raw material used (paper and ink) or for the service provided by journalists, that is checking sources of information and confronting them (either from a partial standpoint or not, here is not the point)? Can this mission be fulfilled through the Internet? Yes, and according to me the need for professional journalism is even more obvious in overcrowded information landscape.

Whereas the rest of the world seems to be anticipating the current shift in the press industry, french press moguls are trying to withdraw from the industry. On the one hand, the Financial Times has been pushing its online edition for years, making it a worldwide reference for financial information (it doesn’t compete anymore with printed financial press, but with RSS aggregators like Yahoo Finance). On the other hand, French press stakeholders are reluctant to acknowledge the decline of the historical information channel that is newspaper.

In a report to the French minister of cultural affairs, Marc Tessier, the president of France Televisions (the French publicly owned TV group), suggested to create an “Internet Press” label, to distinguish professional journalists as credible and legitimate source of information. I’m sure this measure aiming to save a declining business model would be counterproductive. Bloggers don’t claim to be journalists. Professional journalists own assets that bloggers don’t have: multiple and checked information sources, financial support of their company to conduct deep investigations, and the only acceptable label that is the name of the newspaper and its legitimacy. In the current noisy media landscape, they are now responsible to keep and reinforce this historically built legitimacy.

How to promote a niche TV channel with limited ressource ? Impossible to advertise on other TV channels, even nor on the radio : too expensive.

Then, rely on your target to convey your message. That’s the point of buzz marketing. By aiming at the right population, your message can be spread much faster than using traditionnal channels.

Filles TV, a french girls-dedicated TV channel, experimented such promotion methods, dressing up parisian rules in pink and broadcasting movies of the commando-like operation on DailyMotion.

You said cheap? New media channels exponentially increase buzz marketing relevance. French countryside rapper Kamini generated more than 2,5 million hits on YouTube without spending a single cent in promotion. The Blair Witch Project became the most profitable movie ever thanks to the Internet and good viral marketing.

That’s precisely why the new information channels are revolutionary. They allow everybody to reach the widest audience. And that’s why real-TV producers were visionary (in their early years …), understanding that people’s only claim to the media was to get access to the mass-celebrity.

If I had not decided to start blogging this month I might never have started.

3 events led me to do so :

• The Web 3 convention, organized by Loïc Le Meur (HEC Alumni, french guru of blogging whose company is hosting this blog). More than the two previous ones which were focused on the bloggers community, this convention was opened to the outside (real ?) world. Two candidates to the french presidential election, one peace Nobel Price owner, many web-entreprenors, but also “brick & mortar” firms representatives …

• The Person of The Year 2006 in Time Magazine : “You”, as the hero of the new information era. Did they lack relevant candidates to receive this prize or is it only a very good buzz marketing campaign ? Anyway, this choice highlights the main difference between the first internet revolution (Web 1.0), whose firms fosters the so-called “bubble”, and the current one (Web 2.0), whose obvious unifying feature lies in content personalization (e.g. Google with news, Last.fm with music, Youtube with video, or Vox with blogs). As if new economy firms got more mature and focused now on the Internet main competitive advantage : interactivity, making information feeds more and more bilateral.

• Last but not least, a friend’s blog about IT (Tech IT Easy) which reached new trafic peaks. I must admit that I was quite admirative of his discipline in posting everyday, and starting blogging became a new challenge for me.

Information business model is experimenting a true revolution since everyone is a potential information-provider and above all acts as an information provider. This increase in range of information sources, added to the popularization of main information chanels (pictures, video, audio, text) challenges traditionnal media companies. French newspapers are one the verge of bankruptcy and the music and cinema industries are deeply suffering from P2P. Most innovative companies can take up the challenge : The Financial Times makes money thanks to its online edition, Apple and its ITunes Music Store sold more than 1 billion tracks while settling its IPod as a standard of the market.

I and Romain will do our best to update this blog as frequently as possible. In order to reach the largest public possible, I will post in English and Romain in French. Don’t hesitate to leave comments on our posts: exchanging ideas is the best way to increase one’s level.

And guys, one last reminder, you’re the person of the year, yes, you. You control the information age. Welcome to your world.