Aug 6 2010

Make no mistake about location-based services. There’s more to consider than their current low number of users, especially when you take into account the potential they offer to retailers who can learn much, much more about their customers.

At the beginning of this week, Forrester published a study on LBSNs or Location-based social networks. Only 4% of adult US surfers have already used an LBSN service, and only 1% uses it at least once a week.

Although it is connected to Facebook and Twitter, the real interest of Foursquare is limited to the ego boost when one wins points and badges.

But back now to the enormous potential of LBSNs, especially when it comes to click & mortar strategies. We see two reasons for that. First of all, the mobile phone is gaining field in the buying process and context. In its 2009 study, called The Emerging Opportunity in Mobile Commerce, Forrester found that of all Americans having used their mobile to buy a product, 62% have used it to find a shop nearby with the product on stock. 42% used their mobile to look for information on a product in the shop and 39% used it to compare prices within the shop itself.

To those who can’t see what this may lead to in the near future, we would recommend they have a look at this demo by Pattie Maes of the MIT.

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May 21 2010

Brice Le Blévennec, Emakina’ Chief Visionary Officer gave this interview (in french) during Think Big, the annual event gathering the Digital communication professionals. He elaborates on the future of digital agencies, the new iAd format and his new toy, the iPad.

Apr 26 2010

The 4th of May BAQMaR & Febelmar will give the stage to 10 marketers, advertisers and researchers who are willing to share their “Vision on the future of marketing or research” during an inspirational session.

Brice will be one of them with a sharp and sexy presentation about the future of… Web, Mobile, Enterprises, Marketing, Media, Commerce and Agencies.

Do you want to see these heroes at work and get inspired? Register today for this event!

When: The 4th of May at 19:00

Where: in Brussels (Area42)

Mar 4 2010

PUB and BFM Today recently invited Brice Le Blévennec for a filmed interview on the inertia of traditional media. How can press groups and advertisers adapt themselves to better respond to the evolution of society?

Our visionary of the world of communication underlined the many rear guard actions taken by the sector. “The media must change their way of operating”, he says “The world has changed, habits have changed and readers have changed too. The future is now in the hands of a new generation, that of the digital natives, those who have never known life without the cell phone.”

You can review Brice’s baleful interview on the BFM website.

To continue thinking on these lines, here is a recent presentation of Brice Le Blévennec on the future of communication and the media entitled “Looking at the future?”

Jan 15 2010

After 23 years of presence at the Superbowl, the greatest unifying event that makes every creative mind drool, Pepsi has decided to stop investing in Superbowl advertising, which costs no less than 20 million dollars. So, what are they going to do with all that money, I hear you thinking (“Darling, I’ve found some savings under the mattress. How about some serious spending?”). Well, Mr. Pepsi has decided to make a courageous choice. One that is in line with the current media environment. He is indeed going to invest this money in social media! And the new project got a name as well: it’s called the Pepsi Refresh Project.

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Nov 11 2009

“ING Lion Deposit” did it again! The jury of the Interactive Media Awards has decided to give the “Outstanding Achievement Award” to the ING Lion Deposit viral campaign under the ‘Banking’ category. The Outstanding Achievement award is an extremely challenging award to win. The american jury says that ING Lion Deposit viral campaign “has excelled in all areas of our judging criteria and represents a very high standard of planning, execution and overall professionalism.” Build with the “LiveSite” technology, this campaign created a huge buzz around the idea that a webcam was the only tool you would need to create a 3.0 website.

Oct 7 2009

groupeReflect et TrendyBuzz viennent de publier le premier baromètre de l’Attention Marketing : classement des 50 premières marques internationales générant le plus d’attention dans l’environnement francophone. La mesure de référence est l’Attention-Rate qui évalue l’attention accordée par les consommateurs aux marques en étudiant leurs retombées online parmi 330.000 sources : medias, blogs, communautés, réseaux sociaux et autres pages de sites web. Le Top 50 sera désormais publié mensuellement et permettra de suivre les évolutions.

Quelques tendances sont déjà mises en évidence par les premiers résultats :

• la non corrélation entre les investissements publicitaires et l’attention des publics,
• l’omniprésence des marques américaines dans l’univers francophone,
• l’absence de grandes marques, pourtant classées récemment dans le haut des valeurs capitalistiques.

Sep 22 2009

How will interactivity manifest itself in the coming years? What will interactive marketing look like?  And what will it mean for customers and for companies?

Whether you realize it or not the possibilities of interactive technologies for marketers are endless. The 19th Emakina Academy Session invites you to discover those possibilities and capture what could by the highlights of interactive marketing in 2015.

During this Emakina Academy, you will:

• Take a look into the future of interactive marketing.
• Discover an exciting future that interconnects everything, everywhere, all the time and erases the borders between the physical and worlds.
• Learn how mobile technologies will create unlimited possibilities for making interactive communication a new part of life.
• Know how to engage in an authentic positive word of mouth to raise brand awareness and drive direct sales through social shopping.
• Understand the connections between emerging trends and design thinking (graphic design, web design, or simply in design in general).

This free seminar will take place Thursday, 22 October 2009 between 09:00 and 14:00 @ Tour&Taxi – Port Avenue 86C – 1000 Brussels. View road map.

Register online: www.emakina.com/academy and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Sep 15 2009

Everyone envoys a nice wine. The Delhaize Wine Exhibition, which has just started, is a nice opportunity to get some excellent wine on fantastic conditions.

For this occasion, Emakina, just launched a really fun online game: Delhaize Wine Game.

You can win up to 3 cases of outstanding wine until October 3. It is a huge success, in 3 days, more than 9000 games have been played.

Emakina also created the complete bannering campaign (2 concepts, 12 sizes, 3 languages) that are currently displayed on Skynet | Jack, Femmes d’Aujourd’hui, Libelle, Marmiton, Brusselslife, Messenger, etc.

Sep 2 2009

Do you want to…
… optimize your website for search engines yourself?
… successfully advertise your products or services with Google Adwords?
… interpret visitor statistics and learn how they are the driver for a more successful site?

Then Emakina/Perform team @ The Reference has just the thing for you: a series of 5 trainings, all focusing on improving the performance of your website. Our previous trainings were a great success, so we organized 5 more for you!

Google Analytics: Actionable Business Insights

Some of the addressed topics:
Learn how to define key performance indicators for your website
Learn how to use Google Analytics data to get real actionable insights
Learn how to use advanced segmentation and custom reports to your benefit

View full agenda or register here

Google Analytics: Advanced Implementation

Some of the addressed topics:
Advanced configuration and optimization of your Google Analytics account
Learn how to customize the tracking code for campaigns, e-commerce and web 2.0 applications
Learn how to take benefit from segmenting and filtering on a profile level

View full agenda or register here

Conversion marketing: Landing Page Optimization

Some of the addressed topics:
Learn how you can improve conversion by building the perfect landing page
How to measure and understand conversion with web analytics
See the benefits from split testing to increase conversion

View full agenda or register here

Search Engine Optimization: become a SEO expert

Some of the addressed topics:
Understand all aspects of optimizing your website for search engines
How to increase relevancy, authority and trust of your site (from the search engine’s perspective)
Key performance indicators for measuring your (or your agencies) SEO success

View full agenda or register here

Search Engine Advertising: become a Google Adwords expert

Some of the addressed topics:
Learn how to set up a successful campaign with targeted ads and keywords yourself
Essential keyword and bidding strategies giving you a vast advantage over the competition
Integrate your SEA campaign in your other media for maximum success

View full agenda or register here

Jan 28 2009

Our colleagues at The Reference organise on 6th February a training on web-oriented copywriting techniques that can make your website more compelling, more user-centered and more search engine-friendly. A quick overview of the agenda:

Writing through the eyes of users

1. How people read online
2. Demo eyetracking movies
3. Enhancing scannability
4. Text matters!

Interactive extras & exercises:

1. Some quick-scan remarks on participants’ web site copy
2. How to write good titles
3. Make text shorter

Writing through the eyes of the robots

1. How do search engines read your website?
2. Meta tags
3. Important page elements for SEO optimization
4. Text formatting
5. Tools & Tricks

Info and registration on The Reference website.

Feb 26 2008

Very interesting post on Seth Godin’s blog who sets a distinction between two categories of workers : the workaholics and the passionates.

A workaholic lives on fear. It’s fear that drives him to show up all the time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record.

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

And it’s exactly what our mindset at Emakina: creating exciting jobs that keep us working much longer than the usual “from nine to five”. Just because we like what we do. Designing cool websites. Taking up technological challenges. Brainstorming on the great idea that will make our next campaign successful. Like Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) once said : “Have fun, work hard.”

May 16 2007

A funny ad for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions that could be an Emakina ad if we could afford such a shooting budget Please post your comments directly on the (WordPress powered) Bring The Love Back blog…

Apr 5 2007

A few months ago, we participated to a study from Ernst & Young on how the rise of digital media is impacting the advertising industry in Belgium and what advertisers expect from agencies to help them find a way in this new landscape. Download the document in French or in Dutch.

Interesting quote from Bruno Gernay, associate and media leader at E & Y : “According to our study, the emergence of new media will not be followed by a similar growth of the ad budgets. The pie size will remain the same but the slicing will change.” Ready for the battle ?

Mar 13 2007

We created a nice viral game to celebrate the first year of the “state of happiness” campaign by Center Parcs. Your challenge is to blow out a candle with your mouse… or with your own breath if you plug a microphone in your computer. Check out and play:

- Blaas de kaar uit
- Soufflez la bougie
- Pusten die Kerze aus

Mar 7 2007

We just launched the new website of P&V. New design, new content management system (emagiC CMS.Net) and new information architecture that better highlights the services offered by this insurance company.

P&V celebrates today its 100th anniversary. To mark this milestone, we’ve imagined a top topical overlayer that ran this Wednesday on Skynet.be and MSN.be, the main portals on the Belgian market.

Feb 15 2007

VW EscapeTV #6 is available now for download. On front cover: the latest Brussels Motorshow, the NFS Carbon game, street art and the making of Blood Diamond. Check out also VW Escape Race, a virtual race game using the possibilities offered by Google Maps. a virtual race game. Invite your friends by e-mail to join your team and to get fuel for 25km. Your car will ride that distance when your team mates manage to attract other people. Ready to trigger the snowball effect?

Feb 6 2007

This morning, we participated to an IAB Breakfast about RSS and the possibilities this new format offers to marketeers. For this special occasion, we recorded a podcast you can listen with the player below. The speakers are (in order of vocal appearance) Laure-Emmanuelle Nonnenmacher (Proximus), ourselves, Clo Willaerts (Belgacom Skynet), Jeremy Collin (AdLink) and Hilde Boeykens (SOS Kinderdorpen). Ladies and gentlemen, here’s the very first audio podcast in IAB Belgium’s history .

Download here the pdf of our presentation. We suppose the other slides from our colleagues will be available on IAB Belgium website soon.

UPDATE: Clo’s presentation is now available on Robin Wauter’s blog.

Jan 9 2007

After Wrangler, Total or Jean-Paul Gaultier, we’re happy to welcome a new international client with Center Parcs. And “happy” is indeed the right keyword here to talk about this display ad campaign promoting the “first minute deals” (the earlier you book your holiday, the less you pay) in three European countries (Belgium, Holland and Germany). Check out the first IMUs below.

Jan 8 2007

I’m with Josiane for one year. She’s cute, smart, fun, cultured, patient, elegant. In one word, she’s perfect. I admire her so much that I created a website fully devoted to my worship: www.ilovejosiane.be. Every day during the last 12 months, I’ve taken a picture published on my mobile blog. With all this material, I even assembled this short film – Josiane in 365 pictures, day after day, month after month, season after season.

Just tell me in the comments what you think about my new girlfriend.