Apr 24 2012

Like every year, Belgium’s school of social communication (IHECS) organises an event dedicated to presenting its students’ projects, and bringing together communication experts. This year, organisers invited Amélie Sainthuile, Digital Planner & Social Media Strategist at Emakina/ Strategy and Emakina/ Social. She will talk about public relations with new media.

The event, titled “Nuit de medias” (media night) will take place tomorrow, April 25th at 19:30, at the school’s venue, located at Rue de l’Etuve 58-60, Brussels (two steps away from the Grand Place!).

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Apr 3 2012

As every year, business magazine Trends-Tendances has ranked the fastest growing companies across the Belgian market. The competition is open for companies active for at least five years, presenting a positive cash-flow, and which have created at least 20 jobs since their creation.

Out of a database of the top 100,000 companies, Trends-Tendances selects the best cases in three different size categories: small, medium, and large. Emakina made the Gazelles list of medium-size companies thanks to its solid figures: 17% growth in its turnover, 153% increase in cash-flow, and 34% in its personnel. Winners were announced in Brussels in a festive event on March 28, at the Tour&Taxis venue.

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Mar 27 2012

It’s not easy, knowing that we were yet again winners of such distinguished prizes, and to have to remain silent about it… But now that the organisers of the Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) gave us their OK, we can proudly announce: we did it; Emakina won two IACs this year!

Our first prize was for the “Test-Achats 50 Avocats ” campaign, under the Best Magazine Online category. The original campaign was supported by social media activities and a viral clip on protecting consumer rights. It generated a record number of citizens engaging with the organisation, thus making it more relevant than ever before.

We also won the Outstanding Website award for Belgium Rollers’s new home page, designed by Emakina. Thanks to its original funky characters and marvelous design, the website presents to its visitors the fun urban universe in the Roller Parade spirit. All that’s left is scrolling and clicking around this dynamic website in order to learn about the event!

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Mar 21 2012

A panel of experts, specialised in developing the “perfect apps”, presented at the Mobile Forum to an audience of marketers and product managers. As eloquently put by the organisers, “mobile applications have become the holy grail of one-on-one marketing”. The event’s aim was thus to put together those behind the best practices in mobile applications. Among the presenters was Emakina’s Head of Digital Applications, Michaël Totta who spoke of ways to turn an iPad into a “lead generation machine”. His comments and insights were greatly appreciated by the audience, who was eager to learn about the great potential of this exciting new medium.

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Mar 15 2012

This question was raised by DM Institute’s journalist, Eric Van Vooren, who met with Brice Le Blévennec for an interview. The following are excerpts, translated from Dutch to English, of the original article, published in the March 9^th edition:

QR Codes: you can’t avoid them. You see them popping up everywhere; sometimes very prominent as the roof tiles in the Axa ads, but also on bus stations, product packaging, posters, and even on the backs of city buses.

Are these Quick Response Codes really the modern replacement for the reply coupon or the toll-free 0800 numbers? Are they the missing link between offline and online marketing? We put the question to Brice Le Blévennec, the passionate founder of Emakina, voted by Marketing Media as the leading Digital Marketing Agency in Belgium.
I had barely asked Brice my first question when I was flooded with an avalanche of words. “For me, QR Codes symbolise the stupidity of the agencies! It’s a useless, customer-unfriendly gimmick. First, you already have to own a smartphone. But that’s not all. Smartphones do not come with a standard app to scan QR Codes so the consumer has to also choose to install such an application. Afterwards, she or he has to try to scan a code on the back of a moving bus, or on a billboard three meters high above. You need to capture the code very precisely in the frame with your camera, or the scan will fail. Damn hard.”
“I have conducted a survey with the Emakina staff. We are certainly not representative of the average consumer, because all our employees have a smartphone, but less than 10 per cent have an app installed to scan QR Codes. Using QR Codes for commercial messages shows little respect for the audience. Besides, one is usually limited to printing a code, without any call to action. If you give no clear motivation with the QR Code, why would people go ahead and scan the code? And if you go into the trouble to do so, you often find a generic web page, which adds nothing to the initial message. ”

Sometimes useful
“A QR Code can be useful, for example, in a museum to allow the visitor access to more information, via voice and video, on a specific work of art. That is the proper context. Another example for appropriate use of the QR Codes is the Tesco application for the Metro in Japan. There, the commuter can buy everyday products directly online, by scanning the QR of a specific product from a photo with shopping items on a shop shelf. Then, the QR Code offers a tangible benefit. A QR Code may fit well with certain games or contests. Because you never know what you will get to see, such a code can offer something mysterious. This perfectly fits the atmosphere of certain games.”

A better alternative
“For more traditional marketing applications, there is a much better alternative: the shortened URL. It is now possible to link readers directly via a simple web address in your offline message to a custom landing page. And a shortened URL is easy to remember and can be typed in on any PC or smartphone without the user having to install a separate application. An additional advantage is that the offer can be integrated in the name of the URL so the customer already has an indication of what they will get to see.”

100% connectivity
“The QR Code, however, is in line with a broader, general trend in marketing, that all communication should be interactive. The boundary between direct mailing and other marketing applications is becoming blurred. As a good communication manager, here you particularly have to take into account the uniqueness of each medium. A mobile phone (or smartphone) is a device that people almost always have on them. It stands for 100% connectivity: everybody, everywhere. Not so with a tablet PC. In that sense, the two are complementary devices. Moreover, I expect that the tablet PC, just by its ease of use, will catch on especially with seniors. This is a trend the younger diginatives sometimes overlook. So yes, our profession has a bright future!”.

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Mar 13 2012

Patrick Acken, the renowned photographer of Pub.BE and a one-man institution of commercial advertisement, is working on his first exhibition, presenting some 70 leading figures of Belgium’s communication world. Titled, “Face2Face: A Sample of Belgian communication personalities”, the new exhibition will present extreme close-up photos in black and white of Acken’s communication “dream team”.

Emakina’s Xavier Bouillon and Brice Le Blévennec are among the lucky ones to have their photos presented to visitors of this exceptional artistic initiative. The exhibition will be displayed at Seed Factory starting this Friday, Mars 16^th and will remain open until the end of May.

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Mar 5 2012

The Delhaize Dream Job Website, created by Emakina, won the ‘Best in Class’ prize under the ‘Recruitment’ category, in the 2011 competition of the Interactive Media Awards (IMA). This announcement comes shortly after Emakina was bestowed six other awards in this year’s competition. The IMA recognize the highest standards of excellence in website design and development and honour individuals and organizations for their outstanding achievement.

The ‘Best in Class’ award is the highest honour of the competition, representing the very best in planning, execution and overall professionalism. In order to win this award level, the Delhaize website had to successfully pass a comprehensive judging process, achieving very high marks in each of the judging criteria – an achievement only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition earn each year.

The judges utilised a points-based scoring system which allows each entry to receive up to 100 points for each of five criteria, adding up to a maximum of 500 points. By adhering to the specific guidelines and criteria of this system judges were able to maintain the highest degree of fairness, accuracy and integrity; competently and effectively evaluate entries; and, deliver clear results.

Websites receiving an overall score between 460 and 479 receive the Outstanding Achievement award. A score of 480 and above entitles the prestigious ‘Best in Class’ award. Our website scored a total of 489 points (96 on Design, 98 on Content, 100 on Features Functionality, 97 on Usability, and 98 on Standard Compliance & Cross-Browser Capability), making it a ‘Best in Class’ laureate. This is the seventh IMA Emakina wins in 2011 and our 24^th IMA since 2008.

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Mar 1 2012

Data News magazine, organiser of the annual Data News Awards for Excellence, has announced its final list of candidates for this year’s awards. Every year, the magazine selects the most promising companies, products, and individuals of the ICT industry, awarding them for their outstanding contribution in one of twelve categories.  The magazine additionally recognizes one individual as the “ICT Personality of the Year”. This year’s list of nominees for the prestigious ICT Personality award includes Brice Le Blévennec, Emakina’s  President and Chief Visionary Officer.

Candidates were selected based on a series of interviews with ICT specialists, university professors, and presidents of professional associations. Le Blévennec’s nomination was justified by the fact that he is “a self-made man”. He started his career at the age of 16, and now serves as president of Emakina – “by far the largest web company in Belgium”. The company’s multi-national profile and its ambitions to become among Europe’s top five – were equally emphasised by Data News’ editorial staff.

Data News has assembled a specialized jury to select the winner in each category. The jury is made up of representatives from the academic world, business, and the magazine’s editorial team. Final winners will be announced at the Data News Awards of Excellence ceremony, to be held on April 26^th at the Tour & Taxis venue.

 Le Blévennec among some of the other candidates for the ICT Personality prize

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Feb 27 2012

Inside Digital Media’s new annual digital communication ranking, made with Feweb, once again places Emakina in the number one position in the Belgian agency list. Investments in marketing in 2011 were influenced by the financial crisis, shortages in human resources and reluctance of advertisers. Inside indicates in its February special issue that not all interactive agencies have reacted as successfully to this second crash test in a decade in the market.

For Emakina, the trend clearly had a positive effect. The 375 staff members generated new growth with well over 20 %. The market confirmed that digital marketing has become an unavoidable necessity, and the digital native agency benefits from this conclusion.

Brice Le Blévennec, CVO of Emakina, further states in Inside Digital Media that companies are entering an era of mature online marketing and promotions. Digital budgets went up, replacing spending in traditional advertising, with a swing towards social and mobile projects.

Large companies are rationalizing their approach. A series of large accounts have decided in 2011 to reduce the number of authorized agencies that can work for them, often on a European scale. Others have opted to work with partners who could offer a portfolio of services, improving the coordination of service providers.

Brice Le Blévennec concludes: “Emakina now harvests the fruit of its investments in strategy, creative, social and mobile competences. As a real digital native agency, we are well equipped, staffed and organized to handle the new market demands. We understand the pressures and challenges our clients face and we can help them to respond with smart, efficient communication solutions”.

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Jan 27 2012

by Brice Le Blévennec

English version of a comment published in Datanews.

I surf a lot, the digital universe is my passion. Lately I’ve grown particularly fond of applications to feed my insatiable smartphone, but I still pass a lot of my time every day hooked to a huge screen, to ‘watchdog’ evolutions in technology, explore the web, dig up the latest innovations, sniff at new trends, in short to be inspired.

I must say I’m supercharged with suggestions from my 350 colleagues, who post daily links on our wiki, or exchange them through various email lists, that drive our working groups. As I’m too curious, I signed up for all our groups and I cannot resist exploring each new link I find there.

The experience it offers is broad: from online high impact experiences to sites with creatives’ portfolios, apps integrated with Facebook, interactive videos, games in 3D with CSS3, WebGL or Flash, new frameworks for web development or HTML5, new social networks, fresh online services, with API’s that allow us to do digital magic tricks, etc.. In short, each day of my life is packed with discoveries and I’m a very lucky person.

Yet when I scan the wiki, I notice a peculiarity. There is hardly any link to be found leading to exciting Belgian online work. The Belgian web is desperately boring. There are not many innovative projects. Few e-commerce sites. Rare original mini-site experiences. No Web services or  API’s of interest … In short, there’s not much happening on the web in our kingdom at the heart of Europe…

Yet our creatives are highly respected in the international advertising world, as are our engineers in the field of information technology and communication. How can we explain this striking poverty?

In fact, Belgium is a victim of its size, of the linguistic and cultural fragmentation of its population and of the high cost of Internet subscription and Mobile Internet.
A bit like Switzerland or Luxembourg.

Most sites have to be available in French, Dutch, often in English too and even in German. This complicates the creation and updating of sites. The CMS must be configured with workflows that take into account the availability of translations of content, often increasing costs of implementation and slowing down updates.

This fragmentation of audiences has a large impact on projects based on communities, like networks and social media, when they feed on written content generated by users. It increases their costs of managing and moderating the participants. Very few community projects have reached a decent national size, or else they had to ‘balkanize’ their public by language, as Netlog did.

The small size of our audiences slows down risk investments. To be a profitable venture, investment in design and development must be returned by interaction with a large enough audience, a market of a sufficient critical scale.
For example, to achieve the same ROI on a project In  the french-speaking part of Belgium, the penetration ratios must be ten times higher than a similar project in France.

Imagine the same project with equal ‘traction’, an online service capturing 1% of the Internet audience. In France, it could be a huge success, generating sufficient funds for the startup to develop and grow. With the same 1% adoption rate in Belgium, that initiative would not even cover the development costs; the project could easily collapse.

This may explain a certain reluctance of venture capitalist in this country. They tend to invest in projects that have already proven their business model abroad, rather than betting on real innovations.

Finally, the high cost of Internet subscriptions, especially mobile internet subscriptions, and – although the law allows it – the fact that mobile operators all strangely agree not to subsidize the terminals, combine to slow down the adoption of the Internet and its frequent use.

So in short, if you are a web entrepreneur, think from the initiation of your project to (also) attack a market outside of Belgium.

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Jan 27 2012

AIDS is a gift we all want to avoid. To increase awareness of Belgians and motivate them to get tested, the advertising agency Emakina created a series of actions for Sida’Sos, using original, unconventional media.

We decided to convey our message in the same way as the disease spreads. We developed media carriers that can be transmitted unknowingly.

Our media campaign centered around 3 unexpected channels:

-          Stickers on coins: hundreds of coins were distributed during events this summer, on festivals, and at the city ‘Apéros’, casual outdoor get togethers.

-          Free Hug Stickers: at various events, people who enjoyed a good hug, carried a Sida’Sos sticker.

-          Wrapping paper: an original and especially designed wrapping paper was created to wrap Christmas and New Year’s gifts. The paper contained a small message, cleverly repeated in the design. This information was only discovered when paying attention and looking at the wrapping paper up close.

These three actions clearly raised awareness of the AIDS issue in Belgium, reaching over 1.000.000 contacts and increasing the number of people tested in the country by several thousands.

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Jan 13 2012

Belgian marketing is clearly going digital, a new study by Emakina’s agency in Ghent, The Reference, indicates. 150 decision makers of digital marketing initiatives in Belgian companies participated in the survey.

In 2012, Belgian marketers will focus on social media marketing, mobile sites and monitoring performance.

Their main challenges will be to turn data into actionable insights and creating sufficient return on investment. Companies that claim to be leading in terms of digital marketing are planning to invest significantly more in social media monitoring and social/ mobile advertising.

This study indicates that the future of marketing is digital, with 20 % of marketing budgets already allocated to this domain and further growth ahead despite the crisis.The social media hype and the rise of mobile internet are still going strong and will continue. It also shows that a main challenge ahead will be to find the right expertise to get the job done.

The slideshare presentation gives a detailed overview of the trend in websites, traffic, social and mobile.

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Nov 24 2011

Over half a million apps to choose from…which ones would be smart to upload to your smartphone or tablet?

In their latest issue, Knack and Le Vif magazines present the Top Applications for smartphones and tablets in the Belgian market. Belgium being the complex market it is, the list of course is different in the Dutch and the French version…

Out of the jury of five members two experts came out of  Emakina Group companies. Emakina’s Chief Visionary Officer Brice Le Blévennec felt right at home in helping to create this special. Mobile Competence Center Manager Thomas De Vos from the Reference in Ghent also let his light shine on the mobile apps.

So with their colleagues they went to work and made a list of criteria, a selection of categories and then each added their favorites.

Our mobile experts  shared their knowledge in this large constantly evolving field of different kinds of Operating Systems : iOS (iPad, iPhone), Android, Symbian (Nokia), Windows or RIM (Blackberry).

Thomas De Vos of the Internet company The Reference says an app must be to the point, relevant and fun. Also, it should avoid superfluous functions.”Keep it simple; when you start it up you have to be able to do right away what it was made for. App makers tend to pile on functions with updates, but these should stick to the essence of the application.”

The list combines international favorites such as Flipboard, Foursquare, Dropbox and Plants vs Zombies with local gold, like TV Overal, Radio.be, Resto.be, KBC banking, Taxis Verts and Electrabel.

Wether you are ‘the connected senior executive’, ‘the organized teacher’ or ‘the active retired person’, wether you’re living a business Lifestyle, interested in entertainment or food, the two specials guide you to the must have apps.

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Aug 29 2011

- By Brice Le Blevennec -

Online television, it’s the next great battle. Already today, it’s making the minds of many race.

Announced some fifteen years ago already, the infamous convergence between Internet and TV is becoming a reality today. By the end of the year, the major TV manufacturers (Sony, LG, Samsung …) prepare to flood the market with machines permanently connected to the web. For their part, telecom operators also prepare the merger between the two media.

Social tv

As you read this, Mobistar launched its platform close to the Apple AppStore, which adds features such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to the electronic program guide. And major players in the video game market like Microsoft and Sony have never hidden their dream to transform their respective consoles as privileged centers of all forms of digital entertainment.

Always online, television of tomorrow will also be mobile. Smart phones, tablets, laptops: the images begin to appear on all screens, a trend that will profoundly transform the way we consume television. Telenet launched Yelo, an application that allows you to watch (via wifi) a selection of channels on your iPad. Mobistar makes the same move, with 3G customers gaining access to a variety of broadcasters through an iPad/ iPhone application. And  Belgacom launched its mobile platform as well mobile in June. So  in short, welcome to television “AnyWhere, AnyTime, AnyDevice”, freed from the living room and dictated by the ceremonies linked to the schedule of TV programs.

A concept that we experimented with at Emakina in 2006  with VW EscapeTV, the first TV show that could be viewed via download on any mobile device.

American startups are already a step further and want to use mobile to combine the power of television with that of social networks. They are called IntoNow, Yap.tv, Miso, Philo, GetGlue … Some have already been bought up by large US “networks” or receive the  support of Internet giants (eg Miso is financed by Google Ventures).

Closer to home, the WizzChat application for the iPhone focuses on European channels and allows you to specify the TV program you are watching, share that information on Facebook and chat live with other users.

The beginnings of this trend arrived in 2008, during the U.S. elections. For the first time, televised debates did not stop at the end of the TV show; they continued on social networks. These social media became the natural ‘fora’ for comments and discussions between the viewers.

Mobile further accelerates this change: a study by Nielsen and Yahoo made ​​last year, indicates that 86% of mobile Internet users use their mobile device to talk live about a TV broadcast while they’re looking on their on their small frame.

Connected, mobile and social: these are the three attributes of the television of the future.
For advertisers, the consequence of these many changes is that the consumer’s attention is more fragmented than ever. Besides airing a 30-second TV spot, it will now necessary to be present at the same time on the major social platforms, if you want to activate your  brand by covering its entire target group.

For broadcasters, this “Television 2.0″ will also be a new, very different playing field. Regardless of the “format”, TV will have to be considered as an ongoing conversation with the audience, where both of these media mutually benefit from these interactions. Even if it was an abysmal idiocy, “Carré Viiip”, the already deceased reality TV show on TF1, was a fine illustration of this coagulation between two media: when the show ended, social networks took over and were used to generate content that was part of the next part of the competition.

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Jul 5 2011

Belgacom has just announced the launch of TV Everywhere, a service built by Emakina, offering Belgacom TV on web, tablets and smartphones - Android and iOS (Apple validation pending).

This launch, speedily developed by Emakina (less than 2 months from conception to delivery) in collaboration with the Belgacom IT and TV services, is nicely timed to coincide with the launch of the new Samsung 10.1 tablet (and the new Operating System (Android 3.0)).

With Belgacom TV Everywhere, Belgacom Internet & Belgacom TV customers can watch TV and Video on Demand from their smartphones & tablets,  using Wi-Fi at home, or 3G from anywhere in Belgium (with a free hour each month of TV via 3G for Internet On GSM and Mobile Internet customers).

Already in this first version users, can view the (personalisable) TV guide and pre-set their recording straight from the TV guide.

Emakina has developed an original and innovative interface – enabling channel hopping using a wheel specifically adapted to tablets.

Only just launched, there have been more than 2000 installations for Android already.

Belgacom TV Everywhere - Created by Emakina

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