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 26 2012

Clinique, the American cosmetics brand, famous for its allergy-tested products, has decided to engage with its clients differently. Its recent campaign, titled “3 Step coach”, uses a specially designated online platform for this purpose.  Clinique invites users to register as “coaches” on a Facebook Connect application, designed and developed by Emakina. Once registered, the challenge is on. Their goal is to invite as many friends as possible, and then share information on Clinique products as well as their personal experiences with them. Coaches are awarded with “badges” for each successful invitation or item they advertise. They become official “ambassadors”, after having collected a total of seven badges.

During the course of one year, all ambassadors receive Clinique products, corresponding with the experiences they write about. They are also treated with a personal coaching session, offered by an official Clinique expert. This experience will guide them on how to best match their skin types and needs with the most appropriate Clinique products. Friends of the ambassadors, who follow the activity online, get a VIP treatment as well! They each receive a three months products supply and the opportunity to join their ambassador during the one-on-one coaching session.

The “3 Step coach” application is unique in communication on beauty and cosmetics. Clients interact intensely with the brand, and deepen their knowledge of its various products. Furthermore, this campaign, covering 8 different European countries, was adapted to in the various languages of each local market.

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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 16 2012

The European Commission has picked Emakina to promote the importance and benefits of energy efficiency.   An Emakina-produced video clip, released today, illustrates the European Union’s objectives and upcoming regulatory measures in the energy field for the next decade. It also offers viewers concrete and practical ideas on how to reduce their energy consumption. In doing so, the video addresses both private-household consumers and large corporations in presenting future energy saving technologies.

Click here to view the full version of the video (4’32”).

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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 6 2012

In short, no. Surveys, published earlier this month by SodaHead and CNet, show that the vast majority of users do not appreciate the new Facebook interface and that they miss their good old Walls.  But this doesn’t mean that brands should refrain from switching to the Facebook Timeline. For a start, they don’t have much choice. As of the end of March, Timeline will become mandatory for all Facebook Pages; so instead of complaining about it, marketers should better yet learn how to make the most out of it. This article will help you prepare to the Timeline tsunami right before it hits your brand!

Let’s start with the good news. With its new ’cover-picture’, Timeline is much more design-oriented, allowing companies to visually express their brand identity, using a logo, a product, or a personality. Moreover, the chronological nature of the Timeline facilitates a very rich presentation of brands’ histories, especially for those that have been out there for quite a while. The ability to dig out some old information made many individual users uncomfortable, yet, on the corporate Page level it has great potential. The New York Times and Manchester United, for example, use Timeline to tell their stories, dating back to the 19^th century, in a very compelling way. Even younger brands can still use the Timeline to illustrate their major milestones like launching a new product, issuing stocks, or winning a prize.

In comparison to the old Facebook Wall, Timeline is also much easier to administer, featuring new options to enhance communication with clients. It is now made possible to respond directly to private messages without having to alternate among various pages. In order to distinguish between the various posts, new Timelines features allow ‘pinning’ a post so it remains on top or ’starring’ it for a double-wide appearance. At least as important is the improved Activity Log, featuring analytic tools which allow much more strategic use of social media.

But your marketing strategists are not all going to fall in love with Timeline. They might very well complain and rightfully so. Their biggest concern will be the fact that, unlike Wall Pages, Timeline Pages do not allow setting a customised application as the default landing tab for non-fans. This was an extremely popular feature for promoting special content like coupons or contests. Without this feature it won’t be as easy to reach the same numbers of Likes or email subscriptions. On the other hand, to make things somewhat less gloomy, only 10% of Page traffic is generated by the default landing tabs. The remaining is owed to published links and ads which, of course, still play a central role on Timelines.

Despite what Facebook officials may claim, Timeline was designed for individuals to share their stories; it was not intended to serve as a marketing tool. Certain marketers may see this is a challenge, conflicting with their brand philosophy. Yet, brands too have their life stories to tell. The new Timeline interface will make their stories come through as more personal interactions than the traditional brand-consumer relationships.

The new infrastructure should thus change the way you think of your Facebook Page. Instead of message-board-like Walls, use Timeline as a means of viral communication.  If the Wall’s purpose was to serve as a destination point of as many users as possible, Timeline sees itself as a communication station, from which users can spread ideas by sharing them with their friends.

Think of Facebook as your brand’s online reality. When you decide to have a baby, you know you won’t bring her or him into a perfect world. Yet, you do your best to give your child the best tools to succeed in life. Timeline is no perfect either; in fact, it’s quite far from it. But if you do a good job in preparing your brand to its digital life, chances are it would mature into a popular and successful Page. Facebook is big enough to redefine social networking every time Mark Zuckerberg has a bad hair day. It is up to your strategic planners to adapt and learn how to leverage the new Facebook whim.

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Mar 1 2012

What is GTUG? A GTUG (Google Technology User Group) is an informal meetup open to anyone interested in Google’s developer technologies: ranging from Android and App Engine, to product APIs like YouTube.

Programme:

18:30 Welcome
19:30 Using the USB debugger with Chrome and Chrome for Android to debug a mobile webpage on device.
20:00 Open discussion on the past Android Hackathon on Feb 18-19 (GADC).
20:30 Together set up and play with a Google TV
21:00 Massive peer hands-on hack: add 1 feature into one of the apps done at the hackathon. No preparation required.
22:00 End – Information about upcoming events in March-April

If you want to attend this meetup, feel free to register here

Where? Emakina, Rue de Middelbourg 64A, 1170 Watermael-Boitsfort

When? Thursday, 8th of March, starting at 18:30

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Feb 28 2012

Emakina and ING have worked together for the implementation of the bank’s new website, dedicated to careers. ING Belgium is always looking for new talent, especially for its IT and commercial departments. In collaboration with Emakina, the company now upgraded its careers website. The site is like a brand new suit, tailor-made, including twenty videos to strenghten the key messages.

With the renewed site, ING Belgium once more confirms its innovative vision, while adressing the wishes of its future collaborators in a more precise and direct way. In 2012, ING Belgium wants to hire about 135 IT profiles and over 300 sales staff for its Retail department. Last year, the company already hired more than 300 profiles both in IT and commercial jobs.

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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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Feb 16 2012

The combined positive energy of Electrabel, Group GDF SUEZ and Emakina truly starts to create communication sparks. Electrabel launched its new consumer website, introduced a new version of the Electrabel Energy Manager and produced a practical new mobile application for this Energy Manager service.  All ‘signed’ Emakina.

Electrabel, the first energy provider in Belgium, is a long-standing client of Emakina. About one year ago, a new pitch was launched and Emakina came out of this contest as the winner: the agency was named preferred supplier of Electrabel. New in this relationship was that the mission would include social and mobile media, besides web activities.

• Energy Manager

Electrabel helps its customers to reduce their energy consumption and environmental impact. So it wanted to offer its customers a new service that could make them true partners in this valuable effort. The Energy Manager allows them to fine-tune their energy actions and reduce gas and electricity consumption.

In the application, customers fill in their gas and electricity consumption. They then receive a clear analysis, with state-of-the-art bar charts and graphs indicating their energy history. They can also opt for data in a list format, of course. This information is the starting point for improved energy management, with a coaching support, offering practical tips and insights.

The Electrabel Energy Manager is also available on iPhone and Android. It targets both residential and small office/home office clients. For users on the move, the Energy Manager app is the perfect addition to the Energy Manager website.

• Spreading the word

Emakina is also the partner for Electrabel’s web activation campaigns, including promotion and bannering actions. The campaign now starting will highlight the launch of the new online application for residential customers. It will also introduce the other mobile applications, Electrabel Mobile and Electrabel Energy Manager for Professionals. Banners in different formats are placed on key Belgian portals and news websites. Objective is to generate traffic to the different Electrabel websites and apps. The tools are really handy and valuable, so this promotion really is worth the energy!

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Feb 10 2012

Clinique, the leading American brand of dermatologist-developed cosmetics and its digital agency Emakina once more offer a nice surprise to beauty lovers. Clinique introduces its new tool for women, that helps them select the best suited foundation for their skin type. Each beautifully crafted Clinique skin care and makeup product is allergy tested and 100% fragrance free.

The website allows users to connect via their Facebook account. Once the visitors provide access to their pictures, the Clinique ‘advisor’ asks two quick questions about their skin type and possible makeup problem. The answers help to define the perfect foundation, matching the different characteristics of each beauty. The tool now proposes the ideal foundation solution, together with a beautifully adapted picture, adjusting contrast and light, and nicely framing the result in a real star lodge setting. The ‘star photo’ offers a glimpse of the beauty effect the correct foundation will create.

This original campaign already proves to be a great success, with over 3000 registered participants. Clinique’s pages on Facebook for the Netherlands and Belgium have already attracted more than 18.000 members, making it a real beauty forum. Clinique believes that every skin can be great skin. The new tool is once more a new step towards that goal!

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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 23 2012

Starting on February 10th, The Reference is organizing 10 events on different digital subjects. As trend watchers, innovators and opinion makers, they believe it is important to share their insights with customers. Experts of The Ref are happy to provide you with their knowledge and to discuss the best practices of all things digital. You can choose the number of events you want to participate in. Customers of The Reference, Design is Dead and Emakina get a discount of 10%. If you register for all sessions, you receive the same discount.

The series of events starts on February 10^th with “Is social media part of your business”, where you will learn to make the correct strategic decisions in the social media landscape.

On March 2^nd, David Roose will explain you everything there is to know about “Measuring Business Goals with Google Analytics”.

“Strategic SEO for Marketing Managers” will be addressed on March 16^th. You will be guided in getting SEO on-board in your organization.

One week later, the 23th of March, it’s David Roose’s turn again for a workshop “Slicing and dicing with Google Analytics”. He will tell you everything about measuring more with custom code, configuring your accounts and profiles, and lots of other things!

On the 27^th of April, it’s time for Social again: “Social Strategy through Social Listening”. Tom Muyllaert will unveil the best free and paid listening tools and he will show you what you can learn from listening to conversations.

May 4^th is all about “Hands-on SEO for Webmasters and Copywriters”. In this workshop you’ll learn step by step the best methods that will help you to find the best possible keywords.

“Professional Link Building Strategies” are talked about by Nikolaas De Geyndt and Isabel Van Ruykensvelde. They will train you in how to strategically approach your link-building. The date for this event is May 11^th.

Mobile and tablet fans can have their say on June 1^st. Thomas De Vos, our mobile expert, will show you what “Mobile and tablets can mean for your business”. iOs? Android? Windows Phone? Web Apps? HTML5? Hybrid apps? There will be no secrets left when leaving this workshop!

On June 8^th you’ll learn everything about “Conversion Optimization”. Your website might be doing well, but experts of The Ref will help you to make it even better by striving for ultimate conversion.

And last but not least: on June 15^th Bart De Latte will introduce you to “The power of Search Engine Advertising”. He will show you how to analyze and interpret your results.

You can click the links if you are interested in attending one or more events. To subscribe, just fill in the form that you can find on the website. Should you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to contact Vicky Van Daele (vvandaele@reference.be)

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Jan 20 2012

Bavaria launches its brand new consumer website, in close collaboration with Emakina. With this move, the largest independent brewery in the Netherlands kicks of its new online communication strategy. The two first markets to cross over to the new website are the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In the coming three months, 21 other countries will follow.

Bavaria’s new website is based on the idea that websites are no longer leading the consumer’s online action as a platform. Peer Swinkels, Bavaria board member, explains: “The new site for us is a top quality business card, where the Bavaria consumer can quickly receive the right information in inspiring surroundings. However, we would like to engage the dialogue with our customers in the environment where they are already present on their own initiative, for instance on Facebook.“

Swinkels continues: “The launch of the new website is the first step in the new online communication strategy and will be followed this year by various initiatives in the field of social media. This strategy will also enable the consumer to be more and more “at the table” with us, in conversation when we are developing new initiatives.”

To build the website, Bavaria opted for a collaboration with Emakina. A so-called ‘glocal design’ was chosen as the path to producing the web content. This means that the website will have the same look and feel in each country, but will be filled with local content. Via IP targeting, each visitor will discover the website of his/her own country. The renewed site is based on the latest HTML 5 technology and is therefore available on all platforms.

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