For those who did not have a chance to attend the Podcamp Montreal 2009, here is the Video that was produced from the Live Streamed Social Media Case Study intitled: “Not your father’s accounting firm” or “Le secret est dans la sauce 2.0″.  You had to be there to see the slides properly and hear what Duncan Stewart and myself were talking about: a pure case study focused on the return on investment (ROI) in the context of a B2B professional services firm.

LES MÉDIAS SOCIAUX – LA NOUVELLE VOIE DE LA CRÉATIVITÉ EN B2B?

J’ai le plaisir de faire partie du panel d’experts en marketing Web et en communication pour traiter de la créativité dans le domaine du B2B ce vendredi 13 novembre 2009.  En compagnie de Stéphane Dumont, Président de Revolver3,Simon Hénault, Président PODMédia, Sophie Forest, Partenaire senior Brightspark, administrateur de Radian6 et de Pablo Stevenson, Président de Ressac Média nous traiterons de plusieurs thèmes qui touchent les entreprises B2B.

Dans la salle comble (puisque l’événement affiche complet), le public seracomposé d’intervenants divers dans le domaine des communications B2B.  Il me fera plaisir de revenir sur les prédictions technologiques TMT 2009, un projet pilote sur les réseaux sociaux à succès en terme de ROI de Samson/Bélair Deloitte & Touche autant au Québec qu’au Canada, comme je l’avais fait récemment lors de ma conférence au PodCamp 2009.

Voici un bref aperçu des thèmes abordés:

• Image, contenu, vidéo, blogue… où commencer, comment en tirer profit efficacement?
• Quel peut en être l’impact sur notre image, sur les relations avec nos clients?
• Peut-on développer de nouvelles affaires de façon soutenue et rentable?
• Est-ce une stratégie naturelle en B2B?
• Avez-vous la structure organisationnelle pour soutenir une stratégie de médias sociaux?

Une vingtaine d’autres questions seront abordées par thème.  Au plaisir de vous y voir !

Katheline

Just the way we saw it with Facebook, when an enterprise decides to keep you on board, they deploy the stickiest strategies to do so.  Here is an example that I discovered on Avinash Kaushik’s Twitter account that I had to blog about.

FujiFilm ’s sticky approach keeps the customers subscribed to their newsletter.  Yes, Fujifilm contributes to the massive internet “addiction” and information “overload”.

Fujifilm unsubscribe Landing page smiles at the user

Internet marketing is getting more agile in its “subtle” marketing tactics.  It certainly makes us smile. The unsubscription from FujiFilm’s e-mail marketing messages is less dramatic than quitting Facebook and the seduction machine that Facebook has put on to keep their users glued to the social network.

It has become so bad that people actually have to find tips to quit facebook and even guide on How to quit facebook and joining Facebook is Like a tattoo you regret!

First, determine why you wish to quit Facebook and delete your Facebook profile. Closing and deleting a Facebook account can leave some individuals feeling socially isolated and friendless. Create personal life goals that you wish to meet through Facebook (e.g. keep in touch with high school friends that live in other cities). Check to see how well Facebook meets your goals over the course of a month.

Second, notify all of your Facebook friends that you are quitting Facebook and deleting your Facebook profile. Closing a Facebook account affects not just you, but your Facebook friends as well. Give your Facebook friends time to establish other means of contacting you, such as email or instant messaging.

So, when are we going to see psychiatrists specialized in the Facebook detox practice?

Katheline Jean-Pierre, Senior Manager, online marketing, Deloitte & Touche LLP

I have the pleasure of presenting a Web 2.0 Deloitte case study at Podcamp Montreal this year on Sunday September 20 at 2H30PM in room DE-3230.

The title of our unconference is “Not your father’s accounting firm!”

It will be great to connect with the technology + podcampers community of Montreal!  You can find the full list of speakers at Podcampmtl.org

I will be co-presenting with Duncan Stewart, Deloitte’s director of research ,

Duncan Stewart, Director of Research, Deloitte & Touche LLP

who presented to us the TMT Predictions 2009, last January.   He will do a special visit from Toronto!    Our focus will be on return on investment  (ROI) for this specific initiative.

If you remember, the big technology trends for this year are:  the rise of the notebooks, the smart grid, the browser war and the Facebook for the enterprise, just to name a few.  Duncan will come back on a few of these predictions and might decide to reveal a few new ones!

On my side, I will be presenting the secret mix that made these 2009 Technology predictions (TMT) so successful.   I will reveal the secret ingredients that enabled us to meet our objectives.  I will showcase a proper Social Media ROI for a professional services and accounting firm.

There will be many interesting speakers there, among others, Benoit Descary, Michelle Blanc, Laurent Maisonave, Sylvain Grand’Maison, Kim Vallée , Christian Aubry, and Sylvain Carle.

Talk to you there,

Katheline

I just started my day viewing that video entitled “Social Media Revolution“. Is Social media a revolution ?  Or is it the biggest shift since the industrial revolution? The numbers are astonishing.  How many years did it take to a certain medium to reach 50 milliers users?

Radio: 38 years, TV: 13 years , the internet: 4 years, 3 for the iPod and Facebook added 100M users in 9 months.   It links back to the exponential growth curves of technology concept.

80% of companies are using Linkedin as a primary tool to find employees. The fastest growing segment on facebook is from 55 to 65 years old females (what are they looking for? I’m curious. ).

25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 Largest brands are links to user-generated content.

34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands.

78% trust peer recommendations.

25% of Americans say they watched a peer video.

We are no longer searching for the news, the news find us.

The products and services will find us via social media.

Some food for thought…

Thanks to @regisbarondeau for this great discovery.

Here is a Wiki of social media monitoring tools (via @jeanju).

Okay. No updates for two months now. What  have I been up to?

Living the Montreal summer. Rain.  Surfing the trends.  Getting fit. Working at Deloitte.  Jogging.  Meditating.  Breathing.  Yoga.   Biking (before it got stolen).   And some music festivals.
Here are a few events that made my Montreal summer up to now.

• Elektronic Piknics
• Bridge Burner St-Jean party: Ghislain Poirier feat. Face-T and DJ Khiasma
• Montreal – Festival Mode & Design (Video)
• Not in Montreal, but in Quebec : Festival d’été de Québec I have been able to see I.A.M.,  Karkwa, Pierre Lapointe and Malajube.
• Some raw food eating at Crudescence: the desserts are excellent.
• Yoga camp with the Art of Living NGO in Montreal, International.  This truly was a life changing experience.
• Surfing the trends: Montreal Michael Jackson Flash Mob and ridiculous Car surfing videos.
• Working on my master’s thesis focused on internet business modeling at HEC Montreal

Unless the sun decides to hit the city really hard, I should be updating you guys a little bit more.  And I should also show you my new hair coloration…

Talk soon,

Katheline

Me, dancing at the Electronik Piknic 2009

To my Blog readers,

Just a heads-up: I will be giving this conference on June 3rd about risks to avoid (IT related) and opportunities to seize from Social Networking and Web 2.0. You can join the Reseau Action TI linkedin group to learn more about it.

Here is the content description (in french):

Description de la conférence:

Dans cet environnement hypermédiatique, comment un organisme public ou privé peut-il se prévenir des dangers d’une identité numérique mal maîtrisée?

Une fois les risques de sécurité contrôlés, quelles sont les bonnes pratiques et les opportunités de communication offertes par le Web et les médias sociaux ?

Directrice principale nationale/ Senior Manager, Samson/Bélair Deloitte & Touche LLP

Nous vous proposons de répondre à ces questions touchant à l’identité numérique, lors d’une conférence animée par Laurent Maisonnave, fondateur de Ze Agence et spécialiste en Social Media Marketing.

Katheline Jean-Pierre, Directrice Marketing Web chez Deloitte & Touche LLP, nous présentera une étude de cas réalisée récemment par sa compagnie.

On June 15, 2009, Yahoo’s video-editing platform Jumpcut will close.  You might be thinking: “Who cares, anyway?” Well, Jumpcut was a  differentiator in the Streaming video world. It is actually  the little web-based editing functionalities that are missing  in many platforms right now for non-super tech savvy people.  

You might be saying again: “Yes, but there is iMovie, and Windows Movie Maker.”

 True. But, instead of pushing a non-differentiation uncompetitive Yahoo! Video platform, Jumpcut could have been kept alive and better integrated or merged with Yahoo! Video, with Flickr Video or as a stand-alone tool or API compatible with the top video platforms like Youtube, Dailymotion, Blip.tv or else.  It could have been what Picnik is to the photo world, a tool, an intermediate, and Yahoo had plenty of time to do that since Jumpcut was acquired in 2006.

Jumpcut could have been the real User-generated Goodness product.   It brought us the Crash the Superbowl Video Contest (official web site).  This contest revealed real creators (vs. YouTube’s “Wonder of the hour” ) and future directors to the world eye, which has a way deeper dimension and a much broader meaning, even if it is in the advertising world (some people will say they hate advertising anyway).

Do stats say it all?   When we look at the stats, it makes sense to kill it, still it was not promoted to the extent it truly deserved. Yahoo was too busy managing, what was at the time 4 non-integreated with each other video platforms. Yes you heard it: FOUR! When you have two similar product, it is a problem; four is just an overload or an incapacity to make decisions.  The official reason: “This was a difficult decision to make, but it’s part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo! ” At last.  Good enough!  

For once, Google trends and Comscore data seems to align in showing a drop from 60K monthly unique visitors to 30K and less:

And Google Trends:

Jumpcut was stronger in United States and India.

Two same-topic  articles you might find interesting :

Yahoo’ Entire Sorry acquisition story.

Yahoo used to be good at acquisition.

The other upcoming video editing platforms out there Jaycut.com and MovieMasher.com don’t seem to get any closer to a broad adoption.  Jaycut seems to have an interesting suite of integrated video services/products and has won a RED Herring distinction.

Let’s wish them luck!  And about Jumpcut? Maybe that was just me getting too emotional about a defunct product.  When it is too late, it is just too late.

The engineer, inventor, thinker and futurist Ray Kurzweil (Ray Kurzweil bio; Ray Kurzweil wiki ) explains the exponential growth of information technology under the concept of singularity. (Introduced to me by @avinashkaushik & @Eliasgeha)

The way he highlights the trend is interesting: Change not only accelerates, but follows an exponential curve/growth. And technology’s accelerating power transforms us. Here is an excerpt:

The explosive nature of exponential growth means it may only take a quarter of a millennium to go from sending messages on horseback to saturating the matter and energy in our solar system with sublimely intelligent processes. The ongoing expansion of our future superintelligence will then require moving out into the rest of the universe, where we may engineer new universes.
 
View the Singularity of Ray Kurzweil video.

View a TED conference talk on How Technology’s Accelerating power will transform us.

Tags: Innovation, life.

When we look at the word of mouth marketing association definition about What is word of mouth marketing, 8 tactics are social media tactics.

•Brand blogging: Creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere, in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about •Community marketing: Forming or supporting niche communities that are likely to share interests about the brand (such as discussion forums); providing tools, content, and information

•Influencer marketing: Identifying key communities and opinion leaders

•Evangelist marketing: Cultivating evangelists, advocates, who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf

•Conversation creation: Interesting emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity

•Product/service seeding : providing information or samples to influential individuals

•Buzz marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.

•Viral marketing: Creating informative messages designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by email

•Referral programs: Creating tools that enable satisfied clients to refer their friends

•Grassroots marketing: Organizing and motivating people to engage

•Cause marketing: Supporting social causes to earn respect/support

For PR executives out there,  this presentation drafts the trending and the correlation between social media and Word-of-Mouth:

About Ovo:
The Cirque du Soleil continues to amaze in 2009. I just came from Ovo, Cirque du Soleil’s new show last week and was completely blown away. By the Concept. By the costumes. By the music with strong Brazilian influences (samba, sung in portuguese, congas and many percussionists are used). The whole universe that Ovo creates puts the “experiential” marketing definition to a different level. You can visualize some scenes in the Cirque du Soleil’s Official Youtube Channel. I liked the fact that one of the main character is a voluptuous black ladybug. Totally fell in love with the concept, as well as of the Egg, which is called Ovo in Portuguese.

Another innovation is Jukari: Fit to Fly workout program that was developed in Montreal by the Cirque du Soleil and Rebook teams.  In that video, the Cirque du Soleil’s Senior Brand Director  Joanne Filion and Katryn Ley Reebok Brand Strategy explains the Inspiration that brought the jukari concept to life. The name comes for a word dialect meaning “to play”.  You can follow Jukari’s Youtube channel: Jukari.TV.

The concept around Jukari:Fit to Fly is “fitness that makes you feel like flying”. It is a microcosm of “innovation” in the way that the workout is articulated from the Ceiling Up, not from the ground up. It seems disruptive in the perspective that it is not directly in the Cirque’s Core Business Model to start workout techniques at the gym level.   As well, the brand association between the Cirque du Soleil and Rebook gives credibility to that initiative while opening the realm of the Cirque to the street, to any woman who wishes to live 0.1% of the life a Cirque athlete.  According to the statistics displayed, they say that Jukari appeals to 61% of women. I would be curious to know if this data is Canadian-based or US-based?  

 Time will tell us if this will just be a trend, or if the Cirque/Reebok will launch a series of these and evolve the concept through time.  If it is disruptive and if it is strong, we should see other “workout techniques” be pulled off from gyms and a stronger adoption of that new concept.

UPDATED:  In fact, the official press release states that The workout is the first in a series of initiatives to come out of a new, long-term partnership with globally renowned entertainment company, Cirque du Soleil.   Then we should get ready to see them take a big “chunk” of the exercise “pie”.

Sustained or disrupive innovation?  
According to the concept of Disruptive Innovation, developed by Harvard ’s Clayton Christensen, Jukari might be on the disruptive side.

Disruptive innovation, on the other hand, will often have characteristics that traditional customer segments may not want, at least initially. Such innovations will appear as cheaper, simpler and even with inferior quality if compared to existing products, but some marginal or new segment will value it, according to Innovation Zen Blog.

Disruptive innovation, [...] describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves ‘up market’, eventually displacing established competitors. 

 The trending here shows a growth of interest of Jukari in the search volume. Still, I would love to know what are the competitors: Tae Boxe (kind of old), Power Yoga?  Let me know if you have more ideas.   

Trends in the workout industry

Interestingly, Tammy Emma Pepin, Tourisme Montreal’s blogger has shot a video of her first Jukari Workout in Montreal. This shows the begining of the trend…  I am wondering if that will only please the hip hipsters going to gyms like Gym du Plateau (my gym) and MMA or to a much broader audience?

Jukari already has its Twitter Account going on: twitter.com/Jukari

It’s Spring and Montreal is already on FIRE.  

I has an amazing time at April 2009’s YulBiz Montreal Business Bloggers Gathering.  As a proof, take a look at this glamorous picture with Martine St-Victor from Le Groupe Milagro.  I want to give a special Shout out to Jerome Paradis from ParadisVision as well as Kim Vallée  Montreal’s Geek Power Couple for allowing me to use this picture, here, on my blog.    Yes, I said it: Geek Power Couple.  Let’s celebrate Geek Love.  

Taken at Yulbiz April 2009 meet-up at the Lab

You can see all the pictures published on Jerome Paradis’s ParadiVision blog.

Since I heard today that around 55 of my ex-Yahoo! Canada colleagues were laid off from Produder managers and other profiles just today I thought I would share a few job postings I fell on via Twitter.

I heard the news from a few colleagues as well as from ex-Yahoo engineer Sandy via his Twitter account.  As well on his facebook he said that most of them got 4 months paid and that engineers were staying until September.

Yahoo! Canada update, small engineering transition team staying on till Sept….everyone else gets a 4 month severance package.

Via Mashable’s Twitter account, I was made aware of this Guide to Who’s hiring in Social Media this week.  There is Mashable’s job board as well.  While this jobs are mostly in the USA, and the closest ones are in Buffalo, I thought I could share some other less known job ressources (other than Linkedin, Monster, Workopolis, and al):

 

1. Joblighted, a Tech Jobs Aggregator (follow Joblighted Twitter account to get updates). This aggregator is just so amazing with an interactive mapping of jobs!
2. Ottawa Tweet Jobs Twitter account
3. Toronto Tweet Jobs
4. Montréal Tweet Jobs
5. Launch Tweet Twitter account  And their Website is pretty neat too LaunchTweet
6. You can select the #it hashtag to get IT related jobs only on LaunchTweet.
7. There is Dice.com, the Tech job portal.
8. Montreal Tech watch Jobs
9. Tech Jobs Canada
10. Updated: Techentreprise for Montreal Tech jobs (via @Heri).
11. Just discovered this really interesting US web site for Web Strategy and social media jobs: webstrategy.jobamatic.com
12. Realwebjobs via Jamie Calder
13. Recruiters on Twitter

That is a good start. I will update this thread with more discoveries. Since the web world is small, I am sure we will do business together at some point.

You can consult this blog post: Where to find old Yahoos about the Yahoopurplecollective community and other job sources.

Snowboard can certainly hurt

For those who know me and have met me in person, you must know that starting February 6, 2009, I was “stuck in fiber cast” for almost two months because of two fractures: one at the wrist and one at the thumb.

I actually worn two casts, the first one was red, and the second, green… This is now all behind me. I’m out of the Green Cast world and back to Montreal geeky life/work and urbanite balance.  (oh! I love my m.t.l. life!).

To make a long story short, after getting “out”, I browsed through my flickr and realized that my top picture was that weirdo-looking Katheline in the office-showing-her-cast photo. That about a niche product, I discovered not long ago that the main source of traffic was the Recreational Orthopedics Center that probably was looking for an example of the New generation of orthopedic casts that are lighter to carry and are available in at least 8 colors!

They describe their practice as:
“the private art of wearing orthopedic devices for fun. Orthopedic devices used by those interested in this art include Casts, Braces, Crutches, Wheelchairs and verious other orthopedic paraphanalia.”

Lesson learned from that spontaneous case study: you can score high in traffic when you target a super niche product.  A rare one, indeed.  Catching a trend before it rises.

UPDATED: In terms of Pages Views:

• I got 963 unique views on that single photo
• On a total 12, 773 total views for a total of 5,264 photos and videos.
• In conclusion, this single photo got 7.5% of my total pages views.

Here is a proof :

How do you react to this job interview? Really? This interview is pretty tricky. The candidates look as thrilled as ever, and, except for the “Monkey Business” guy, all seem to stay a bit “uptight” to make sure to nail that job interview aimed at “MBAs”.
I like the edgy aspect of the Born to Consult marketing campaign chosen by Deloitte marketing, especially the category chosen on Youtube:

Interests and Hobbies: racking up hotel points, monkey cups, thai food, consulting

The return: 145, 800 views and 122 comments.  Whether viewers liked it or not, they commented on it, ( and it might have polarized some people),  but the buzz went on  and on… It was favorited 256  times.