I’m loudly claiming that 2013 will be a great year for web analytics solutions! Actually, that’s my two cents on this market I’m monitoring on an everyday basis from both a selling and a practical perspective.

So why 2013 should be a great year? Each of the top 4 web analytics solutions in North America (1) Google Analytics, (2) Adobe Analytics (ex-Adobe SiteCatalyst), (3) IBM Digital Analytics (ex-IBM Coremetrics) and (4) WebTrends, should all launch new features and it looks like it will be a battle of Titans. Furthermore, web analysts (not also to say financial analysts) will have to be delighted to adapt to these new features as the competition between these solutions will continue to be on the rise. In the following blog post, I will give you a personal overview of the state of the market.

Point 1 – State of the Market: Current Market Shares

In terms of market shares for each web analytics solution, the most recent table I have under the belt dates back from mid-October 2011 by Stephane Hamel. Since that publication, Google Analytics Premium was launched less than a month after, Yahoo Analytics was closed down for Halloween 2012, and I would bet a Benjamin that the top two enterprise solutions (Adobe Omniture and IBM Digital Analytics) have both gained a larger portion of the pie – even though it’s an augmented pie since you can have more than one web analytics solution – when it comes to top 500 North American retailers. According to the graph below, it is quite clear that Google owns a huge chunk of the market, but are they the best positioned to dominate in 2013 in terms of revenues generated? More to come in the next section, surprise, surprise!

Point 2 – My two cents about each web analytics solution

1. Google with Google Analytics Premium

Google is the only top web analytics solution to have both a free and an enterprise version. While the company may be considered to own the market for web analytics, this is only the case in terms of usage, but not in terms of revenues since Google Analytics is free and Google Analytics Premium is used by only a small amount of companies worldwide. Even though Google owns the free web analytics solutions market, the company is considered as a laggard when it comes to the enterprise web analytics solutions market, the market that generates revenues. Does this mean that the company is topped in terms of market share potential? My rough guess is yes, but this also means that there is plenty of potential to transfer some free clients to an enterprise–level solution, but for this to happen, Google needs to find a way to convince customers of the free version to convert to an enterprise solution that could be considered as good as other enterprise web analytics solutions. For the coming year, I’m expecting a lot from all features related to Universal Analytics that were first announced during the Google Analytics Certified Partner (GACP) Summit held in October 2012 in Mountain View.

2. Adobe with Adobe Analytics

Adobe did a lot for their web analytics solution Adobe Analytics since they acquired Omniture in 2009. To solidify the branding, the web analytics solution even changed name from Adobe SiteCatalyst to Adobe Analytics. With their latest release, a new report called Time Prior to Event was introduced, here is a summary of Ben Gaines upcoming presentation at the Adobe Summit Digital Marketing from March 4th to March 8th 2013 in Salt Lake City.

3. IBM with IBM Digital Analytics

I am a firm believer that IBM has all it takes to eventually become the leader in the web analytics solutions market, necessarily because of how IBM Digital Analytics could be integrated with other IBM solutions. The complete integration between Unica and Coremetrics is still not over, but more and more the IBM Digital Analytics solution – which changed name from the initial IBM Coremetrics name in December 2012 – really looks like it’s making a name for itself. The initial plan in 2010 when IBM realized they bought both Coremetrics and Unica in the same year, was that IBM Coremetrics should be the IBM web analytics solution combining the best features of both Unica and Coremetrics while IBM Unica should be the IBM campaign management solution combining the best campaign management features from Unica and Coremetrics. Furthermore, according to a study by Forrester published in 2011 (note that this link shows only to a single table of the report), IBM Digital was at that time considered as the best web analytics solutions in terms of features. I’m looking forward for the Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Nashville from May 21st to May 23rd 2013.

4. WebTrends
Webtrends was the first true web analytics solution to be launched, dating back in 1995. Even though WebTrends is a great web analytics solutions, it will need sleepless nights for its resellers to keep up with the pressure of the other three giants. Maybe the Engage Webtrends event taking place in San Francisco in less than a week (January 28th to January 30th) will kickstart the year 2013.

Point 3 – Ownership as a Proxy for Potential Revenue Growth for Each Web Analytics Solution

So which company has the highest potential for 2013? Based on the ownership and market capitalization of each company, the answer seems straightforward here. IBM (219.74B) and Google 231.50B) are the two companies with the highest Market Capitalization, Adobe is way much lower at 18.77B but less diluted, and Webtrends looks like a David against Goliaths in terms of Market Capitalization. Even though, WebTrends Market Capitalization is not available since the company is private – my rough guess as of January 20th 2013 is that WebTrends is worth between half a billion and a billion based on how Omniture was sold in 2009.

Top 3 Predictions for 2013

As a conclusion to this post, here are my top 3 predictions for 2013 based on the last 3 points:

1. Google Universal Analytics will change the state-of-the-market finally embracing the Business Intelligence market and leaving the traditional Web Analytics grounds.

2. Adobe and IBM will continue to fight as top enterprise solutions players, trying to convert Google Analytics users to web analytics enterprise solutions users before Google Analytics Premium become more competitive.

3. WebTrends will have to be sold to a bigger player to stay in the race, either Google or Microsoft may be buyers.

Conclusion

As it is looking right now, in this Chinese year of the snake, the web analytics solution market will not be for snake charmers but more for bloody fight involving pythons and boas. Something is sure, whatever the web analytics solution used, what is most important is not the web analytics solution, it’s the web analyst using the solution ,

Have a great year 2013 everyone,

Jean-Francois Belisle

Share/Save

This post is the first of a series of posts related to Big Data, since I thought it was worth going in-depth with this topic. Big Data is a big word, a big buzzword, some might even call it big bullshit, since many components revolving around Big Data, and especially the ones on the analytics/methodology side, that we can label Big Data Analytics, have been around since more than a decade.

Monday June 18th 2012, I went to the Big Data Montreal event #5 as it is written on my Foursquare feed (yes, I used it sometimes!). The event involved presentations mainly on programming and on what where the best software frameworks to use to correctly tabulate all of these data. The conversation was about software frameworks such as Apache Hadoop, Pig, HiveQL and Ejjaberd, all software frameworks I’ve never programmed with, and that have for objective of cleaning the mess in unstructured data. Personally, this is a part of Big Data I’m less familiar with, and what I’m better at is what follows these steps in the process, “Big Data Analytics”. But what is really Big Data?

As defined in “Big Data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity”, a 143-page report that will become a classic report, the well-respected consulting firm McKinsey suggests that “Big Data refers to datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze” (p.1). So what does this mean? It means that Big Data is only a term that refers to a big dataset, and what revolves around this database are only supporting concepts to Big Data.

Why Should We Care About Big Data?

Yes, Big Data are everywhere, similarly to cheesy teenager’s pop bands that all sounds the same. But do you remember the sentence: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure” by management Professor Peter Drucker? If you don’t, then you should from now on. However, in this Big Data era, the competitive advantage should emerge from the following sentence: “you can manage what you can measure with the right method and the right software”. A little longer and less sexy than the one by Drucker, but at least it is a great follow-up.

Big Data are Everywhere

Theorizing vs Observing?

Is Big Data killing science? Is it killing theory? Psychologists create and develop theories by testing on small sample sizes. Big Data analysis is based on the model of Physics which suggests that a different pattern may emerge from any Big Data, which means that there is no point of having a new theory, what we care about is the pattern that is specific to a particular case. In 2008, in a provocative article entitled “The End of Theory”, Chris Anderson, Wired editor-in-chief, made a statement about how Big Data are becoming more and more important in many fields of study. Related to this point of view, I completely agree even though Chris Anderson might be biased since he’s a physicist by training. In anyways, I think that a pattern that emerges from Big Data might be explained by a theory or a series of theories, which would reconcile both points of views.

Conclusion

Big Data may sound simply like a buzzword for many of us. However, even if many of the components that revolve around the concept have been around since many years, as previously mentioned, I agree that the software and programming software used for big data extraction are way much newer than the analytics methods associated with Big Data. It’s so hot at home, I’ll enjoy a big glass of water and prepare for big work tomorrow. I raise my big glass to Big Data!

Cheer up!

Jean-Francois

Share/Save

I’ve recently accepted a position as the new Director, Consulting Services at K3 Media.

More posts, more online presence, more interactions, I promised it for 2012. I’ve promised it at the beginning of the year, I like to write and I won’t stop doing what I like the most. I’m back. I really appreciated all my time at LoyaltyOne, I learned a lot about retail. I met and had fun with a lot of great and brilliant folks out there, but it was time to move on, I wanted more web and more trendy stuff.

The main reason for accepting this opportunity at K3 Media was based on my desire to participate more actively to the dissemination and implementation of the best digital practices in a rapidly growing environment.

More about K3 Media

• Founded in 2002 (10 years old is quite old for a web agency)
• Top clients include: Beiersdorf Canada (Nivea, Elastoplast, Eucerin), The Montreal Canadiens Hockey Team, RDS (french equivalent of ESPN), CBC Canada, SAIL and more
• Employees have 18 web-related certifications
• 25 full-time employees
• For more information, simply visit the K3 Media website

My role at K3 Media

• Managing the Consulting Services team
• Ensuring appropriate external and internal training
• Ensure appropriate business development aligned with the K3 Media vision
• Add some depth to the K3 Media ball hockey team

K3 Media - Web Agency

How does it change this blog?

• More blog posts than in the last 6 months;
• More managerial insights based on mobile marketing and big data;
• More posts on new trends in retailing and etail (E-Commerce);
• More fun (I wish!).

How does it change my presence on the web?

• More active on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and maybe even on Foursquare, Instagr.am and Pinterest;
• More active in the Montreal web community, feel free to invite me as a guest speaker or an attendee at any event related to Web, Mobile Marketing, Big Data (or data mining) and Retail.
• I’ll be more active in French on the APCM blog, you can even read my new entry: Webcom Montréal 12e édition – Mes 3 Conférences Préférées
• I’ll continue to post content on the WAO Factor newsletter, a newsletter that’s worth reading maintained by my friend Jacques Warren. The next month issue features Stephen Few, yes, Mister Data Viz himself!

Conclusion

In conclusion my blog’s revival starts now, cheer up!

Enjoy time with your family and friends, and enjoy summer everyone!

Jean-Francois

Share/Save

Extreme couponing is not only one of these weird shows on TLC, it’s also more and more a way of living for many households. Since January is generally one of the months where households spend less and are looking to save money in opposition to the bloody months of November and December, I thought it was a timely moment to write a post related to this topic. This post takes a mom blogger approach blended with some of my old-style economist thinking to decorticate the “Real Basket Value” equation and suggests that some extreme couponing behaviors may increase the “Real Basket Value” instead of decreasing it. This post is written purely from a customer perspective rather than from a retailer perspective. So let’s get it started by presenting the “Real Basket Value” equation related to a specific transaction at a retailer:

Basket Price + Direct Costs + Externalities = Real Basket Value

Real Basket Value - It's Not Only What's in the Basket When Shopping at a Retailer

Basket Price

Let’s first start with the easiest part of the equation, the Basket Price. The Basket Price is defined as the nominal price of all items included in the basket you will buy at a retailer. This is the price you happily or unhappily see on your bill.

Direct Costs

Direct costs may be restricted to distance costs, which can be defined as the additional costs related to the act of moving from point A (Generally your home or your workplace) to point B (the retailer where you will buy your items). These distance costs may include the amount for gas you will spend to make the distance and the depreciation cost of your car related to this particular ride. In some cases you may fix these costs at 0, while in other cases, they may be not as negligible.

Externalities

Externalities are forgotten by many households since they may look frivolous, but the reality is that they may, and sometimes should, have an impact on the “Real Basket Value” equation and in the final decision of: (1) where to shop/buy, (2) what to buy and (3) in how much quantities? An externality is defined as a cost or benefit that is not transmitted through direct prices.

Most importantly, externalities include time costs. As Benjamin Franklin stated, “time is money”, since time is a scarcity that can be associated to a particular opportunity cost. Some components of “Time costs” are a function of distance costs while some others are not. For instance, the time spent in traffic to reach a retailer is a function of the distance cost while the time spent searching for THE discount is not.

Furthermore, many other costs and benefits could/should also be taken into account. These include: (1) the benefits associated to the loyalty programs points you are gaining in buying what you are buying, (2) the stockpiling costs, (3) the costs or benefits associated to how much life expectancy (including medical costs) you are gaining or losing buying high or low quality food, and (4) the costs or benefits associated to your joy of buying (and most importantly thereafter consuming) a certain type of product that is offered at a particular retailer.

More About the “Real Basket Value” Equation

To fully take advantage of this humble equation, you can do a quick benchmark between two or more retailers or run the equation again by manipulating components of this equation. Thereafter, using heuristics (reflex or shortcuts) may be the optimal way to reduce the “real basket value” by cutting useless overthinking.

Conclusion

Happy new year to everyone, enjoy the year 2012 shopping efficiently and don’t spend too much time finding THE “right” coupon.

Cheers,

Jean-Francois

Share/Save

The sentence “I’ll be traveling with Air Miles in 2012″ may have different meanings. However, It will become clearer what it means for me in the next few paragraphs.

I know I’ve been relatively absent from the social web for the last three months, except maybe on the LinkedIn website, where I’ve been more active than usual. That being said, many changes have occurred during that 3-month period from a professional perspective and it will impact the content of my blog in 2012.

As a matter of fact, I’ve accepted a position as a Partner (Manager) in the Consumer Intelligence (CI) Department at LoyaltyOne (a division of Alliance Data). As part of the LoyaltyOne company, my role involves working for the Air Miles Reward Program (AMRP) at the Montreal Office. My first week of work was last week (starting on December 5th) and I enjoyed it. The main reason for accepting this opportunity was based on my desire to participate more actively to the dissemination and improvement of the “competing on analytics” philosophy in the practitioner’s world. Overall, my decision to join LoyaltyOne was based on 6 factors, which I ordered in a hierarchical way.

1. Office in Montreal
2. Availability of a managerial position
3. High analytic potential
4. Company’s potential growth
5. Work life balance
6. Salary

Among all of these factors, the following factors will influence the most the content of this blog: (1) availability of a managerial position, (2) high analytic potential and (3) company’s potential growth. However, for confidentiality reasons, I won’t be able to report any practices or data methods developed through my work at LoyaltyOne as long as it will be considered as confidential information. In any ways, I’ll be happy to share what can be shared.

The Air Miles Reward Program (AMRP) Card

More about Alliance Data, LoyaltyOne and the Air Miles Reward Program

Alliance Data: www.alliancedata.com
Headquarters: Plano, TX
Founded: 1996 (from a merger of JC Penney’s transaction services business (BSI Business Services, Inc.) and The Limited’s credit card bank operation).

LoyaltyOne: loyalty.com
Headquarters: Toronto, Ontario
Founded: 1992

Air Miles Reward Program (AMRP): airmiles.ca
Founded: 1992
Sponsors: More than 120 sponsors

For more about the history of the company, visit the Wikipedia page for Alliance Data.

How does it change this blog?

• More blog posts than in the last 3 months;
• More managerial insights based on analytics;
• More posts on retailing and loyalty marketing;
• More fun.

Conclusion

The Holidays are coming soon, which means that for many of us, it’s the last rush before the end of the year. Good luck to everyone and when shopping don’t forget to use effectively your Air Miles card when applicable,

Enjoy time with your family and friends, and Happy Holidays to everyone!

Jean-Francois Belisle

Share/Save

Hey kids and University students, it’s time to go back to school and enjoy learning with top notch educators. And if you’re looking for a way to “waste” your time on social media (it may transfer into an “investment” in the long-run but its usually a short-term waste), there are still old social networks available to you such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, or maybe you could try Google+, if it’s not already done. This introduction sounds like it was composed for a Barney’s commercial, but anyway!

Google+ Google Plus G+

I am back from the AMA Summer Conference at San Francisco, where I presented and attended a great conference. The best session I attended was a special session entitled “The Sustainability Imperative and Marketing” organized by distinguished Professor Rajan Varadarajan and featuring “influence guru” Robert Cialdini. Even though it wasn’t really framed as an academic presentations, I mainly liked it since it applies social norms theories to real-world cases and was measured by clear outcomes right at the end of the conversion funnel, the authors were not measuring attitudes or intentions, they were measuring real behaviors, like it should be. Furthermore, during my stay in San Francisco, I noticed that my number of followers on Google+ had risen a little, you social folks! Since I am back, I also noticed, that some articles reported a slow rise or even a decline in the first few weeks of the social network’s existence, so what? Summer is a dead season for social networks, many people enjoy their vacations, and other enjoys good times away from all types of screens. Taking a position on these numbers would look like GIGO to me, politely referred to in computer science as “Garbage In, Garbage Out”.

Google Wave and Google+

In a post entitled “Fighting for the Web Supremacy: How Will Google Wave Suffer from Switching Costs and Lock-In Against Facebook”, taking the Google Wave case as an example, I suggested that the lock-in effect may dictate if users are going to embrace a new product or not. Even if the new product is better than the old ones, the “heavy” switching costs may have a dominant impact on the decision to switch when compared to the benefits. In terms of a social network, the investment is even bigger, since most people can’t handle more than 2 or 3 social networks, even if there exists some aggregating tools. Most importantly, most people are participating in a social network if their friends are there. There is no point of sharing information on an empty social network unless you want to be the king of nothing. Finally, the lock-in effect may have actually won over Google Wave, but I guess that no clear benefits were there for the typical user due to: (1) a lack of user friendly functionalities, (2) a lack of integration to existing Google services, and (3) there was nothing really trendy offered to the user.

Back to School and Social Media

Like previously mentioned, summer is a dead season for social networks and I must admit that launching Google+ on June 28th 2011 was not a bad idea. Generally, in the first few weeks of a social network’s existence, only social media enthusiasts register to new social networks, the bugs get fixed and thereafter the crowd decides to come or not to come. When it comes to social networks initial growth, it’s all about youth and young adults and most importantly about University Students. Some geeks will always pick up new products, even if they sometimes literally “suck”, because they want to be perceived as “precursors”, or in terms of the Bass Model terminology as “innovators”. However, only a small portion of these “precursors” may thereafter act as mavens for the non-technological/ubersocial crowds.

So why back-to-school and University students? First, students are a large portion of social networks user. Second, when workers are switching jobs and connecting with new colleagues, not all workers are switching at the same time, some might never switch and might always work with the same colleagues. On the other side, when University students go back to school for the academic year, they all go back at the same time. Overall, if there is one time students make more “new” friends/connections, it’s in the beginning of the academic year, it’s all about the “initiations”, new classmates, sometimes it’s time to chit-chat with serious folks that are more friendly than during the rest of the year, to enlarge your friends’ network, to have fun and to exchange links. It may also be time for love.

More on Google+

If you want more articles about Google+, feel free to follow these links:
- Tons of useful and useless articles related to Google+ on Mashable
- Great SWOT analysis of Google+ by Jeremiah Owyang
- Google+ in 50 points by Chris Brogan
- To add me to one of your Google+ circles, you can follow this tiny URL: goog.la/jfbelisle

Conclusion

In conclusion, in the next three months (September, October and November), we’ll see if Google+ is a failure or a success. How will the youths and young adults react? Odds are that it might be better than Google Wave, will that be enough against forceful Facebook? Let’s wait and see before being overoptimistic. Any additional comments?

Have a great semester everyone!

Jean-Francois

Share/Save

Strategic Marketing thoughts and analytics are the future of business. This first sentence reflects my own opinion and is mainly written for search engines, the rest is not for machines but for you readers, .

I have been digitally absent during the last two months to focus on my PhD dissertation, challenging strategic marketing research-related projects and also to enjoy summer. After participating at both the Web Analytics Quebec Canada first UnConference and the ASAC conference, both held in Montreal, I then went on vacations on a 13-day road trip on Route 138 right away to the far east of the Côte-Nord region. It’s always great to discover the beauties from around the world, but part of this beauty may be found locally too. I’m back to work since last Monday (July 25th), 3,226 kilometers later along with a heavy 5-week growing beard similar to Brian “fear the beard” Wilson (we nearly have the same age, same height and we’ll both be in San Francisco next week, so I felt the comparison was of circumstances) that I will soon shave even though many Asian friends have already envied me.

My main guidance for this trip was hardcopies of pdf touristic guides and most iPhone applications were irrelevant during that trip, the only three I used were the WeatherEye, the Pedometer and the Maps applications.

The objective of this trip was to explore nature along with my girlfriend and relax. However, even though this trip has nothing really business-related, I decided that a “short” post on the business-related issues and marketing concepts I encountered could include interesting strategic marketing thoughts to share. Ready for the story? 13 days = 13 strategic marketing thoughts.

Day 1 – Montreal -> Quebec City OR The Dropkick Murphys Brand

I ended up the day attending at the “Festival d’été de Québec” two shows targeted to two diametrically opposite crowds: Dropkick Murphys and 12 Hommes Rapaillés. Here I will mainly focus on the first one from a brand perspective.

The first one was the Dropkick Murphys, an Irish-punk-rock band from Boston, Massachusetts and proud to come from there, a band I have been following since their beginning in the late 90’s, mostly known to the mainstream audience for the song “Shipping up to Boston” which appeared in the award-winning movie “The Departed”. As a “brand”, the band heavily represents the city of Boston wherever they play by generally wearing sports jerseys from Boston sports team, especially the Boston Bruins and Boston Red Sox. They are also connected to some of the players. The Quebec crowd even had a special guest when Patrice Bergeron from the Boston Bruins made a special appearance on stage. The guitarist Ken Casey wore a Boston Bruins jersey with the number 4 in honor of Bobby Orr. In terms of brand congruency, the Dropkick Murphys brand is a great marketing example. It was thereafter time to grab a delightful beer at l’Inox before the next show.

Day 2 – Quebec City -> La Malbaie OR Charlevoix Famous Road Signals

After an employee noted my vehicle registration plate at Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré for touristic calculations purposes, we then headed up to the Charlevoix region. Forget about the agro-tourism, forget about artistic gifts, my main attraction when entering the Charlevoix region was to learn how to manage the use of my car brakes while dealing with the famous road signals such as the 18% hill slope at St-Joseph-de-la-Rive, a small town sadly known for Canadian most fatal accident when a bus crashes in the hill in 1997, killing 44 passengers; the slope is more secured since, but still heavy for brakes. On the other side, these high percentage hill slopes (between 8% and 18% at many places) are extremely great marketing signals to get more tourists which can be labeled as “adventurers”.

An Urgency Breaking Area in Charlevoix, Great for Security and Great for Adventurers from a strategic marketing perspective

Day 3 – La Malbaie < -> Parc des Hautes-Gorges OR The Scarecrows Village

On the road to Parc des Hautes-Gorges, I was happily surprised by all the scarecrows I seen in St-Aimé-des-Lacs village, carefully handmade to make the village more enjoyable during the “Rodéo de Charlevoix” event that was held the month before. I find it a great way to build the branding of the village, unless you are scared by the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.

Day 4 – La Malbaie -> Tadoussac OR The Whale Watching Industry

Tadoussac is a small touristic town with 850 people, but what it is mostly known for is its presence near the Saguenay Fjord, which makes it a perfect place for Whale Tourism. Before watching some whales, belugas and porpoises, I had some time to study the structure of the Whale Watching Tourism market which is mainly a duopoly where you have two generalist well-implemented players, AML and Dufour, while some smaller players such as Otis are also present. You can even buy tickets for Whale Watching in a 60-kilometer radius of Tadoussac. All in all, it was a nice small town with high prices that remembers me Norway and a high percentage of tourists from France. I had the worst bargain in terms of hotel prices of the entire road trip but that’s part of the game I guess!

Day 5 – Tadoussac -> Baie Comeau OR The Sushi Restaurant in Baie Comeau

When I arrived to Baie-Comeau, I was hungry and I don’t remember why but ended up watching the ad of a Sushi restaurant offering Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese food, all at the same time. From a Montrealer’s perspective, it first looks to me like a lack focus signaling a lack of quality. However, since the competition for Asian food is certainly lower in Baie Comeau than in Montreal, I guess that including more food types may be a great way to wider the audience in a smaller market. In a big city, this strategy would signal “lower quality” and would result in a wide audience reach but a low conversion rate. Any strategic marketing thoughts on this one? Anyone wants to conduct a field experiment with a 2 (focus: High vs. Low) X 2(City size: High vs. Low) experimental design with sales as a dependent variable? Finally, we ate some macaroni with cheese, anyway.

Day 6 – Baie Comeau -> Sept-Iles OR Manic-2 and Strategic Marketing

Day 6 started and culminated with the visit of the Manic-2 hydroelectric dam 22 kilometers north to Baie Comeau on route 389. The whole presentation was correct, but what really surprised me, and my girlfriend even more, was the way the presentation was framed. Since the hydroelectric dam is the property of Hydro-Quebec, the staff was trained to present a “pro-Hydro-Quebec” point of view rather than a scientific speech. I even had to fill a “Hydro-Quebec is great” survey at the end. Call it lack of transparency, call it great advertising, call what you want, at the end of the day, I would have done the same if I were Hydro-Quebec anyway!

Jean-Lesage Generating Station, mostly known as "Manic-2" near Baie-Comeau

Day 7 – Sept-Iles -> Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan OR My Favorite Brand was AfterBite

This day was a global maximum (a culminating point) in terms of mosquito abundance, even equipped with my newly bought hunter orange cap; I can tell you that we lost the fight against mosquitoes. Anyway, my favorite brand for that day was AfterBite, and if I would have been a commerce manager, I would have put a rack full of these, right after the twilight zone.

Day 8 – Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan < -> Natashquan OR Bigger Than His Town

On Day 8, I finally reached the end of the road populated by lunar landscapes and plenty of bogs, and visited Natashquan, also known as Gilles Vigneault‘s village as popularized in his poems/songs. For the younger generation, with at least three honorific doctorates, Gilles Vigneault is to Natashquan what storyteller and singer Fred Pellerin is trying to be for St-Élie-de-Caxton. If there something I can say about Natashquan is that the city officers better take even more advantage of Gilles Vigneault’s appurtenance to the village before and after he’ll die, since there are not really a lot of industries that can be developed there due to the geographical location.

Day 9 – Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan -> Moisie OR “Chicouté” All The Way

Heading back on Route 138, this was the day the word “Chicouté” finally stuck in my head. Cloudberry, known in French as “Chicouté” or “Plaquebière” is a little fruit that has the texture of a blueberry and looks more like a raspberry. In anyways, I heard this word so much, that Côte-Nord touristic agents should put some “Chicouté” on the front page of the next Côte-Nord touristic guide since this fruit is so emblematic.

Cloudberry, known in french as or "Chicouté" or "Plaquebiere"

Day 10 – Moisie -> Baie-Trinite OR Drinking Coffee with a Straw at Tim Hortons

This day was mostly about shopping, visiting historical venues and trying my newly bought waterproof pair of boots. However, what really picked up my attention, and even more the one of my girlfriend, was the straw drinking habits of inhabitants ordering at the Tim Hortons in Sept-Iles. Most people were drinking their coffee with a straw which was, and is still, unusual for me. Using some deduction, I could suggest that this phenomenon is due to the fact that most people going to Tim Hortons are blue collars, most blue collars near Sept-Iles drive a lot, especially driving a truck, ranging from a “small” Ford F-150 to a mammoth construction truck, and since roads in Quebec are well-known to be “extremely well-paved and resistant to any climate”, then it would reduce stains to use a straw to drink coffee. I also noticed after surfing the web that drinking coffee with a straw is better for your teeth even though it doesn’t look really glamorous.

Day 11 – Baie-Trinite -> Portneuf-sur-Mer OR I Have a Glaciologist Apprentice License, so What?

Similarly to Day 10, this day was also dedicated to history due to the bad weather and also to my appetite to always learn more. Stories about mining/company city and a multimedia show about glaciology were part of the day. I even earned my “glaciologist apprentice license” while giving the wrong answer to most questions, c’mon, fail me if I suck folks, no pain no gain, even if it was designed for kids. No one is winning when everyone’s winning.

Day 12 – Portneuf-sur-Mer -> Saint-Simeon OR Where Gas is Cheaper

The Sacre-Coeur/Forestville axis on Route 138 is certainly one of the areas with the lowest gas prices in Quebec. After filling my tank full at 1.44 per liter at Aguanish 4 days earlier, I filled it again at 1.27 per liter at Forestville. You can even find more information about gas prices on the web. Low municipal taxes and the proximity to an aboriginal reserve may have explained these prices.

Day 13 – Saint-Simeon -> Montreal OR The Last Tourist Trap

After seeing the car in front of me taking a police ticket after the bridge to Ile-d’Orleans, as a microbrewery fan, I stopped at Ile-d’Orleans near Quebec City for a beer at Ile-d’Orléans microbrewery. Ile-d’Orléans is certainly a beautiful place but what I was surprised is that prices were quite high for the same goods exported from this area that I would buy at a place near my home, let’s say at the Jean-Talon Market or at the 350-different-beer convenience store near my home, maybe storage fees are sometimes higher than transportation fees or it’s all about the markup?

Conclusion

These were great vacations! I hope you enjoyed the little strategic marketing-related story! The next step for me is the Summer AMA Marketing Conference in San Francisco where I will present along with my friend Robert Mackalski, and will attend presentations such as the one by Robert Cialdini. I should be back in two weeks with some more tasty content. Enjoy!

Jean-Francois Belisle

Share/Save

Product-harm crisis and its associated brand spillover effects is a “relevant and spicy topic” in marketing that I am currently investigating in more depth along with colleague Bob Mackalski (more to come concerning this issue on this blog). Similarly, in the last few days, I must admit that the Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) sexual scandal is great food for thoughts (for more details about the May 15th 2011 sexual scandal that happened in New York) concerning these issues but at the employee or connection-level, rather than at the product-level. However, by considering Dominique Strauss-Kahn as a brand, the analogy for analysis is nearly the same. Before writing anything on the topic, one should first decorticate Dominique Strauss-Kahn identity or if you prefer the ecosystem evolving around him. Thus, my objective here is not to give implementable solutions, but simply to expose you which entities can be affected in a public figure failing/scandal. All the information used here is easily available on the web or in newspapers and is reported in an objective fashion. Thus, let’s classify Dominique Strauss-Kahn identity in 6 categories:

1. Origins and ethnicity
2. Institutions
3. Professions
4. Ideology
5. Business Connections
6. Family and friends

Dominique Stauss-Kahn (DSK) - Before the May 15th 2011 Sexual Scandal in New York City

Category 1 – Origins and Ethnicity
1. France
2. French nationality
3. Of Jewish ethnicity

Category 2 – Institutions
1. Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
2. Member of the Socialist Party of France (PS), he was also France Minister for Economics, Finance and Industry from 1997 to 1999. He was expecting to run for France presidency.
3. Full Professor of Macroeconomics and Microeconomics at Sciences-Po
4. Attended High school at the Lycée Carnot
5. Graduated from HEC Paris
6. Graduated from Sciences-Po
7. Graduated from Université Paris X (Nanterre)

Category 3 – Professions
1. Politician
2. Economist

Category 4 – Ideology
1. Considered as a communist in his early life
2. Center-left point of view

Category 5 – Business connections
1. I won’t put names here, simply search them on the web if you want.

Category 6 – Friends and family
1. Parents
2. Married to Anne Sinclair
3. Two other wives from previous weddings
4. Four daughters
5. Other family members
6. All friends

A Quick Analysis

At the end of the day, a quick analysis brings the conclusion that the biggest losers here are:

1. All friends and family
2. Socialist Party of France (PS)
3. All French politicians
4. The French, the people from France
5. IMF
6. Science Po

Next Steps

For sure, for the ecosystem associated closely to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, what needs to be done is to work days and nights to recover, recover and recover as fast as possible. From a purely analytic perspective, the next step would be to measure the short-term and long-term impact of this scandal, qualitatively and quantitatively, and to act accordingly to change perceptions.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the biggest loser in this scandal is DSK himself, but the harm may be irreversible for some people evolving around him (especially family and friends). Don’t forget that what can strengthen you, can also destroy you!

Enjoy the day (even if it’s raining here), not the scandal,

Jean-Francois Belisle

Share/Save

During the last year, QR codes have popped up from everywhere around me as well as in most marketing circles in North America. However, for many people, QR codes still remain a mystery. This post is a humble attempt to decorticate what QR codes really are, both from a customer’s and an advertiser’s perspective.

A Quick Overview

QR code is an abbreviation for “Quick Response code” intended to allow its content to be decoded at high speed. It was created by Toyota’s subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994, a company that still owns the patent rights but has chosen not to exercise them. The main objective of Denso Wave was to make “code read easily for the reader” (it looks like a bad Japanese translation, but anyway).

More precisely, QR codes refer to a specific two-dimensional matrix-type barcode, readable by QR barcode readers available on most new smartphones models. It consists of black modules arranged in a squared matrix on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data. Recently, what has mostly emerged in the online marketing community is the used of QR codes for encoding long URLs for offline advertising.

QR Codes Capacity

Similarly to barcodes, QR codes have extremely high data capacity. There actually exist 40 versions of QR codes (see the Denso Wave website for all versions). Each version has a specific “module configuration”, where the module refers to the black and white dots that make up QR codes. Version 1 is a 21 modules by 21 modules square, while version 40 is a 177 modules by 177 modules square. Each higher version number includes four additional modules per side, which suggests that version 41 would be 181 modules by 181 modules. Version 40, when error correction “L” is used (read more on error correction for QR codes), can encode up to 4,296 numeric symbols or 7,089 alphanumeric symbols.

How to Read QR codes?

There exists multiple mobile applications to read QR codes, one can use the QR code scanner integrated in Google Goggles available for the iPhone, and the Android platforms. For iPhone users like me, the Bakodo application is currently the most used (for the iPhone version I have) since it permits to read both barcodes and QR codes.

Who Uses QR codes?

QR codes usage by consumers is still extremely marginal. If you’re in Asia, especially in Japan or South Korea, where it seems mainstream since some years (2009-2010), it may be different, but in North America, maybe not in San Francisco (I will have the answer no later than this August) it is still reserved to geeks, so it’s still time to be considered as innovators (or geeky consumers) but it may change fast.

QR code for Jean-Francois Belisle website

How to Generate QR Codes?

There exists many ways to generate QR codes for your website URLs or any other kind of data. However, the Kaywa website seems to be the reference to generate fast QR codes for your website URLs.

When Should Advertisers Use QR Codes?

Usage of QR codes has been emerging at a fast pace. You can actually put QR codes on cars and buses if you want or on magnetic cards and dishwasher machines (I don’t see the point but …). However, from an advertising perspective, one needs to take into account at least four factors when deciding to include a QR code or not: (1) the amount of data to be stored, (2) the medium used, (3) the space available for the ad, and (4) how it may alter the ad design.

From a web tracking perspective, QR codes should be used to target any marketing campaign even when the URL is extremely short. However, if you’re tracking a campaign properly using tools to separate sources such as Google link builder, your campaign should always have a long URL anyway. In exceptional cases, if you have a short website URL, you may want not to include QR codes for lack of space and/or not to alter the design. This may be the case for small ads in magazines or TV ads. However, on magazines and especially on billboards, I am a huge advocate of including QR codes.

QR codes should be seen as complements to website URLs on an ad, not as substitutes, since you may reach different types of consumers. Anyway, rarely you will encounter a consumer both scanning a QR code and typing a web URL after.

If there is a place where QR codes are useless for encoding URLs, it’s on the web. Which consumer will want to scan a barcode when on the web to get access to a URL using another device? It may happen, but I don’t see the benefits compared to the disadvantages it may bring by altering the design.

Pepsi QR Code Campaign for Pepsi Max

How to Track QR Codes?

Like mobile technology, QR codes are useful for tracking campaigns even though they for sure underestimate the number of consumers who have seen an ad. For more about how to use QR codes for web tracking using Google Analytics, Publicinsite got an excellent post on the issue entitled “QR codes and Google Analytics to track mobile devices”.

Conclusion

QR codes may not be as sexy as social media, but similarly to tiny URLs, they are around to stay. After the emergence of location-based services, they are another technological innovation that pushes in the direction of connecting the offline world to the online ecosystem in a multichannel marketing fashion.

Enjoy your QR code quest with your mobile device,

Jean-Francois Belisle

Share/Save

This blog is now 2 years old and I’m happily surprised of its evolution during that period. Overall, the blog has reached an average of approximately 2150 visitors per month for the last three months. It has reached a diversified audience visiting from the United States (27%), Canada (22%), and from 127 other countries around the world, from the United Kingdom (UK) to Germany, from India to Australia. 54 posts, 295 comments posted by well-informed readers, and 3773 spams deleted (thanks to the Akismet plug-in) later, this blog has continuously evolved, and will continue to evolve as long as I continue to evolve as a person. Thanks to PhD colleagues, ex-students, ex-colleagues, practitioners’ friends and web enthusiasts who have visited this blog during the last 2 years.

This Blog is 2 Years-Old

I’m satisfied of the outcomes related to the time devoted to learn how to blog properly in search of a WOW effect, how to use the WordPress plug-ins adequately and how to answer amazing comments, while learning and gaining insights from these comments and discussions. This blog has also been a versatile way for me to apply tips and thoughts learned from consulting, research and teaching.

More like a Website less like a Blog

More and more, this blog has become part of an entire website. New sections entitled “Consulting”, “Speaking” and “Useful Links” have been recently added. Look for more sections and especially links to useful resources to come during the next year.

A New Headline: Marketing, Analytics & Entertainment

I’ve recently changed the headline of the whole website from “E-Marketing, Analytics & Entertainment” to “Marketing, Analytics & Entertainment”.

I changed “E-Marketing” to “Marketing”, keeping the online marketing portion but orienting the discussion towards an integrated view of marketing rather than a more restricted one.

I also decided to drop “Technology”, since technology is mostly related to tools and I don’t think I can really compete with gadgets-and-tools-oriented websites such as “Mashable”, “TechCrunch” or “ReadWriteWeb” for audience concerning technology. However, how marketers and statisticians use technology to get insights is more important to me than describing a new technology. Furthermore, this blog is moving more towards analytics, such as web analytics, data mining, business intelligence and statistics. My last three posts are crystal-clear examples of this type of post, but posts such as My Top 10 Superbowl Commercials for 2011 will remain part of this blog. I also recently added a plug-in to add equations in LaTeX, but don’t worry this blog won’t become flooded with equations. Thus, tools and technology will still be discussed, but especially as a support for analytics and entertainment.

I kept the word “Entertainment”, since I thought writing in an entertaining fashion or writing about entertainment in a geeky fashion is a pleasure for me and I hope for the reader/you too. I personally don’t think I am boring person and I don’t want this blog to be boring. The day I’ll stop joking, that day I’ll stop blogging.

In Search of Quality Rather than Quantity – A New Schedule

If there is something I learned during my PhD studies is that quality is even more important than quantity. I get “spammed” by bloggers who posts too much information and of too low-quality. Quantity of bad or average quality is spam for me. I don’t want to overwhelm anyone with too many posts and I personally don’t have time to overwhelm anyone, quality is my objective. A clear example that comes from the academic world is that from an expertise point of view, you’re better off writing fewer papers that are of great quality and that will receive more citations, than to write many crappy papers published in obscure journals that will get no citation except self-citations. In this sense, this blog has recently moved towards a biweekly schedule, which means that there will be a post every two week, except during vacations where no posts will be published.

The Newsletter to Follow More Easily

As a last point, if you want to have biweekly updates of this blog, feel free to register to the blog via either e-mail or via RSS feed reader, these are clear practical ways to receive updates without having to type the website URL every time.

Conclusion

Enjoy the hockey playoffs, enjoy your exams if you still have some to complete, enjoy Summer, and as a conclusion enjoy my blog!

Cheers,

Jean-Francois Belisle

Share/Save