I found a great note from Eric Kintz, Vice President of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence for HP, about the importance for marketers to start paying more attention to French Blogging as both blogging and the Internet are growing tremendously in France, and offer indeed an opportunity for marketers to really use France as a lead/pilot market in their European Marketing Strategy. Below are highlights from Eric's note, his recommendation specifically:
"So what does all this mean for marketers? Blogging marketing is still in its infancy across the world and marketers should apply sound marketing practices. At the same time, France can represent a very interesting marketing pilot country (similar to Korea in Asia). A very interesting case study is Vichy, a skincare company, part of the L’Oreal Group. Vichy launched a blog for the introduction of a new anti-aging product as part of an integrated marketing campaign. Bloggers quickly bashed the Vichy blog for presenting a fake character and filtering comments. The Vichy team learned from its mistakes and developed a blog with bloggers going through the anti-aging treatment and providing honest feedback, creating viral marketing for its cream".
Click here the read the full note
Still, the irony for me is as that although "outsiders" such as Erick see this as a wonderful opportunity... I am still facing resistance from the French market, and we are still as a company, fighting to convince some clients that "online research" is as good as regular/offline research, specifically since last April 05, according Médiamétrie, over 50% of French people aged over 11 years old are now online! I usually say then that the ones that are not online, are the ones that are not "representative".
We are launching a new research program to better understand blogging in France and specifically the value and contribution of blogging for brands (as perceived by bloggers and blog readers). I will soon update you on key results and share insights with you. If you are interested feel free to get in touch with me I will be happy to tell you more!
Naturally, blogging is a kind of marketing...
Posted by: liliann | 10/31/2007 at 01:47 PM