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Every month, Altavia Coach offers you a selection of innovative solutions in the retail sector. Let’s take a closer look at two of them: Soyooz and SimpliField.

Soyooz: Helping the client choose THE right product for them

It all began…

…in 2012. It should be noted that trying to buy a high-tech product on the internet often turns out to be a long and painful process. After three years of R&D, the Soyooz start-up was finally able to create a technology that guides clients based on their usage. While Soyooz is only for high-tech products to begin with, it is quickly making investments in other areas (food, finance, home improvement, etc.)

This start-up is becoming a recommendation specialist. With the help of artificial intelligence, Soyooz basically plays the role of a personalised salesperson who helps the customer define their needs, selects products for them and explains why they’ve made a good choice opting for a given article.

How does it work? Clients answer a few simple questions about their use habits or their tastes (when it comes to wines or décor, for example) so that Soyooz can pinpoint the user’s needs in a few seconds.

Accessing Soyooz’ services 

This start-up is available through all customer relations interfaces, via the brand or store’s chatbot, website or app. One example is the Soyooz module used by Samsung so that MySamsung members can discover products that match their needs easily.

Future challenges

The teams are continuing to develop chatbots that they train to be expert salespeople in their fields and capable of responding to multiple questions.

On the business sides of things, Soyooz expanded their product offerings to include the automotive and manufacturing sectors.

Finally, exports will become a significant challenge over the next few months, as solutions are developed internationally.

SimpliField: Putting field teams at the heart of the customer experience

Based in Lille and Paris, the French start-up has been developing its business over the past four years. It created a mobile app that has enabled brands and retailers to become more efficient and increase their turnover.

Great customer experience, great products and great prices

Designed for network coordinators, merchandising, auditing, the head office, etc. and the application allows everyone to collaborate on projects such as introducing new collections, promotions, or products at different points of sale. It helps to ensure that if the retailer has 1,000 stores, each customer who goes into any one of them will have a great customer experience and see great products at great prices. This start-up has found a way to enable a brand to bring all the innovations, operations and the customer experience it wants to create into all of its stores, by using the latest technology, including mobile and cloud technology.

Aligning the teams, ensuring that processes, operations and objectives are understood and able to be applied by everyone, in a natural and intuitive way. Linking the consumer experience with more extensive business actions and digitising the exchanges between the teams in the field and those at Head Office for greater responsiveness. Such are the challenges SimpliField has decided to address.

Visits up by 20% per month

The SimpliField application has a significant impact on the business of brands and retailers who use it for several months. On average it has increased in-store visits by 20% and the number of products per till receipt by 15% every month.

80 clients, 26 countries

SimpliField now works with over 80 clients in 26 countries (in the luxury, cosmetics, fashion and home electronics sectors) including the Sony group. By using the application, Sony was able to launch, in less than a day and in 2,500 stores, a large-scale operation for promoting the launch of the PlayStation VR augmented reality headset and obtain the associated results in real time in order to optimise visibility in each point of sale.

SimpliField raised 4 million euros from Runa Capital and CapHorn in 2017 and is one of the start-ups to keep a close eye on. 2018 is shaping up to be a very exciting year, especially with the first office opening in the USA.

A non-profit research association based in Germany, Fogra Research Institute For Media Technologies plays a pivotal role in research and development for graphic industries. We put the spotlight on this major ally of the graphic industry

Fogra is located to the east of Munich. The association has its own research institute, with sixty employees, including engineers, chemists and physicists.

Their work is based on three fundamental principles: “Neutrality, Integrity, Reliability”.

“Fogra has several missions: knowledge transfer via diverse training sessions, organisation of noteworthy events and symposiums, writing of technical reports, certifications and other services for each step in the production,” Hervé Lyaudet explains. Patented inspection tools and methods – such as the Fogra Media Wedge CMYK 3.0 – allow high-quality production standards to be attained. Fogra also has a full system of certification (FograCert CPS/VPS/CPC/VPC)”.

The association also allows members access to international experts.  “Fogra participates in the development of ISO norms related to the graphics industry,” Hervé Lyaudet adds. “It is chair of the TC 130 Graphic Technology division within the International Standardization Organisation (ISO), which is constituted of a network of national institutions, and leads several major research projects that involve, for example, colour management for media”.  

Some of the research conducted in 2017

This year, Fogra conducted several research projects, particularly on:

– criteria for evaluation of colour reproduction on softproofing systems – application in production;

– development of methods to solve problems linked to paper fluorescence (OBA);

– the development of a method of evaluation for colour reproductions on different output channels

On the agenda for 2018?

“The agenda is currently under discussion,” says Hervé Lyaudet. But we already know that the development of tools for PDF 2.0 workflows will be part of our research next year, as well as the revision of the Standard Digital Process”.

By Hervé Lyaudet, Colorimetry and workflow manager at Altavia Paris.

With the emergence and sheer volume of digital media – whether in terms of the press, culture, marketing or sales industries – you’d be forgiven for thinking that paper is destined for the scrapheap, to be replaced by online media, e-books, and other email-based advertising.  But what is really happening out there?

An overview of popular misconceptions on paper-based media:

Popular misconception 1: “advertising material goes straight from the letterbox to the bin”.

Faced with the efficiency of emailed adverts, especially in terms of targeting and performance analysis, can physical advertising sent through the post, for a retailer, really be an effective communications tool?

Some would say no, given that everything is now digital, consumers show little interest in what appears through their letterbox and, what’s more, such content actually looks like publicity, so it goes straight from the letterbox to the bin – without even being read. Others, myself included, would say that, on the contrary, direct marketing still very much has its place within the right communications strategy.

Looking at studies carried out in recent years, it is now well recognised that the alleged indifference of French citizens towards media posted through their doors is not actually founded on anything tangible. See for yourself: in 2016, 93.5% of French citizens read at least one letter a week. And nearly 70% of those involved a printed advertisement, in the majority (62%), from supermarkets. Even better: 59% of French consumers put more value in post and advertisements when they’re printed.

What’s more, contrary to the popular misconception, 59% of 15-34 year olds – those famous ‘digital natives’ – read at least one printed advert per week. And for good reason: by drawing on the opportunities offered by new technologies — more precise targeting, personalised content and interconnected tools, direct marketing must reinvent itself and uphold concrete value for any company wanting to connect profitably with their clients.

It’s by no coincidence that over recent years, posted advertising is making a comeback in the United States and, to a lesser degree, in the United Kingdom. Are the signs in France pointing that way too?

Popular misconception 2: “printed catalogues have been cast into oblivion thanks to online shopping and digital marketing”.

Once considered a real shop window for retailers, catalogues have seen their popularity dwindle since the mid-2000s, as e-marketing and email campaigns have gone into full swing.

Just ten years on, in November 2014, some French consumers were surprised to discover — the ultimate paradox! — an Amazon catalogue pushed through their letterbox. This campaign by the e-commerce giant has since been renewed year on year, in the belief that “the return to paper (was) more qualitative”. As a result of this, a significant number of pure players have decided to integrate paper catalogues into their marketing strategies, such as Net à Porter, for example, as well as Birchbox.

Evidence, indeed, that we aren’t heading towards the complete digitalisation of communications, but towards omni-channel mix marketing, blending print and digital with one another. Furthermore, recent years have seen the generalisation of hybrid communication tools, connecting paper media with digital functions. Among these, we can particularly point towards the example of Camif’s connected catalogue, as well as Selectionnist’s image recognition application, which lets users find a product online simply by taking a photo of the product in their paper catalogue.

Popular misconception 3: “unlike paper, digital has little or no impact on the environment”.

We’ve all received messages like this: “do something for the planet, switch to paperless billing!”. On an almost daily basis, we’re pushed towards digital, ecologically responsible tools, to the detriment of paper, the environmental footprint of which is well established.  Taking into account the amount of paper we throw away every day, it goes without saying that we’re all part of this impact on the environment. And yet the same does not apply to digital, where the apparent lack of materials easily convinces us of its environmental soundness.

But, in actual fact, digital needs to be looked at more closely: the environmental impact of a material is not inherent in its very nature, but rather in the way it’s used. Printing an email in ten copies will obviously have more of an impact than not printing it at all. In contrast, reading the same message over thirty minutes will have more of an impact, in terms of energy consumption, than reading a printed version for the same amount of time.

In other words, the more something online is used over time, the more digital media turns out to be ecologically problematic.

Furthermore, as for paper, it has been reinvented thanks to environmental efforts (recycling, reducing the carbon footprint during production and processing), but also thanks to its diversity, and the extreme freedom with which it can be procured. Indeed, consumers are starting to feel freer when dealing with paper than with their smartphone: they never feel tracked or spied on when reading a book, magazine or newspaper.

Paper and digital: complementary media

As always, the deciding vote lies with the end-customer. It’s a given that people will continue to use coupons and vouchers on paper. It’s a given that they’re more sensitive to direct paper marketing (which is rarer) than those arriving by email (where they’re inundated). But at the same time, customers still appreciate, for example, being able to see reviews from other customers before buying a product thanks to digital, and in the same way, make recommendations to others.

The consumer citizen perfectly knows how to take advantage of the complementarity of offline and online media, because they know how to reap the benefits from both. They take just as much pleasure in seeing the day’s news online in brief, before enjoying the greater depths of an article printed on paper. Paper media still has good days to come!

By Raphaël Palti, CEO and founder of Altavia

Sources:

https://www.cospirit.com/magazine/media-courrier-publicitaire-stop-aux-idees-recues/

http://www.fr.twosides.info/includes/files/upload/files/France/Two_Sides_Print_and_Paper_In_A_Digital_World_FRANCE-KEY-FINDINGS.pdf

https://www.lsa-conso.fr/quand-amazon-s-essaie-au-catalogue-papier,192595

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctYTog-fyeI

http://www.archimag.com/vie-numerique/2015/11/30/cop21-pratiques-numeriques-ecologiques

Each month, Altavia Coach brings you a selection of innovative solutions in the retail sector. Here we take a closer look at two of them: V-Cult and SmartPixels.

V-Cult takes brand storytelling to the next level. Founded in 2009 by Tom Gauthier, the Lille-based start-up has become a 3D and virtual reality expert. The idea? Use video games as a basis to offer exciting, interactive and immersive experiences around brand experience. The goal is to enhance brand storytelling, boost companies’ sales performance and address specific business line issues.

Its B-to-B services were launched a year and a half ago.

Unique technology. The immersive experiences created by V-Cult can be accessed natively from any web browser thanks to its one-of-a-kind technology. The start-up developed its own graphics engine that runs online, so there’s no need to download smartphone apps or computer software. Users simply open an Internet browser and access immersive 3D content which can also be viewed using a virtual reality headset.

Vertical markets. To date, V-Cult has moved into four vertical markets: retail (Décathlon, Etam, Boulanger, Tape à l’œil, etc.); professional training (Moët Hennessy Group – LVMH, Bonduelle, etc.); real estate development (Nacarat, which is part of the Rabot Dutilleul construction group); and industry.

The next stages are to develop the industrial vertical market for maintenance projects and factory management, continue expanding the company internationally, launching its first B-to-B product to enable clients to develop their content themselves, and launch a second product for retail merchandising.

SmartPixels and projection augmented reality. SmartPixels, which was formed in May 2015 by Jérémy Verdo (HEC, Polytechnique) and Julien Berta (telecommunications), turns objects into screens and transposes digital uses and interactivity to the physical world onto the product itself.

This approach has various objectives:

• First, allow brands to successfully get their messages across by attracting people’s attention – an object that ‘comes to life’ on its own is much more impressive than a mere screen, to which we’ve all grown accustomed!
• Adapt to increasingly smaller store sizes and be able to show a whole collection on just one object using projection augmented reality.
• Give brands the means to show customers what a product might look like once personalised – and simply inform them that it is, in fact, possible to personalise items.

One of SmartPixels’ customers is MoëtHenessy, which was the first to put its trust in the start-up and embark on a large-scale project (deployment in Tokyo, Las Vegas and Paris). Other customers include Nike (experimental phase on the Champs Elysées and at Les Halles in Paris) and Berluti (pilot experience in its store on Rue du Faubourg St Honoré), as well as Christian Dior, The Kooples, Swatch, Chloé and more.

The start-up will soon set out to conquer the Asian and American markets.

Business intelligence. SmartPixels also gives its clients the possibility to use its platform to manage its content for easy updating. Meanwhile, SmartPixels uses this site to collect useful data on consumer behaviour.

Support brands in digitising points of sale. Rather than positioning itself within the events sector, SmartPixels wants to offer a more sustainable service. The idea is not to install a shop window for just six months, but rather to have machines robust enough to stay in place for several years, evolving alongside collections and product launches. The ultimate goal is to assist brands in digitising points of sale.

On 25 May 2018 (sooner than you think!), the GDPR will be applicable in the European Union’s 28 member countries. The responsibility of organisations and subcontractors will be increased through new rules and obligations. Are you ready? Here is the latest with Alexandre Guénon,Direct Marketing Purchasing Manager at Altavia.

 Some deadlines seem so far away and we wrongly think we have more time than we do… In just six months, the European Regulation of 27 April 2016 on personal data protection, initiated in 2012 by European Commissioner Viviane Reding, will take effect. According to France’s CNIL – the regulatory body that governs digital rights – the text should enable Europe to adapt to changing digital realities. “Non-compliance will be fined very heavily,” warns Alexandre Guénon, MD Purchasing Manager at Altavia. “The penalty is €20 million or 4% of global sales revenue, whichever is higher. That is some serious financial pressure to enforce all the new rules!”

The GDPR governs anything related to the handling of data, more specifically data that can identify a physical person (name, age, street address, IP address, telephone number, etc.). The rule applies to all organisations within the European Union, as well as those outside of it, who may be handling the data of European Union citizens: “The approach relies on three main focal points,” explains Guénon. “The risk, meaning anything related to data security, the rights acquired by individuals, and obligations in the event of data breaches.”

The rule sets two levels for involved parties: The “data handling manager,” the owner and manager of the database, and subcontractors, who use one part of the database from time to time on the request of the data handling manager.

Consent of individuals

Organisations’ obligations are invoked when new contact details are acquired. “Now, the agreement cannot be ambiguous and active involvement is necessary for the individual. On an online form, there could for instance be a box to tick to express consent,” Guénon continues. “In addition, companies will need to keep a record that states the date, time and means of agreement. These represent major changes in the acquisition of new contact details and will no doubt require data managers to be more exacting.”

Data handling

Once contact details have been acquired, organisations must respect a number of constraints imposed by the GDPR:

–Data limitation: obligation only to collect strictly necessary data. “One example of data limitation is when a company wishes to send out a birthday email,” explains Guénon. “Whereas up until now, it had been customary to also ask for an individual’s birth year, only the day and month are now considered necessary.”

–Obligation for data accuracy

–Obligation to ensure data integrity and confidentiality

–Creation of a new position called DPO (data protection officer), the named contact for security and legal and IT matters

–Recording of all of the company’s activities through regular updates to a log describing stored data

Individuals’ rights

The individuals concerned by the handling of personal data have the right to assert control over their personal information.

–The right to opposition, meaning that individuals can block their contact details from being reused, particularly for commercial purposes

–The right to access, rectify, and to request the deletion of personal data

–The right to portability, in order to transmit data to another company in a usable and legible format

Security

Organisations must also ensure that their IT architecture is properly secured by conducting regular testing.

“In the event of breaches, the companies involved must warn the CNIL within 24 hours of the incident,” says Guénon. “Depending on the gravity of the incident, the end user may also need to be informed.”

These major changes to how data is acquired and managed involve all organisations that manage personal databases, whether it is collected for use by human resources, purchasing, or sales. So, are you sure you’re ready?

In a world that is changing faster and faster, the consumer evolves right before your eyes. Many marketeers have been pulling their hair out trying to find a way to reconnect with this new consumer.

What if the solution was as old as time?

It’s all in your head

Before delving into marketing considerations, we should focus on the most important thing: our brain. Relax! We are not going to explore this fabulous machine in its most complex aspects ‒ quite the contrary.

Each of us has the same goal when we communicate: for our message to be understood and remembered. But while it’s easy to recall the overall idea of a movie, for example, it is far more complicated to remember its details, such as the colour of the dress the actress wore in the eighth scene. The same principle applies to marketing communication, but with a key difference: your consumers did not ask for anything, so it is pointless to expect them to make the slightest effort to remember anything!

That is how the human brain works. However, although we are naturally drawn to what is simple, it is extremely complicated to achieve that simplicity in our creations.

Why make it complicated when you can make it simple?

The major problem we encounter on a daily basis is lack of vision. Traditionally, advertisers do not have a clear sense of where they are going. As a result, to be sure they have conveyed the right message, they would rather ‘play it safe’ and say everything. Wrong! The studies speak for themselves: a single message on a poster has a 30% chance of being memorised. But when you move up to three messages, the memorisation rate plummets to 14% (source: Kantar Millward Brown study).

Ask the right questions so the consumer does not have to ask any questions

Who is your audience? What response or what emotion do you want to elicit from those people? On which media platforms are you communicating? The questions you should ask are simple, but you have to ask them at the right time, namely before you write the brief.

Simple but not simplistic!

Simplifying does not mean paring down your message to nothing. The fact that your product is complex is not a bad thing. Au contraire! ‘What matters is that your promise is obvious to the consumer,’ explains Benoit De Saedeleer, Strategy Manager at Altavia ACT*. To accomplish that, you have to be empathetic with your audience because, though something might be easy to understand to one person, it will undoubtedly harder to grasp for another person. This is a painful and costly lesson for a company like Snapchat, which is dropping off the map after having set the world on fire.

Let’s conclude with a quote from Henri Bergson:

‘Man should put as much effort into simplifying his life as he does in complicating it.’

Easier said than done?

Innovation is at the heart of business today. From Uniqlo to Jimmy Fairly, companies are innovating in terms of their products, business models and services in order to attract and satisfy increasingly demanding customers navigating a commercial ecosystem that is constantly flooded with new offerings. As a result, brands are forced to innovate in terms of their services, to attract more customers for their traditional ranges but also to develop other services and businesses to secure the reputation of their brand and company.

There are two ways of developing services, one of which is through acquisitions. This is the strategy chosen by the company Alphabet (Google). Since its creation it has taken advantage of its position as leader and its substantial resources to purchase companies and start-ups. The aim is to improve both its search engine and the synergies between different sources and thereby improve the overall navigation experience. The list of acquisitions can be consulted here.
On the other hand, some companies prefer to develop their services directly in order to establish their brand as a benchmark for a specific segment. This is the case for Amazon and Alibaba, which push innovation to the limit by creating R&D centres to work on aspects such as the supply chain and the delivery experience. A good example is Amazon’s latest innovation of delivering packages directly into customers’ homes.

Whatever the strategy chosen by the company, in addition to establishing the company as a benchmark for its segment and thereby boosting incremental turnover, the common denominator of developing services is the consumer centric approach. Indeed, “new” models of innovation and ways of thinking are appearing, such as business design for example. This approach aims to develop services that are pertinent both for the consumers (meeting needs based on actual usage) and for the brands (developing profitable services that generate new sources of income). The development of services of this kind allows brands to establish themselves as benchmarks in their segment for several business targets, without having to shout the loudest, simply by offering pertinent services that enable consumers to appreciate their experience and therefore to spread the word amongst their entourage.

By Sidney Debaque, Strategic Planner, Agence Cosmic

Standardisation, systematisation, unification, normalisation… These terms all refer to the need, when talking about the same subject, to establish a common framework. This is essential when it comes to colour. Interview with Hervé Lyaudet, colorimetry and workflow manager at Altavia Paris.

Why is standardisation of colour so important?

The perception of colour is a physical phenomenon (before it reaches the eyes), then a biological one (once the light is captured by the eyes). It is therefore dependent on several factors, the illuminant, the object being observed and the observer. The fact that colour is nothing more than a sensation created by our cortex from electromagnetic waves captured by our eyes means that we all see colours differently and that this perception depends on our state (culture, stress, tiredness, etc.).

To manage these factors, the graphic industries must adhere to a certain system, a controlled framework, so that each person can see colour in practically the same way. Standardisation therefore concerns the whole design implementation process, including the viewing conditions (standardisation of illumination, the environment, etc.), measurement and reproduction of colour and press settings, the exchange of files, etc.

How can we measure and reproduce colour identically?

Equipment, such as the spectrophotometer, is used to measure the electromagnetic waves precisely. The job of this now essential instrument is to measure the waves that reach our eyes. Thanks to the mathematics and research done by the CIE (International Commission on Illumination), we have a calculation method for defining measured colour in a mathematical space. Once this has been done, we can predict colour and obtain statistics, precise information on deviations and possible reproduction in various media.

Is colour standardised at European level?

Yes, and event internationally by means of ISO standards. The data we use in colour management reproduces the characteristics, for example of Offset presses reflecting printing aims stipulated in ISO 12647-2, which enables us to align our work according to worldwide recognised printing.

In some regions such as Europe additional groups such as ECI (European Color Initiative) is active by providing free of charge tools such as ICC profiles and control wedges reflecting ISO standards spot on. Also Fogra, a not-for-profit media technologies research centre based in Germany, which more than 800 members whereas more than 30% are based internationally.  They represent the members interests, which reflect the entire graphic chain from the supply industry over printing and prepress houses up to print buyers, by shaping ISO standards that provide clear aims all of the planet. The technical committee behind all graphic arts ISO standards is TC 130.

What are the benefits of colour management?

Incorporating colour management into workflows helps to automate the process as much as possible and therefore reduces the risk of error, production costs and lead times. Reproducing colour over time, which was not the case in the not so distant past!

But of course, we cannot talk about colour management without talking about standardisation.

Are there different interpretations in different geographical places?

Yes, and that’s the problem! Some countries ignore international standards and some add regional variations on top.  The USA, for example, opted for a spatial method known as G7, different from ISO 12647-2 aims. Although the US voted for ISO 12647-2 aims as part of TC130, more influential experts promoted the G7 method and do a great marketing. Modern colour management tools can convert from national G7 (CRPC or GraCol) to international (ISO) standards such as FOGRA39 or FOGRA51.

The interpretation in Japan, by Japan Color, is similar. Although they heavily contribute in TC130 and agree to ISO 12647-2 printing aims they provide local standards that differs a bit, in particular the paper shades.