Thursday’s mornings Viscom Paris conference had a title even longer than a Welsh village name, which meant that the focus was a bit vague but the aim of the meeting was to cover the questions to be asked and answered before embarking on a DS project.
The Panel consisted of Marc Ballu, CEO of Retail Media [1]; Lucille Beneschi, Communication Content Manager at Nexans [2]; Guillaume de la Tour of Bluefox [3]; Sabine Massin, Digital Signage Sales at Infotrafic [4] and Emmanuel Pottier of Clear Channel France [5], and the discussion was chaired by consultant Pierre Reitlinger.
Marc Ballu has a lot of real ‘hands-on’ retail experience, dealing with some of the toughest major supermarket chains in the country, such as Auchan [6], Monoprix [7], Géant Casino [8] and Carrefour [9] as well as car parts chain Feu Vert [10]. Each has its own business model – in some cases Retail Media is just a supplier, and the network is financed by the store as part of its communication programme (e.g. Monoprix) or by twisting its suppliers arms to advertise (Géant Casino) – in others it is funded by Retail Media who then sells ad space (e.g. Auchan Music, which is now profitable). Marc stressed that good content is fundamental to the success of a network – it’s essential to have interesting content to attract audience in order to be able to sell ad space. And the key to having a successful integration is to have a CEO who believes in the project and who knocks heads together to make sure that all departments cooperate – otherwise you get stuck in turf-wars. With Clear Channel’s outdoor focus, Emmanuel Pottier was more concerned with federating local communities and involving them in the media. Clear Channel is currently working with local associations with a cultural bias in Nantes and is also testing in Bordeaux. He emphasised the need to create value for citizens with ‘geo-localised’ information, and places the value of the content above technology – “It’s all very well having the best of the latest technology, but its worth nothing if public isn’t interested. We need a new approach to creating content – we would like to organise a round-table of local interest groups to agree on a common approach, with the objective of creating a network which is useful for everyone.”For Pottier, the Business Model is quite simple – it’s up to Clear Channel to generate income from advertising and when the money is there, then its just a question of sharing it up between the various stakeholders… which pre-supposes of course that the content works !!!!