Ged Carroll

Category: france | 法國 | 프랑스 | フランス

Salut! – welcome to the France category of this blog. This is where I share anything that relates to the Republic of France, business issues relating to the France, the French people or culture.

France in some ways feels outside Europe. It has the biggest love of Japanese culture from all European countries. It has also cut a swathe in science fiction and graphic novels. France also does things differently like doing big infrastructure better than other European countries such as high speed rail or civilian nuclear power. Skills that the UK seems to have lost somewhere around the OPEC oil crisis of 1973.

On the flipside, there are aspects of France that define Europe, such as the George V Hotel or the country’s luxury powerhouses LVMH and Hermes.

Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Renault launched a new advertising campaign. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as France.

So far, I haven’t had too much French related content here at the moment. That’s just the way things work out sometimes.

I don’t tend to comment on local politics because I don’t understand it that well, but I am interested when it intersects with business. An example of this would be legal issues affecting the media sector for instance.

If there are French related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • Yahoo Found + more news

    Yahoo Found 

    Advertising Age has a case study of the Yahoo Found campaign that ran in London.The Yahoo Found campaign was interesting because it used the environment as an interaction with the poster executions to give it an experiential feel.

    The Yahoo Found campaign reasonated for a long time with consumers and we took found arrows on to the streets long after the poster campaign had finished to hijack the Dukes of Hazzard UK fillm premiere, SES London (with the help of Vegas showgirl outfits) and a Harry Potter book launch.

    Running a brand building campaign like Yahoo Found on a sustained basis takes a lot of cojones, especially in a corporate environment. Its a pity that Yahoo Found wasn’t exploited to its full potential.The problem that marketers now face is that brand activating tactics Google Adwords provide a safer option with PowerPoint friendly data that can be dropped into pivot tables and used like a crutch to support their decision-making in the face of a hostile management.

    What this doesn’t capture is brand equity through salience and mental availability which provides more diffuse benefits of preference over time.

    Influential analyst houses

    Interesting survey over at Duncan Chapple’s blog over which analyst houses have the most influence.Whilst the split may may change depending on what tech sector your client is in, its an interesting piece of research; particularly when you see the dominance of US focused players.

    And the fact that a good third of the most influential analysts are in the other category indicating a large amount of fragmented trusted expertise.

    EU roaming charges

    Meanwhile the GSM Association have a handy site that allows you to compare roaming charges when you visit different countries in Europe.

    I tried it using Orange post paid as my settings to have a look at different carriers. What I found interesting was that in the countries that I sampled (Germany, Ireland, Spain, France) there was not price differential between the carriers. Of course this was an unscientific test isn’t at all indicative of price fixing is it?