WorldWatchReport: Between Societal and Competitive Monitoring

The Haute Ecole de Gestion de Genève organised a conference on June 10 regarding Economic and Competitive Intelligence. David Sadigh of IC-Agency presented key findings of the WorldWatchReport regarding trend forecasting, along with other presenters such as:

- MARC BÜRKI, CEO of Swissquote Bank
- JÉRÉMY DUMONT, Strategic Planning Director for «Pourquoi tu cours ?», a strategic planning agency
- MARK FROELICHER, manager of eXMAR (Executive Marketing Management), a representative of XTC World Innovation in Switzerland
- ALAIN JUILLET, advisor to the firm Orrick Rambaud Martel, former Haut Responsable de l’intelligence économique in France
- NICOLAS LESCA, maître de conférences at the Institut d’administration des entreprises (IAE) de Grenoble and laboratory researcher at CERAG-CNRS UMR 5820
- JEAN MOCHON, manager of la Belle Idée, an innovation consultancy firm
- ELMAR MOCK, founder and president of Creaholic

IC-Agency's presentation is available on slideshare :

SIHH 2010: The Haute Horlogerie under the WorldWatchReport’s magnifying glass

• Despite a gloomy economical context, demand expressed for Haute Horlogerie brands registers a 14% increase in 2009.Alexa Traffic Rank for htt
• Facebook becomes the biggest online community for watch fans, with more than 300'000 declared aficionados. Hublot is the most popular brand there with 56’000 fans.
• Emerging markets from the BRIC already account for 12% of global demand for luxury watches on the Internet.

• BRIC markets Brazil, Russia, India and China
• Additional contributions from opinion leaders of the industry
• Social Media impact, measured through historical data

Hublot Number 1 on Facebook

The presence of Hublot on Facebook has caught IC-Agency’s attention. With more than 50,000 fans, the "Hublot Genève" page has moved to the top, surpassing Cartier and Tag Heuer, who were until now top leaders on the social network for more than a year.

While 440% represents the average increase of new fans for all watch brands, Hublot’s performance represents an increase of 2500%.

 The opportunity to reach 400 millions potential contacts on the largest community website has not escaped Jean-Claude Biver’s attention, CEO of the brand, contacted by IC-Agency, who commented on the brand’s results:

"I am pleased to learn that these results demonstrate that we are a young, high-end brand. It may be the consequence of our general activities on the Net. I think we should use all tools available online without neglecting any of them.

Tourism, Internet and Customer Loyalty

Yesterday, Yves-Alain Schwaar, Consulting Director for IC-Agency, hosted a workshop about the impact the Internet has had on the rules of customer acquisition and loyalty. Organized by Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL) and its research department, this event incited a great deal of interest from the audience, which consisted of directors and executives from EHL’s Alumni Enterprises.

The key players in online tourism: comparison sites, search engines, travel agencies like Ebookers, Expedia and TripAdvisor were reviewed in order to better understand their impact on a traveler’s online behavior before, during, and after their trip. It is important to note that Kayak, leader in tourism search engines overseas, has extended into Europe: further proof that things are far from stagnant.

To discover more, we invite you to consult the presentation from this workshop:
Tourism: How does the Internet Change the Rules of Customer Acquisition and Loyalty?

Listening to what your customers are saying

This is our reality: the Internet has completely rocked the way companies are marketing.  Every day, millions of netizens are sharing their consumer experiences related to your products and services.  Your brand image, its reputation and the wants it creates are being molded on the Internet.  Whether you like it or not.

As much as this citizen articulation can be damaging, it also represents opportunity: a chance to listen to your customers, join in on their conversation and learn from the criticism, observations and suggestions to improve on your product, launch a new one or to optimize your corporate communications.

IC-Agency offers its clients a monitoring solution that gathers and analyzes thousands of consumer opinions in blogs, forms and social networks (Facebook, YouTube, etc).

Collected opinions are automatically grouped within a secure web interface and are evaluated by the IC-Agency team.  Each opinion, available in its full text form, can be tagged with a specific theme to allow for in-depth reporting.

A search function exists that allows filtering along multiple criteria, as well as a subscription feature that alerts you that a new opinion been published relating to your specific search.

A flexible privacy system makes it equally possible to limit publishing certain opinions only to those concerned within your organization (ex: only Client Services can view opinions regarding hotline quality).

Lastly, the interface contains a reporting module allowing for a graphical representation of perception evolution of each brand or product attributes.

Contact us if you are interested in seeing a demo of our online monitoring solution.