Monthly Archives: May 2019

« On ne veut pas d'une simple croissance financière mais d'une croissance basée sur l'impact social ! » En 2017, Julie Chapon crée Yuka,  une appli qui permet d'évaluer  la qualité nutritionnelle d'un produit et sa potentielle dangerosité, simplement en le scannant dans un rayon. En moins de deux ans, elle compte 10 millions d'utilisateurs en France et révolutionne la manière dont les consommateurs appréhendent leur alimentation. Aujourd'hui, elle s'attaque au marché des cosmétiques.

« Instamarque »La marque proposera à la fois du prêt-à-porter, des souliers et des accessoires, ce qui montre l'ampleur du projet. Ce sont les « choix de Rihanna en termes de distribution et de communication » qui prévaudront, a indiqué LVMH. Autrement dit, ses collections seront vendues essentiellement sur internet, et sans doute dans quelques boutiques éphémères à travers le monde.Le digital est déjà le pilier de sa marque de beauté.  Au départ, Fenty Beauty a été créée avec Kendo , l'incubateur de jeunes marques de cosmétiques de LVMH. Ce dernier, installé à San Francisco, et dirigé par l'ancien patron de Sephora USA, avait bâti son modèle de diffusion sur internet. C'est ce qu'on appelle, une « instamarque », autrement dit une marque née via Instagram. « C'est une marque digitale, suivie par plus de 100 millions de followers de Rihanna, et qui a la capacité d'engager derrière elle une communauté », indique Antonio Belloni, directeur général délégué de LVMH.Un fort potentielLa marque a été commercialisée dans tous les Sephora du monde, soit 1.620 magasins dans 17 pays. Son concept de produits de beauté « pour les femmes de toutes carnations, personnalités, attitudes, cultures et origines ethniques », comme l'a voulu la jeune métisse, a fait un carton.Lors de la présentation des résultats annuels,  Bernard Arnault, le PDG de LVMH (propriétaire des « Echos ») avait précisé que Fenty Beauty avait atteint, en à peine deux ans, près de 500 millions d'euros de chiffre d'affaires. Et ce, avec peu d'investissements au départ.Les stars mondiales des réseaux sociaux connaissent aujourd'hui des succès d'une rapidité phénoménale en lançant leur propre marque de beauté ou de mode. L'été dernier, Kylie Jenner, la plus jeune du clan Kardashian-Jenner, a par exemple fait la une de Forbes, grâce à sa ligne de maquillage Kylie Cosmetics. Créée en 2015, la société aurait vendu pour 630 millions de dollars de produits de beauté en 2018. Kim Kardashian West, sa demi-soeur, a vendu 300.000 unités de son kit de maquillage en à peine 24 heures en juin 2017. De quoi donner des idées à bon nombre de célébrités…

The bleeding will end soon—soon-ish—Lyft executives said on a call with investors. “We anticipate 2019 will be our peak loss year,” said Brian Roberts, the company’s chief financial officer. “We are on day one of a $1.2 trillion market opportunity.”Investors aren’t fully convinced. Lyft shares have fallen more than 20 percent since the IPO.A few business lines weighed down the company in the quarter, executives said. The company is rapidly expanding its bicycle- and scooter-share offerings throughout the US. Lyft expects its revenue per active rider to stay flat through the coming summer months—peak scootin’ time, which might steal riders away from the company's higher-margin ride-hail services. The company also expects to sink serious money in its driver centers, new hubs where drivers can receive troubleshooting help and reduced-price maintenance services. Roberts said the company expects to “unlock … leverage in 2020,” meaning it will be able to make more—or lose less—on each ride.Even as the losses grew, so did Lyft’s revenue. The company reported $776 million in revenue, compared with $397 million in the first quarter of 2018—a 95 percent year-over-year jump. That was helped by a 46 percent leap in active riders, to 20.5 million in the first quarter. Lyft executives said they suspected the media blitz around its IPO—the first major tech offering of 2019—helped attract new riders.Lyft also used its investor call Tuesday to announce new developments in its self-driving-vehicle efforts. Since 2017, Lyft has taken a hedge-your-bets approach to autonomous vehicles. It’s developing its own tech in a research center in Palo Alto. And it has formed deals with a bunch of major self-driving-tech developers, promising to allow robofleets onto the Lyft platform so riders can hail a self-driving car. Since January 2018, for example, app users in Las Vegas have had the opportunity to hail one of 30 testing AVs in the city, courtesy of the company Aptiv.

Chinese pop singer Hua Chenyu once made $17,000 in five hours, and he wasn’t even famous yet. In 2014, Hua posted a single on Chinese microblogging site Weibo and charged 2 yuan (30 cents) per download. He also allowed tips. The 23,000 payments made within those five hours included an average tip of 2.5 yuan each.In China, Hua wasn’t breaking fresh ground with his financial model. Tipping video producers, podcasters and musicians online for their work has been the norm since 2013, when online payments really took off there. Tencent Music’s three streaming apps — QQ Music, KuGou and Kuwo — and its karaoke app WeSing, allow fans to tip artists any amount through the apps. Writers can be tipped for their stories through WeChat and podcasters for their episodes on Ximalaya, China’s biggest spoken-word audio platform. Now, digital tipping is beginning to catch on in the U.S., with Americans who are used to tipping bartenders, baristas and hairstylists loosening their purse strings for other services and creative professionals.A growing number of U.S. startups are letting users tip for services as varied as a paycheck advance to podcasts and live music. Among the pioneers is Bay Area-based Earnin, which allows you to access your paycheck several days before the next payday and then pay what you think is fair for the service — between $0 and $14 per cash-out. Tipping is the company’s primary source of revenue. It also has a “pay it forward” function that allows users to add a larger tip to cover someone else who can’t afford to pay anything. Earnin (formerly Activehours) declined to reveal its exact number of users, but since launching in 2014, more than 10 million thank-you messages have been sent by people who’ve had their transactions covered by others through the pay-it-forward function.WHEN THEY’RE GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY, PEOPLE KNOW [TIPPING] IS A GREAT WAY TO SAY THANK YOU.ZACHARY DAVIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF PREMIUM CONTENT, HIMALAYASan Francisco’s Himalaya launched its audio content network earlier this year, allowing users to tip the creators of their favorite podcasts. Donations or tips can be difficult to collect for audio because users aren’t already looking at a screen. But the tip function is embedded in the Himalaya app, making it easier for listeners to contribute. China’s Ximalaya is Himalaya’s biggest investor, and its tipping option inspired Himalaya to do the same. So far, the firm says it has seen a high level of engagement in tipping.

The campaign is being supported by a manifesto for change, which identifies a range of factors currently shaping marketing, including the expanding millennial workforce, the impending roll out of 5G internet, the adoption of flexible working, the rise of automation and concerns around fake news.The manifesto highlights a number of challenges for the government, including the decline in trust between people and institutions, emerging social concerns and the fact communications are becoming more platform focused, with a specific reference to Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (FAANGs).Based on this analysis, the government has identified six areas where its marketers need to address change, from data, customer experience and the emerging channels, to digital platforms, issues around trust and creativity.Co-author of the manifesto Sheila Mitchell, director of marketing at Public Health England, tells Marketing Week that the Year of Marketing campaign comes as a response to the pace of change occurring across the wider marketing discipline.

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, has revealed that he spoke with several people about pursuing a re-organization of the Bitcoin Core blockchain. One of those was Bitmain’s Jihan Wu, who CZ said educated him on why he cannot do this to BTC.The primary reason CZ cited in favor of such an action would be to take revenge against hackers. Binance announced it suffered a major security breach on May 7, where hackers reportedly used a variety of attacking techniques, including phishing and viruses, to steal 7,000 BTC (worth over $40 million) with just one transaction.Proposal Provokes Negative Response Across the BoardThis revelation caused a firestorm of comments, with reactions ranging from confusion to anger. Notable figures were shocked that the CEO of the most popular cryptocurrency exchange would consider such an approach, while others mocked him for even thinking that he had the power to make such a thing happen. CZ will not have been surprised by these negative reactions, as he mentioned that the possible downsides of a re-org would be to damage the credibility of BTC and cause a split in both the network and community.Needless to say, had this rollback of BTC successfully taken place, it would have played into fears that what is supposed to be a decentralized system of immutable transactions is actually controlled by a handful of powerful people. The impact on the wider community, which has handled far greater crises than a $40 million hack over the years, would probably have been more devastating than the split of the Ethereum community with the creation of ETC under similar conditions, following the DAO hack.For now it seems that the only casualty has been CZ, who has taken a hit to his credibility for suggesting a reorg, which may prove much more damaging to Binance in the long run than the stolen funds that were but a fraction of its massive holdings.

Mr. Rogers, one of the founders of the digital thermostat company Nest, has put millions of dollars into start-ups whose goal is to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon-removal technology, as it is known, is something that scientists have said will probably be necessary to avert an extreme increase in global temperatures.But Mr. Rogers has made a disappointing discovery: Despite all the money sloshing around Silicon Valley, few venture capitalists have been willing to join him in backing companies trying to address climate change.“We don’t need another photo-sharing app or another blockchain start-up,” said Mr. Rogers, who is investing his money through Incite Ventures, a fund he created with his wife, Swati Mylavarapu. “We need to solve the carbon crisis. But a lot of folks are chasing the easy money rather than taking responsibility for what needs to be done.”After Matt Rogers sold his company to Google, he started investing in start-ups trying to make a business of removing carbon from the atmosphere.CreditGabriela Hasbun/Forbes Collection, via Getty ImagesMr. Rogers knows the arguments: The last time venture capitalists invested heavily in environmentally focused technology during the so-called clean-tech boom of the 2000s, they lost a lot of money. Getting one of these companies off the ground can be expensive, as investors learned a decade ago. But he is not swayed by their caution.“Sitting on your pile of money while the oceans are rising may not help you stay dry,” he said.It is common wisdom in the tech industry that it is much easier to raise money for a software company than it is for a start-up that wants to work in biotechnology or energy. The current wave of internet-focused start-ups going public, and reaping billions of dollars for investors, has hardened the bias against so-called hard technology.Total funding for clean-tech start-ups fell during most of the past decade, according to data from the research firm Pitchbook. In 2018, $6.6 billion was invested in clean tech, about 15 percent of what went to software start-ups. Carbon-removal start-ups got a tiny sliver of that.The lack of investment in carbon-focused start-ups poses a particularly existential problem. Two major scientific organizations said last fall that even if greenhouse-gas emissions were reduced significantly, stopping drastic global warming would require technological breakthroughs that allowed for the removal of billions of tons of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.

Passionné par l’Afrique, Alexandre Maymat est, à ce jour, Responsable de la région Afrique, Méditerranée et Outre-mer pour la Société Générale. Avant d’accéder à cette fonction, il a été Administrateur Directeur général de la Société générale de Banques au Cameroun, en 2009, et a occupé diverses fonctions au Réseau France de la même banque, à partir de 2004. Il a également officié à l’Inspection générale du groupe Société Générale en 2001. Et, en début de carrière, il a travaillé au ministère de l’Economie et des finances, puis à l’Union européenne. Cet homme de conviction, père de quatre enfants, nous explique ce qui se joue sur le continent africain s’agissant du développement du digital dans le système bancaire.Et comment la Société Générale aborde le marché de la finance digitale en Afrique.«  Depuis cinq ans, nous constatons une évolution absolument spectaculaire du système bancaire sur le continent, à la faveur du développement du digital. Le temps où les banques reproduisaient le modèle occidental est révolu et les Africains sont en train d’inventer leur propre manière de consommer la banque. Cette manière va inspirer les pays fortement industrialisés. »

En mars dernier, Netflix dévoilait sa nouvelle série d’anthologie Love, Death + Robots* chapeautée par les réalisateurs David Fincher et Tim Miller. La première saison est composée de 18 animes d’une durée de 10 minutes environ. Araignées extraterrestres, loups-garous sanguinaires, robots destructeurs, yaourts avides de pouvoir, de nombreux thèmes sont développés dans chacun des épisodes, réalisés à chaque fois par un studio distinct.L’un des épisodes a attiré notre attention, car il touche le secteur du Tourisme. Intitulé « Les trois robots », il raconte l’histoire de trois robots (l’un est l’évolution d’une console de jeu, l’autre d’un moniteur pour bébé notamment) qui visitent une ville apocalyptique où les humains n’existent plus. Comme des touristes, ils découvrent alors les pratiques de ce peuple étrange, qui se divertissait avec des balles rebondissantes et aimait la compagnie de petits animaux poilus appelés « chats ».Un épisode plein d’ironie et bien plus engagé que l’on ne le croit. Car si les robots sont les touristes de demain, c’est parce que les humains ont causé leur propre perte…