Doing Business in an Expanding Reality

In these times of economic uncertainty, disruptive innovation is increasingly essential for creating a competitive edge. At Repères we are convinced that innovation must be conducted in collaboration with the consumers to design in a meaningful and differentiating manner. Our prospective and interactive co-design protocol calls on the imagination of hyper creative consumers (recruited in the virtual world of Second Life) to help brands find new sources of inspiration.

So far we haven’t yet had the opportunity to present actual results from co-design initiatives since these are highly confidential. Today, thanks to CTIFL (Centre Technique Interprofessionnel des Fruits et Légumes – Inter-professional Technical Centre for Fruit and Vegetables) and UNFD (Union nationale des syndicats de détaillants en fruits, légumes et primeurs – National Union of Fruit and Vegetable Retailers) we have a unique opportunity to present the details of the process and its results.

I will let Emilie Labidoire, the head of the Repères Communities Department continue:

Our last project conducted for CTIFL and UNFD made it possible for us to work on the design and the offering at the same time, with a 3D model of 2 proposals from among 10.

Point of departure of the project

To adapt to new modes of consumption UNFD intends to make points of sale of fresh fruit and vegetables denser in areas of intense urban traffic through the creation of mobile outdoor kiosks and/or the setting up of dedicated gondolas with traditional retailers.
This is because, in a climate of a decline in the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables, UNFD must take up a number of challenges:
- How to promote the purchase of fresh fruit and vegetables?
- How to reduce preparation constraints?
- How to enhance the image of fruit and vegetables (healthy, simple, quick, etc.)?
- How to prevent consumption among the young from declining further?


The Protocol

The strong points

.Greatly increases the potential of “imaginative” communities from the virtual world of Second Life® by injecting prospective visions in partnership with the agency Proâme
. Engages consumers in brainstorming on a collaborative, exploratory blog for two weeks. Presents the benefits of asynchronous communication and of a widened time frame allowing ideas to mature.


The Designs

As a result of the brainstorming session and the joint analyses of Proâme-Repères, 10 detailed proposals for kiosks and innovative fruit and vegetable corners were presented to UNFD and CTIFL, a working tool for a highly fragmented sector (different sizes and means according to geographic situation).

The two proposals selected were then modelled on Second Life® to bring to life these concepts and propose a 3-D illustration. Instead of static boards, the client and vegetable retailer teams are able to discover a space and to fully experience it to test the ergonomics, the positioning and interactions between the retailer and the client.




We presented this work at the Esomar Consumer Insights 2009 conference in Dubai and we are looking forward to seeing the kiosk open, probably in the autumn 2009!

You may also read the interview with Catherine Roty from CTFIL, whom we warmly thank, on the site dedicated to the activity of Second Life.

In January 2009, based on its cosmetic expertise acquired over a period of 20 years Repères created a subsidiary entirely dedicated to the cosmetics / luxury / perfume sectors: Repères Beauty

Under the aegis of its CEO, Christian Hardy, this subsidiary has merged the current cosmetic teams of Repères and Déduction inspiring them with the same drive while preserving two distinct commercial departments:
. the “luxury / selective / health” department headed by Amélie Debaye,
. the “mass-market” department headed by Bénédicte Lunel.

The creation of this entity is a strong statement enhancing Repères image with clients in a strategic area for the company.

It is also the accomplishment of the integration of Déduction within Repères bearing in mind that Danielle Hirsch, the founder of Déduction, continues to manage relations with the company's heritage clients.

This new entity corresponds perfectly with the values of Repères: Rigour, Honesty, Partnership, and the constant Search for progress.

The major challenge for Repères Beauty will be to provide its clients with operational answers (while taking into account their budgetary constraints) by offering them methodologies that go beyond the scope of standard studies.

The development of this subsidiary will therefore be conducted in partnership with all of the other teams within Repères and will call on their expertise (Qualitative, Data Mining and Communities) so as to provide the most relevant research.

In addition to brands that have been partners for many years, Repères Beauty is also aiming to develop business with new clients seeking to employ new evaluation approaches.

We wish Repères Beauty much success!

On behalf of the entire Repères team, I wish you all the best for 2009 and much success personally and professionally.

The beginning of the new year is always a time for reflection, even more so this year which has started in an atmosphere highly conducive to anxiety.

I would therefore like to take this opportunity to step back from this very short-term and hackneyed vision of the crisis to share with you some of the medium-term strategic issues for Repères.

From my standpoint as the CEO, I believe that in such periods of uncertainty there is all the more need for us to focus on respecting the core identity of the company (the values and mission) AND at the same time to renew and optimise everything that is not a part of this core identity (organisation, process, methods…).

This belief is largely exposed in the writings of the American academic Jim Collins:
"The most enduring and successful corporations distinguish their timeless core values and enduring core purpose (which should never change) from their operating practices and business strategies (which should be changing constantly in response to a changing world)" Jim Collins - Built to last

In the case of Repères our core values are the following:

Our mission is “to help companies design, develop, optimise and market their offers of products and services”.

In accomplishing this mission we respect four core values:

. Rigour, with high-quality services,
. Honesty and ethics
. A spirit of partnership with our clients and internally with our different teams,
. A permanent quest for progress, in individual terms and regarding processes.

These core values are not destined to change. However, with the aim of making all the rest evolve, we constantly seek to optimise our methods and processes to ensure we are always in synch with the needs and constraints of our clients. This has led us to successfully innovate in certain areas of research (testing products and brand images, qualitative studies...) in which the application of innovative approaches generates enhanced relevance and more value for money.

This strategy is a response to our objectives for the next 5 years which translate into a vision. Hence the Repères vision for the period 2006-2011 is as follows:

« In 2011, Repères is the research institute which is:
. Connected globally,
. Has renewed and continued to renew the tools of the profession,
. By being a reference in terms of methodology and innovation »

This vision is clearly associated with the Repères positioning: the aim is to renew research tools, not as an end in themselves, but in order to provide the most valuable contributions for our partner-clients.

I propose we meet in 2001 to assess the realization of this vision :-)

During the last fifteen years at Repères we have developed a high level of expertise in the analysis of market research data for the modelling of consumer preferences. Our work has been based on Trade-Off analysis models and on Preference Mapping tools. From services that were only initially proposed within the framework of market studies conducted exclusively by Repères, we progressively evolved towards services involving customised modelling, by working on data from a variety of sources that our clients provided us with: sensorial evaluations, physico-chemical measurements, panel data, client data-base extractions...

In order to further develop this expertise and to promote it more widely we decided to create within Repères a department dedicated to Datamining, which intervenes either independently, based on client data, or in synergy with Repères research projects. The management of this department has been entrusted to Fabien Craignou, previously in charge of quantitative Senior studies at Repères and a specialist in research involving preference modelling.

As a complement to the Trade-Off and Preference Mapping models referred to above, the team now has extensive expertise in the use of Bayesian networks, an especially effective learning and modelling technique, that we have applied successfully for the development of typologies and scoring based on client data.

In compliance with the vision of Repères, the objective of this department is to take part in the development of new tools for the profession and the dissemination of new practises. Hence Fabien's presentation, in partnership with Lionel Jouffe from Bayesia, of our work on the identification and modelling of the appreciation of a product at the latest Sensometrics seminar in St Catharines in Canada:

Also attached is another presentation from our Datamining department, again in partnership with Bayesia, conducted during the SKIM conference in Barcelona last May. The objective was to present the advantages of Bayesian networks for defining consumer typologies, namely within the context of the ‘Uses and Attitudes’ studies. Among the advantages of the method a key point is that we analyse links of all variables 2 by 2 without establishing any principle ex ante – contrary to the usual approach of canonical typology, which requires dividing variables into two groups, for example, on one side uses and on the other attitudes, a method which is at times highly arbitrary (“I use this product every day”, is that a behaviour or an attitude, or both?).



For more details concerning these services, or more generally on Datamining services, please contact Fabien Craignou.

For those who do not know the Esomar Congress it is probably the most prestigious event in the field of market research where professionals from all over the world present their most recent research.

We were therefore delighted to learn that we were selected to present a paper at the next Esomar Congress; this is the third time in a row (which to my knowledge, is a first for a French research institute:- ):

. in 2006 at the London Congress, with Moët Hennessy we presented the Emotional Monitoring tool, a real disruptive innovation for the understanding and monitoring of the imaginary perception of a brand, and which has now become the object of a licence with partners in the United States (PERT) in Germany (OPINION) and in Spain (ADVIRA) who now offer Emotional Monitoring to their own clients .

. in 2007 our presentation at the Congress in Berlin concerned our presence in the virtual world of Second Life,

. and finally, in 2008 in Montreal, with Danone Research we shall present a paper on the inclusion of non verbal communication in our research methods, via VideoEtude, a concept developed by our partner Franck Saunier. It concerns a whole field of research aimed at approaching the consumer from a holistic point of view by never separating verbal from non-verbal communication at any stage of the study. Beyond the theoretical aspects, we shall present very concrete examples in two areas that seem especially promising: The detection of unconscious insights able to help anchor disruptive innovations, and the measurement of the emotional involvement aroused by a stimulus (concept, communication, product...).

Happy new year, and please see the film below to discover our wishes for 2008.

On May 22 last, we had the pleasure of receiving the Marketing Magazine Innovation Trophy 2007 in the Studies category.

The profession rewarded our installation in Second Life, Repères having accomplished a world premier by developing a market research activity in a virtual world.

Obviously we are very happy and proud of this award, and I take this opportunity to once again thank the whole Repères Second Life team: Emilie Labidoire, Christophe Desgouttes, Hailong Xia and Moragh McVicar.

This award is timely in that it comes as a crowning achievement following a very fruitful first six months of Repères in SL:
. We are now well established within the SL community, following the exploratory studies we have conducted and published (cf. the Repères Second Life site) and following the organisation of design competitions (Repères showroom, Fabrique du Future Building, The Halles Gardens in Paris)
. our panel includes 8000 original residents from all countries ready to take part in qualitative and quantitative research as well as in co-creation projects,
. within the next few days we will be launching our first research project commissioned by a customer (in our initial plan, we expected our first order only after a year in activity...)
. And more generally speaking our presence in SL has given us the opportunity to take part in many events in France and abroad and to present the different tools used by Repères.

In conclusion I would like to stress that our presence in Second Life is perfectly consistent with the strategic vision for the next 5 years that we have defined for Repères – Passion for Research:

To be in 2011 the research institute:
connected worldwide and constantly renewing and updating the tools of the profession by being a reference in terms of methodology and innovation

An entrepreneurial vision that is indeed ambitious, but also clearly has the power to mobilize… and is rather fun.

CB News in partnership with Repères presents an opinion poll conducted among 1085 Second Life residents on their perception of Real Life brands in this universe.

The main thing learnt from the poll was that the presence of RL brands is perceived as positive by a great majority of Second Life residents: 66% believe that the presence of RL brands has a positive impact on SL, whereas 22% believe that RL brands have no impact on SL, and only 11% believe that RL brands have a negative impact on SL. Therefore there is no evidence of any overexposure effect or rejection. On the contrary, the avatars are looking forward to the presence of brands (45% of respondents even want more brands) because they enhance and give more credibility to Second Life:
- they give realism and substance to SL by establishing a link with Real Life,
- they make SL more interesting by increasing the number of residents and thus contribute to a greater permanence of this universe.
On the contrary, the main obstacles have more to do with the fear of spoiling the universe, by being too close to real life or too commercial.

In this context, being present in SL may represent a real opportunity for a brand since beyond the impact of communicating around events linked to the current buzz around SL, the brands can promote RL products and also benefit from the creativity of the avatars by associating them in their innovation processes. The potential of Second Life in the co-creation process is confirmed in this study. The majority of the residents are ready to take part in this type of operation… in exchange for remuneration and visibility. It should be noted that the motivation to take part will be even stronger if the aim is to innovate for a much-liked brand.

Upon analysing the results of the study, it is clear to date, that the brands are still far from having succeeded in exploiting all of their SL potential. For instance no RL brand introduced in SL has succeeded in establishing a strong presence in the minds of residents. According to residents, the RL brands that wish to penetrate SL should offer a sim which:
. associates the philosophy of the universe (namely conviviality, originality and innovation) and the image of the brand
. maintains a link with RL
. is visible, easily spotted
. energises the universe by introducing real added value by offering goods or special offers, by organising events, in a fun manner.

You will find a report on the study here.

For further details, please contact Emilie Labidoire, project manager at Repères Second Life.

I have the pleasure of announcing the creation at Repères of an Industry and Services quantitative department, headed by Christophe Ralle who recently joined us and will provide Repères clients with the benefit of his experience in these areas.
Christophe’s team will work in perfect synergy with the other departments at Repères: qualitative studies, observation studies, community management, data mining and modelling.
The creation of this new department is consistent with our intention to develop innovative research in all sectors of activity.

. We have published the results of a new Repères Second Life study: “Purchase Habits”, to know everything there is to know about the shopping habits of SL residents, ranging from the frequency with which they visit shops to the psychological price of clothing for avatars. You can read a complete report on the study here.

. Marie Juan Lallier has published a note in her blog "Pourquoi Second Life n’est pas une déviance ? "(Why Second Life isn’t a deviance?)

. The apéros du jeudi organised on Thursday 22 February, by Jeremy Dumont from the agency pourquoitucours gave me the opportunity to share a few thoughts about Second Life (the summaries of all the talks are available on the blog levidepoche) and especially to explain what, according to us, constitutes the three main areas of opportunity for brands in Second Life:
• communication: Second Life can enable brands to offer an experience of immersion in the values of the brand via a site presenting the brand’s platform in an interactive and fun manner,
• e-commerce: Second Life, often considered as the future of the Web, is characteristic of what could be the future of e-commerce, more human and more experience oriented,
• lastly, an area which especially interests us at Repères Second Life, this platform gives us an opportunity of offering brands protocols for the co-creation of products and services: this is a typical example of participative marketing, with creative residents who wish to express themselves and to act and whom the brands will be able to call on in order to develop their offers.