What Québec Wants™

Self-expression as a new form of entertainment

I had the opportunity to listen to a talk by Arianna Huffington yesterday. The co-founder of the Huffington Post was in Toronto to give a speech to the communications industry as part of Advertising Week.  

She had much to say in her speech and in interviews about ‘The Brave New World of the New Media” including about what she calls the ‘linked economy’. Here’s an excerpt from an item in the Toronto Star - ironically the lead sponsor of her talk:

The site has raised $30 million (U.S.) in two rounds of financing, the most recent by venture capital firm that valued the site at $100 million.

All this while many traditional U.S. newspapers are struggling with the challenge of new media made worse by an economic downturn that saw advertising dollars shrink.

At least some of that could also be due to sites like The Huffington Post, which freely borrows content from mainstream media sites to enhance their coverage. Huffington calls it the "linked economy. We link to others, they link to us and that's how we see the future."

Self-expression as a new form of entertainment

Huffington asserted that everything from user generated content, to citizen journalism, to blogging, and social networking has become a new form of entertainment.

I guess that's really why I’ve been blogging for the past two years. I just want to have fun.

Disconnect to recharge

She repeatedly encouraged her audience to turn wireless devices off at the end of the day to recharge and get some sleep in order to make the most of what technology enables us to achieve.

I’m going for a nap.

An online community where e-commerce, T-shirts and poutine meet.

Design T-shirts, sell them online and make good money. This seems to be the promise of CafePress.com:

CafePress is a community of 6.5 million members, where folks from all walks of life gather online to create, sell, and buy T-Shirts and other "print-on-demand" products (it's called user-generated commerce, and we're the leader in it). Our Shopkeepers offer over 150 million products-including everything from funny T-Shirts to custom hats, hoodies, mugs, and more. Rewarding self-expressionists since 1999, CafePress is based in San Mateo, CA.

You can search designs created by these self-expressionists by Shopkeepers’ brands or by topic. I searched in Places for Québec. There are the expected Québec flag designs. And the stupid ones like ‘Québec. Our Hookers Are Fantastique!’. I have yet to see someone on the streets of Montreal wearing

 that one so I presume this shopkeeper hasn’t quit his or her day job.

This collection of stereotypical designs would not be complete without the “Poutine Power” or the “Poutine for ever” designs. Poutine may at one time have been a symbol of Québec in the minds of outsiders but they should know that it crept up on menus across Canada and is no longer a delicacy only Quebeckers indulge in.

According to a survey by the Strategic Counsel conducted last June among 1,000 Canadian adults, 79% of Quebeckers have ever eaten poutine compared to 73% of Canadians in the ROC. It might still be more popular in Québec but ‘Poutine Power’? Surely these self-expressionists can find another cliché about Québec.

How I spent my summer (online)

Have you ever heard of Fred? As in Fred Figglehorn? Chances are your kids have. The popular fictional character whose YouTube channel has become a hit among kids ranks #9 on the top 100 search terms used by kids according to Symantec. Other popular search terms include Michael Jackson, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, and the Black Eyed Peas’ song “Boom Boom Pow.”

Between February 2009 and July 2009, Symantec tracked a total of 3.5 million searches that were submitted by users of their OnlineFamily.Norton service. The list of search terms was ranked from those submitted most frequently to those submitted the least.

You can check out the full list here.

To my knowledge, there is no similar data on what kids from Quebec might be searching online this summer. However, the top 10 words are probably not that different – YouTube, Google, Facebook, MySpace and of course the cross-cultural obsession with ‘sex’, ‘porn’ and ‘Michael Jackson.’

In search of relevance

Four in ten web users in Quebec say they aren’t aware of sponsored links on search engine sites like Google, Yahoo and Toile du Quebec.

According to a recently released report by SEO SEM experts Skooiz and email-marketing firm Toutacoup.ca, this % has not changed significantly in the past three years. The report suggests that while web users likely see the sponsored links, they do not see them as different from other links.

The real wake up call in this report is the finding that the six in ten web users who say they notice the sponsored links generally do not find them relevant.

Our firm sponsors links on Google. I guess we’re covered since searching “brands quebec” leads to both our site’s link in the top position and a sponsored link.

But is it relevant?

Websites that suck.

Vincent Flanders has a website called Web Pages That Suck.

For thirteen years now, he’s been listing bad websites so that we can all learn from other people’s mistakes.

I visited it again recently and found what will soon be a collector’s item; the now inactive home page of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.

Bernie’s website gets an honorary mention. Have a look at the page. I love the "Advanced Technology. Sophisticated Trading. Global Access" flashing bits.

This guy had to be charmer with a website like this.

For a related post on financial advisers, click click here.

Old friends

When mom, dad and granny are your Facebook friends.

According to AdAge, social networking is no longer a youth phenomenon.

As of January, more than 50% of Facebook users and 44% of MySpace users in the U.S. were over 35 years old, according to ComScore estimates. The single biggest age demographic in the U.S. on both Facebook and MySpace is now between 35 and 44. Indeed, Facebook says its fastest-growing demo is 55-plus.

So far, Facebook's aging demos haven't turned off the college set: It's the most popular website on campus above Google and Yahoo, according to an Anderson Analytics poll of college students last fall. MySpace has taken a bit of a tumble in the eyes of college students, falling to No. 4 this year from No. 2 last year school year and No. 1 during the 2006-2007 school year.

College kids might still be addicted to Facebook but my daughter isn’t too crazy about the fact that her dad can read what’s on her wall. So uncool.

TED

I attended the TED conference last year in Aspen. I loved it. But I enjoyed the talks more than the social scene. That’s not snobbism. It’s just not my thing. So I watch the talks online instead.

TED 2009 “The Great Unveiling” begins this week in Long Beach. True to TED’s promise of “Inspired talks  by the world's leading thinkers and doers”, the line-up is as impressive as it is eclectic. From Bill Gates to Natasha Tsakos.

As I scanned the speakers’ list, I asked myself: is there someone from Quebec I would want to or expect to hear from at future TED conferences?

Cirque du Soleil’s Guy Laliberté.

I doubt he does much of this type of speaking, but if there’s one venue that would fit him, it’s this one. If entrepreneur and brand builder Richard Branson can get his twenty minutes at TED, I bet Laliberté’s story would give ideas worth spreading too.

By the way, here’s a short talk given by my friend, Toronto market researcher Allison Hunt, at TED 2007. I think it’s one of the sharpest, funniest TED talks.

Getting smarter

“Hot smartphones for hot, smart people.”

This headline on a retail poster for Rogers caught my eye.

Not because it’s clever.

The phones are no doubt smart. But how smart are we with them?

If not the smartest, Apple's iPhone is certainly the hottest. It's described as the “first true mobile computer”. As Josh Quittner writes in Time Magazine this week, “Anyone who thinks it's a cell phone with a college education hasn't been paying attention.” He adds “Together with the Apple App Store, which has more than 10,000 free and cheap applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, Apple--that is, Jobs--has built a platform that will generate billions of dollars."

So I checked out the most popular applications at the App Store. I found games, lots of them. And some email apps. “Part fun. Part function.” That sums it up nicely.

I have no doubt that the iPhone and its applications will generate billions of dollars for Apple. However, for now, it’s more about games and convenience than knowledge and skills that would make us smarter.

Ipsos Reid conducted a survey last fall (October 2008) among Canadians and asked “Do you download applications for your mobile device? Applications include things like weather updates and stock market news that you download to your mobile device.” Only 9% of Canadians said yes. 72% said no. Quebeckers were most likely to say no at 84%. And perhaps most telling, 12% said, “I don’t know anything about downloading applications.”

Looks like hot, smart people have some catching up to do.

Taking calls while having sex.

I spend a lot of time in airports. Which means I can’t avoid listening to other travelers chatting away on their cell phones – particularly the louder types who pace the lounge while reminding their interlocutor that they were in Vancouver yesterday and will be in New York tomorrow. And there’s the special times when I’m standing at the urinals next to a guy talking on his Bluetooth-enabled phone or, worse, holding his phone with one hand while maneuvering his other device and zipper with the other.

So I chuckled when I saw recent data from an Ipsos-Reid survey conducted in October 2008 asking Canadians “if your mobile device were to ring in the middle of making love, would you answer it?” I  suddenly had visions of the same guy wearing his Bluetooth device and nothing else taking an incoming call (excuse the pun). Seven percent of Canadians said ‘yes”. As high as 10% of residents in BC said they would answer the call and there were no differences between those in households with kids or without kids.

The same survey also asked the question “What do you come in contact with most during your day - your mobile device or your significant other?” A majority of Canadians (66%) said they are more in contact with their significant other than their mobile device. That number goes up to 83% in Quebec – a significant difference with the rest of Canada.

What this survey doesn’t tell us is if the significant other is calling while they’re busy with another significant or less significant other… more on that in future posts.

"For days like today" when you check things online and buy from bricks and mortar.

Canadian Tire’s website no longer sells merchandise for home delivery.

Wise decision by Canadian Tire to pull out of online selling.

Richard Talbot, president of Talbot Consultants International and quoted in a National Post article , put the challenge of sustaining an online retail business in Canada this way:

“It is expensive to sustain an online retail business in Canada given the country's population relative to its geographic size.” And then he added: "Everybody, I think, knows that with the exception of some categories like CDs and books, most people use the Internet to check prices and product specs, and most of the purchase is done in the stores. I think this will be the first of several as more and more retailers realize that consumers are doing this."

I guess not everyone knew. But Wal-Mart knew.

Wal-Mart Canada developed Web sites to showcase products but does not sell online.

Quebec consumer behaviour on the internet

One of the key findings from the Canadian Internet Project’s 2007 report supports Mr. Talbot’s views: 

Three of every four Internet users (77%) who conduct online shopping product research make their ultimate purchase in-person from a local retailer (i.e. not online).

The study does not provide this data for Quebec compared to the ROC. But given Quebeckers’ lower usage of and familiarity with the Internet overall, we can safely assume that the percentage of Quebeckers who use the Internet to research and then buy from stores is at least as high.