- Fluid'Advance – by Brieuc Saffré : Web, Advertising, Photo… by Brieuc

Here I am ! I am back in France 2 weeks ago. I won’t stop to blog of course but I will try to write my posts in English or in French, it will depend on the subject and the time I will have. I just updated my Wordpress version to the last one and I am working on the iPhone version to propose you a more « fluid » website ! Today, I will try to talk about a very typical French product and user generated content.

The Flamby is a very famous dessert in France. I guess this brand name comes from Nestlé. Several weeks ago, this video was posted on Dailymotion.

Guess what? It was watched 1,200,119 times (at least). When you Google « Flamby », the results are only the video. The official brand doesn’t appear anywhere.

I guess when you watched this video (I don’t think you need to understand French to get that), you had some nice feelings for the characters and the product. You even probably wanted to eat one. Many UGC examples are done now but the thing is that most of the brands (except the big ones) do not use them.

Here are some reasons why it would be useful and fun for everyone :
- Increase the good image of the brand.
- Create the dialogue with customers or more likely fans.
- Stimulate the word of mouth about the brand.

To know more, do not hesitate to have a look to this slideshow, created 3 years ago but still relevant.

Several weeks ago, Facebook made some changes on its way of working. This time, I must notice that change management was better dealt than with the terms of use. However, once again, the users do not like the changes. After having tried to buy Twitter, (several offers around $ 500M in cash or Facebook participation were refused), the Facebook strategy changed. The new objective was « to kill Twitter ». They created for example Facebook connect at the end of 2008, the first results seem interesting (even if I still don’t like it, more about this here). The Facebook status is no more asking you « What are you doing? » but What’s on your mind? » and there’s no more difference between your status and your wall. Last month, Facebook made the most serious change for me, they opened the users status. Yes, exactly like on Twitter. And to finish, the Facebook profile can be now opened to « Everyone ». You can find a quick sum up about this strategy on AllFacebook.

A last strange fact, Mark Zuckergerg, the famous CEO of Facebook, created a Twitter account. You must think that is weird. As I read once again on AllFacebook, « imagine if Mark Zuckerberg decided to set up a MySpace page to start promoting himself in order to reach a different audience, Do you think he would do that? I doubt it.« .

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