4 Questions to Antoun Sfeir, Founder and President of Epresspack

1. Could you tell us about your background and how you came up with the idea of Epresspack?  


My name is Antoun Sfeir and I am the founder and President of Epresspack.

For 10 years, I had worked in the media and marketing sector. I was notably in charge of developing the French subsidiary of PR, Newswire, a major American media group. Evolving in the media field, I witnessed the significant changes undergone by media throughout the 2000s. The digital revolution forced media to profoundly remodel, and even in a certain case, abandon the printed format. These changes shook the media industry, and most companies were compelled to adapt their external communication, which used to be mostly based on paper or PDF format.
 
Observing this evolution, I decided to create Epresspack in 2011. In the beginning, the goal of Epresspack was to bring change in companies’ traditional communication strategy, by digitizing the traditional channels of communication. Therefore, our main targets at the time were PR actors. However, the Epresspack project soon evolved to a second phase. We shifted our main target to companies and brands, intending to offer them innovative digital communication solutions. The underlying idea is to encourage our clients to think in terms of audience, that is to say, to think of content as the media does. Beyond content, we help companies create bridges with journalists, influencers, institutions, and clients to create and foster loyalty.
 

2. Do you consider that Blockchain technology has contributed to the development of your core business? 

 
By working in the media and the universe of social influencers, you must take into account the issue of verifying and securing content and information. This problem is particularly important considering that 55% of what is shared is social media content. In addition, the time to verify and think about information is decreasing every day.
 
False or unverified information is being shared extremely quickly. Therefore, developing protected stories perfectly makes sense both in terms of business and method. Considering that Blockchain technology is a new trust machine, integrating this technology into our business is key to our development and our impact.
 

3. Why did you choose to build a partnership with KeeeX?

 
Our partnership with KeeeX perfectly represents this vision.
 
Indeed, today, Epresspack is a newsroom leader. We have offices in 5 countries and more than 300 clients in Europe and North America. Therefore, we need to guarantee our clients the best and most secure solution, a real added value. To achieve this goal, we have 2 options: either developing our blockchain solution by ourselves or joining forces with strategic partners who can bring us the best technology. Our operating model favors the second alternative. We believe that the best solution often comes from the collaboration of two leaders, rather than from the reconstruction of a new option from scratch.
 
The partnership with KeeeX is a way to make sure that we offer the best blockchain technology to our client. Indeed, KeeeX is today the French leader for document verification via the blockchain. They are bringing us the best of security parameters, notably their use of blockchain technologies. Moreover, this partnership allows us to entrust a third party with the development of our technology so that we do not end up being a judge and an arbitrator at the same time.
 

4. What is your vision for Epresspack?

 
We want to bring to the market the idea that companies need to acquire media-like tools and organization to build a noteworthy brand image and an involved audience. This image is what will lead people to engage with companies’ content.
 
In other words, our vision is the quintessence of the subscriber approach: the right brand image brings adhesion and consent, which build relations and contact with customers. In the years to come, Epresspack intends to position itself as a newsroom giant. We want to lead our clients to build their content like a media, meaning not to think in terms of press mentions but rather of subscribers and conversion rate. Moreover, we also offer them a qualitative follow-up, allowing them to analyze their downloaded content and global targets. Providing this verified content and follow-up is possible thanks to blockchain technologies.
 
We aim to become a reference both in enabling access and protecting content. If we want to position ourselves at the heart of the external communication of companies and institutions, we need to offer protection in terms of messages and contents.
 
As a whole, I want to emphasize this idea of verified content. I believe the key concept for brands in the future has to do with protection.