#CercleDircom #11 – How to put digital communication at the service of business?


What we learned from the exchanges:

  • The current health crisis highlights the impact of digital on business
  • Using the same digital tools while working on cross-cutting issues makes it possible to share the same level of data and to gain in agility.
  • Setting up an internal digital platform promotes the creation of a language and a common framework and guarantees the consistency of the message conveyed by all of the brand's players.


Roundtable: internal organization

The difficulties encountered are numerous and multifaceted. For Romain Gauvrit, B2B communications manager at Egis and Emmanuelle Garnaud-Gamache, international development director at B2C, the main difficulty is that of the timing of their respective sales process. Emmanuelle Garnaud-Gamache explains: “Between the first demonstration of a technology and the moment when it is transferable, it can take three years. ". Hence the need to support this long cycle with strong brand communication. "This revolves around two main areas, first promoting the influence of the corporate brand, and then supporting the marketing and sales team. "

Another difficulty is to make the product “tangible”: “If I schematize, continues Emmanuelle Garnaud-Gamache, we sell lines of code. The bulk of the team's job is to stage the product to promote it. Digitization in general and in particular that of the marketing and sales division is accelerating at the moment, with an impetus coming from the brand and communication ". Emmanuel Pujol, director of digital communication at Aviva, is also working on the product image: "The challenge for us as an insurer is to twist the culture of secrecy to deconstruct the insurer / thief association which is still present in many people. Concretely, it's a lot of storytelling. ".

Emmanuel Pujol adds: "At Aviva, we linked communication and marketing very recently, before we were with HR. That says it all ”. For Stéphanie Abadie, deputy director of communication in charge of the press and Luc Bernard, digital manager within the Casino Group, the difficulty of identifying the right elements of language between the different players is also an obstacle. Except that this is not expressed at exactly the same scale in the Casino group: "If the business interest of digital communication is well integrated by the group, it is much less so by our various brands which remain very independent, ”observes Luc Bernard. Anne Pouplier, communications director at Bjorg, Bonneterre & compagnie, cites two avenues explored by the brand: “a new internal unit is in charge of launching our e-commerce site and relations with our e-retailers. It will therefore be easier to measure the impact of digital on business; for the brand-employer part, digital tools such as LinkedIn are also valuable, since they generate data ”. Anne Pouplier adds that the health crisis is obviously at the heart of the company's concerns: "We have to be very attentive to changes in consumer behavior. The health crisis is helping to convince people of the impact of digital on business. » But how do you put digital communication at the service of business? “To put it simply, once you have a Facebook page, what do you do? What are the levers to operate, and how should we work? », Summarizes Laure Blédou, editorial & marketing director of Bayard Africa.

Mirna Cienewicz, Director of Communications at Beneteau Group discusses the importance of agile and impactful internal communication: “Our employees work on production sites, and therefore do not have access to a computer. We still use posters and paper to communicate. However, they all have a mobile. It's up to us to identify the right channels, to deploy the right tools to reach more personally our employees but also our future employees. "

The stake is there: Gaëlle Le Vu, communications director of Orange France explains how the group converges digital communication and business. "We created an econometric model that integrates all the levers of communication." This allows us to all be around the table with a common language and frame of reference, that of business performance. "

 

Answer :

Loick Tanguy, facilitator of this exchange and Chief Marketing Officer of Epresspack, notes that the use of certain digital tools is not always obvious within teams. Gaëlle Le Vu (Orange France) underlines the importance of supporting and training its employees: "Our tool was designed by managers of the communication and marketing departments. Its monitoring is carried out by a mixed steering committee. We have noticed on several occasions that certain departments regularly work on the same type of projects. Their objectives were not only different, but above all contradictory. To avoid these situations, I meet with the Marketing and Sales Director every two weeks to discuss all of our topics. We have taken a number of years to achieve this governance, which remains fragile! In times of crisis, everyone tends to go back to their silo. "

The challenge, especially when the teams are consistent, is to be able to rely on them to relay the image of the brand. “At Aviva,” explains Emmanuel Pujol, “teams are currently mobilized for training, particularly in social selling. We took two hours of their time to create their LinkedIn page, their Twitter accounts and educate them about the positive impact observed when the message is also carried by employees. "

In large groups, it is also important to ensure that brands' independence is preserved while allowing their collaboration when it is needed. Stéphanie Abadie observes that if there is generally no top-down content from the group to the marketing departments of the various brands at Casino, it is because the group assumes the fact of having powerful brands with an autonomous strike force. . “However, there can be joint marketing work on transversal issues (eating well, CSR, etc.)”. Luc Bernard specifies that the content can, however, be bottom-up and feed into the group's digital channels: "I interact with brands very regularly, and report on initiatives that can benefit others. "

Loïck Tanguy talks about the value of sharing content. An ambition shared by Emmanuel Pujol: "to create a place where you can meet up with company news, put up moods or strategic remarks from internal spokespersons is in our opinion more than judicious ”. In short, "we have to provide internal leadership", concludes Loïck Tanguy.

To close the debate, the participants consider how the current crisis is changing the triptych of digital communication, marketing and business. Alexia Lefeuvre (Novotel) evokes the “erasure” of marketing in such a period: “Novotel has positioned itself as a brand that allows you to regain control of your time, and has faded in favor of the Calm application, a meditation app, which the group usually makes available in its hotels ”. Romain Gauvrit (Egis) also had to rebuild an editorial line very quickly: "But what will be interesting is to see what will last from what was born of this emergency".