In the last couple of weeks there was a lot of buzz about city marketing, a topic on which Profacts has realized several surveys in the past.

One of the stories concerned a discussion in the city of Leuven: the opposition does not agree that the city would pay 200.000 euro to become the scene for a new TV-series. Also in Halle there has been protest, because “Mijn restaurant” can cost the city up to 50.000 euro. There was also some commotion about the intervention of Bart Tommelein in the Flemish parliament. He wondered whether it is acceptable that the VRT receives money from local communities. Taking into account the dotation the VRT receives from the Flemish government it could be stated that tax payers are paying twice for the same TV program.

Indeed, more and more cities, communities and regions are willing to pay to act as the background of a Flemish TV-show. Koksijde has even paid 200.000 euro for getting the telenovela “David” to the city. “The viewer will undoubtedly recognize or discover many beautiful places”, said a proud mayor of Koksijde. The intention was clear: make a postcard of your city and lure the viewer to Koksijde on his next trip to the seaside.

City marketing on the TV screen is indeed very popular these days: De Rodenburgs are living in Kortrijk, you can taste De smaak van De Keyser in Hasselt, Jes is moving to Brussels and after Gent, the city of Sint-Niklaas now wants to welcome the new season of Villa Vanthilt.

The article states that city marketing is considered as priceless advertising for a city and an easy extra income for a production company. This seems correct, but at the same time this also implies a potential problem: cities expect advertising and promotion for their city, while production companies simply expect a scene. This means that city marketing can also be a risky investment. E.g the scene for Jes was Brussels. But in the first episode someone got robbed, confirming the negative image of the city. Other initiatives, e.g. Het Glazen Huis” of Studio Brussel, clearly have a more positive image, and cities are fighting to welcome them in their city, as they are a guarantee for success.

So even though city marketing can be a bit of a gamble, it still remains interesting. Think about the series Flikken: this costed the city of Ghent 500.000 euro, but because of the success the number of overnight stays by Dutch tourists doubled.

Want to find out more about city marketing research at Profacts? Do not hesitate to contact us.

Last week (25-27 february 2010) the Euprera Spring Symposium took place in Ghent. This year’s theme “Social Media go Mainstream”, dealt with a variety of “New Challenges for Internal Communication, Reputation, Education and The Public Sector”.

As a true “stropken” (born & educated in Ghent), I’d like to draw your attention to a presentation brought by Bart Rosseau, responsible for the communication strategy of the City of Ghent. Bart Rosseau explains why and how Ghent added social media to its communication strategy, thereby evolving from traditional media to “Government 2.0”. As we would say in Ghent: “Oas da nie wijs es …”.

Why using social media?

• Government communication is quite complex: it covers a very broad spectrum of messages, with different tools, by different spokespersons. But most importantly:  the messages need to reach EVERBODY in the city. Using social media, allows to address those segments that are difficult to reach with traditional media (e.g. the City Magazine), as for instance the youngsters.
• Social media allow reaching segmented groups with specific, direct messages (e.g. parents, inhabitants of a certain street, companies …).
• Their informal, creative character enhances the public’s interest in politics, making the decision-making process itself a part of the public arena and letting citizens interact. Social media bring you “where the people are”. It involves the citizens in the city projects; it makes ‘talking to the government’ less intimidating.
• Social media can be used to create a good “vibe” around certain events, at a very low cost.

Overcoming the challenges faced by Government 2.0?

Mr. Rosseau also warns for some pitfalls when using social media in governmental communication.

• Using social media broadens your communication toolbox. This means that you, more than ever, need to plan ahead, thinking about your goals, target audience and tone of voice.
• Maintaining a consistent online corporate identity is probably one of the biggest challenges: who is allowed to speak for the city, how and at any given time?
• Last, but not least: social media can be the right tool for government communication, but not the only tool for communication. Let’s not forget that a lot of people have no access to computers and/or internet, and thus still rely on the traditional media to receive information.

Ghent Government 2.0 success story: “Gent over Morgen”

With its project “Gent over Morgen”, Ghent wanted to apply the two-way symmetrical model (as developed by James Grunig), informing its citizens about the city’s long term strategy (“Ghent 2020”), and on the other hand also asking people about their expectations of Ghent in the long run. This project combined the social media Youtube, Facebook & the city’s blogsite Gentblogt.

Via YouTube people were invited to visualise their ideas about the future of Ghent, or what they would like to see changed.

The facebook-group Gent over Morgen, created a platform where people could show there affiliation with the project and were informed about upcoming events.

The most effective medium in gathering people’s feedback on the project was Gentblogt. This is one of the more active cityblogs in Belgium, and was awarded with best Cityblog. Gentblogt launched one question each week for ten weeks running. Quickly, elaborating and challenging discussions coloured with personal stories, scientific references and gossip stories emerged; providing the city with a clear image of the topics people cared about and where they saw the best opportunities for Ghent to grow.

Want find out more on measuring the effects of news- & social media on your brand or corporate identity? Profacts has developed a tool which allows for tracking your e-reputation (your reputation on the internet).

A new research by Jobat and Profacts among 4.014 employees reveals that most employees have now had their yearly job evaluation for 2009 and that most of them received positive feedback.  ”Managers like to give high scores. It keeps the peace and quiet among the employees in the company and it releaves them from following up on employees that are not performing as desired”, says Reginald De Lannoy of Hudson.

Flanders is working. And apparently, Flanders is working hard. Of the 4.014 Flemish employees that were interviewed, 9 out of 10 claim that they have received a positive job evaluation. Most of them – 86% – also say that they had expected such a positive feedback. De Lannoy is a bit surprised by such positive news. “It is important to know that not all managers are trained in conveying a negative message. Often, they prefer to be positive, because a negative evaluation means that they have to put time in helping and guiding underperforming employees or that they have to implement negative consequences.”

Non-critical managers often turn the job evaluation into a useless tool. “Managers who don’t dare to set objectives carry an important responsibility for the fact that job evaluations often don’t reach their goal. Moreover, they are playing a very dangerous game with their employees. A good evaluation provides hope and a false feeling of security. I often meet ex-employees in outplacement that received splendid job evaluations year after year, but who were layed-off anyway. So, don’t think that a good evaluation means you’re not considered when companies are letting employees go” says to De Lannoy.

“On the floor, formal and informal evaluations are often mixed up. The reason is that managers are seldom well-prepared to evaluate their employees. Very few of them are coached in the evaluation process. They are rarely evaluated about the way they evaluate people. This means that they often quickly do an evaluation session in between some other tasks” says De Lannoy.

This rather gloomy analysis by De Lannoy is confirmed by the results of the study. One in five employees says their evaluation session is badly organized and not well prepared. Even more than half of the employees are convinced that the evaluation is nothing more than something the manager feels he has to do out of obligation, rather than as a tool to improve employees’ performances. Among civil servants even two thirds of employees thinks this is the case. On the positive side, about three out of four evaluations are based on standardized documents and are in this way relatively objective.

If you would like to know more about this study, please visit Jobat.

A couple of months ago, Profacts performed about 400 street interviews about the interest in take-away coffee shops in Belgian tourist cities. More than half of the people who were interviewed were very interested in a coffee shop with take-away coffee and thee. About 1 in 10 even said that they would have bought coffee or thee at the very moment of the interview if there would have been a coffee shop right there. Not surprisingly, the idea of a take away coffee shop was most appealing to young people and to tourists. Old ladies still preferred local coffeeshops where they could also order pancakes or Belgian waffles.

In this research, Profacts also wanted to know which chain of coffee shops was best known, spontaneously as well as aided. Six out of ten interviewed people knew the chain Starbucks and 28% of interviewed people even mentioned this chain spontaneously. Based on these findings we did not understand why Starbucks was not yet present on the Belgian market. Some of the Starbucks-addicts at Profacts – actually only Timothy – went to Brussels Airport hours before his flight a couple of times to try out the Starbucks at Brussels Airport, but it is clearly not the same as a Starbucks in the city.

Apparently, also Starbucks has heard the cry of the Belgian Starbucks fans (or they wanted to stop the constant stream of mails by Timothy), because today Starbucks is opening a new coffee shop  in the central train station in Antwerpen. Many train passengers will have an extra ‘attraction’ in the train station Antwerpen-Centraal, but I’m curious whether every passenger will like the Starbucks take-away coffee. Undeniably, there will always be people who still prefer a fresh cup of coffee in a local café. According to Starbucks this is not a problem, because their numbers show that the presence of a Starbucks actually increases the coffee consumption in the venues around the Starbucks. Our own Starbucks-watcher – yes still the one who goes to Brussels airport and who spent a whole day in the first Starbucks in Seattle even though it looks just like a regular Starbucks – thinks this positive effect on the surrounding venues is correct. He is probably biased, but his belief is based on the observation that during a visit to Vienna, one of the authentic coffee capitals in Europe, he saw that the traditional historical coffee houses co-extisted peacefully with the at least 6 Starbucks coffee shops in the city center. Both the Starbucks coffee shops and the traditional coffee houses were crowded at all times of the day.

Anyway, our research results predict a bright future for Starbucks in Belgium and we sincerely hope that also the local coffee houses prosper through the presence of this competitor.

On Friday, there was an interesting news story in Het Laatste Nieuws, which shows the need for companies to be vigilant when they want to protect their internet brand. Apparently Google earns quite some money through advertisements that are placed on websites that have a misspelled name. The phenomenon of registering intentionally misspelled domain names, e.g. domain names that are only one letter different from existing popular domain names, is called “typosquatting”. It is one of at least two ways in which your online brand can be misused by others.

Cybersquatting

The first method revolves around predicting the need for the domain name itself. A perfect example of this in recent times was with the release of Apple’s Ipad. People tried to buy names like www.Islate.com; www.Ipaper.com; www.Ipage.com in the hopes that one of them would be the new name of Apple’s new gadget. If they are lucky and actually guess the name of the product and register it, they might be able to sell this domain to Apple for a huge profit or get revenues by placing ads on the “cybersquatted” site. Off course, this isn’t always possible because apple’s main domain is http://www.apple.com/insertgadgethere but there are many other products that have their respective website like www.senseo.com (product of Philips) or www.nespresso.com (product of Nestlé).

Another way of “cybersquatting” is looking for the domains that are not yet registered. Let’s take for example Douwe Egberts, a coffee roasting company. Douwe Egberts registered the URL www.douwe-egberts.com which will be their main domain name. A “cybersquatter” will register www.douwe-egberts.be or www.douwe-egberts.eu. This way, if people look for the company Douwe Egberts, they will have multiple options and perhaps click on the link of the “cybersquatter” which redirects them to a website with wrong info, spyware or other information that you as a company do not want. Another example of a company that is aware of “cybersquatting” is a newspaper called “het laatste nieuws”. There URL is www.hln.be but you could use www.hetlaatstenieuws.be as well. No luck for “cybersquatting” this brand.

Typosquatting

“Typosquatting” is a way where you use common typing errors. For example, people type www.google.com like www.googel.com or www.gooogle.com. In this case, Google already registered most common misspelled ways of Google and redirected them to the correct website. This common way of mistyping can lead you to an alternate site containing information that might be harmful to your company or brand or associate your product with something you do not want.

Did you know

Did you know that people visit “typosquatted” and “cybersquatted” sites about 68 million times a day.

Did you know that Google makes around 497 million dollar each year by “typosquatting” (ad revenue).

Did you know that Arnold Schwarzenegger registered the 10 most misspelled ways of his name?

A majority of the active Flemish people (67 percent) say that their job makes them happy in everyday life. “If the economy starts to improve again, satisfaction will probably decrease. At that point in time people will see more opportunities on the job market and the grass will again seem much greener at the other side”, says professor Anseel. “Although previous research shows that ‘working’ is the activity that makes us feel least happy, other studies show that working gives our life meaning and is important for our identity.”

It is probably not a coincidence that especially employees in the social sector (76%) and education (82%) say that their job makes them happy. “In those jobs you often notice at the end of the day that you have made a difference”, continues professor Anseel. “However, there is an alternative explanation. Jobs in education, for instance, are not paid very well. So you are not in such a job for the money. Choosing a job in education is thus probably more based on the job content.”

Within the top three of most satisfied employees are also people who are self-employed. Among them, 79 percent are happy with their job, which has much to do with the freedom and independence with which they can do their job. “The more people can decide their own job content, the higher the satisfaction with their job”, clarifies professor Anseel.

Apart from the freedom or independence (29%), liking our job has to do most with the job content (39%) and the colleagues (27%). Only 16% thinks the pay check is the most satisfying about a job, ranking even after working hours and social atmosphere at the  job. “Pay is important, but not a determining factor for job satisfaction. The trio autonomy, meaningfulness and good relations are much more important”, confirms professor Anseel.

Click here if you want to know more about these results.

Today I came across a news story on the website of the Daily Telegraph (telegraph.co.uk) that might be interesting to anyone looking for a job and even for everybody who currently has a job. It also confirms a feeling that most people who closely follow the selection and recruitment sector have. And it also confirms the results of some focus groups and surveys that we at Profacts have run among job seekers and recruitment professionals.

According to new figures released by Microsoft checking the profile on social network sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, has become as important as a CV or an interview. In this study HR managers at the top 100 companies in the US, the UK, Germany and France were surveyed and 70% of them admitted that they had already rejected job candidates because of the things they saw on the candidates’ publicly available online profile, such as drunken photographs, foul language and messages revealing a poor work attitude. However, on the positive side, these HR managers also said that a strong and impressive online profile could be an advantage to people looking for a job. Peter Cullen, of Microsoft, has put it this way: “Your online reputation is not something to be scared of, it’s something to be proactively managed. These days, it’s essential that web-users cultivate the kind of online reputation that they would want an employer to see.”

But even if you already have a job, the online profile on your favorite social network site might be something to actively manage. Farhan Yasin, of online recruitment network careerbuilder.co.uk, said that his research has found that 28% of employers had already fired employees for content found on their social networking profile. More specifically Mr. Yasin said: “A huge number of employers have taken action against staff for writing negative comments about the company or another employee on their social networking page. Social networking is a great way to make connections with job opportunities in 2010 and promote your personal brand across the internet. People really need to make sure they are using this resource to their advantage, by conveying a professional image.”

When Steve Jobs presented the new iPad, bloggers were quick to criticize the new device. Even during his speech, the limitations of the iPad were already discussed on the internet. The main recurring limitations in these reviews are the fact that the iPad does not have a camera or a phone, the fact that it is not possible to run more than one application at the same  time and its name “iPad”, which draws a lot of jokes related to feminine hygiene (“Yes, the iPad is small, lightweight and slim. But can you swim with it?” wrote the Los Angeles Times’ tech blog). The title of a post at Gizmodo, “8 things that suck about the iPad”, probably brings home the negative message most clearly. After a couple of days, reactions became slightly less polarized and the new consensus seems to be that the iPad is not really a big disappointment, but neither a revolutionary step forwards.

We believe, however, that the iPad is likely to accelerate the shift from print to online media and in this way it might prove to be a revolutionary device indeed. First of all, the shortcomings of the iPad, such as the fact that there is no camera or phone or the fact that it is not possible to run multiple applications at the same time, are relatively easy to fix and Apple is likely to do so relatively quickly.

Second and more importantly, some major publishing houses (such as Penguin & Simon & Schuster) and newspapers (such as the New York Times) have already made a deal with Apple to provide books and access to the electronic version of newspapers on the iPad. Probably, by this deal these big companies are trying to turn the trend from print to online into their advantage. Until now, almost no consumers have been willing to pay for online content, but with the iPad this might change, comparable to the revolution in the online music industry. Although the music industry still blames Apple for its near monopoly in digital downloading of music with the iTunes store, Apple has proven to be almost the only company – and definitely the most successful one – in getting consumers to pay for online music. With the iPad the same pattern might repeat itself, but now for online books, newspapers and magazines. The fact that major publishing houses and newspapers are so eager to play a role from the very start might just prove that.

Third, in looking at business developments we have always found it very useful to investigate the reaction of the competition. In this case, firms that have put dedicated e-readers on the market, such as Amazon (with its e-reader Kindle) or Plastic Logic (with its e-reader Que proReader), have started to make their products more multifaceted and exciting, exactly because they have since quite some time expected the entry of Apple onto their terrain. Most of these firms have also decided recently to allow software developing companies to create applications that could run on their products in order to make them more versatile.

Finally, although we know there are many reasons not to do so, we think in this case it might be useful to look at history to predict the future. Taking into account Apple’s excellent track record of revolutionizing industries, we believe Apple’s iPad will now take on the online print industry. The main stakeholders, such as major newspapers and publishers, and the main competitors, such as the producers of e-readers, are betting on it and we are following this bet.

Half of Belgian employers think 2010 will be a better year – economically speaking – than 2009. However, six out of ten companies still think that they will have to take crisis measures in 2010, such as a hiring stops and lay-offs. That is what 130 business leaders indicated in a recent survey by Jobat and Profacts.

Two thirds of the business leaders that participated in the research admit that they have felt the crisis in their company, but an overwhelming majority of them is convinced that within the next year business will be much better. Nevertheless, this renewed optimism doesn’t mean the end of the many painful anti-crisis measures that were taken in response to the economic crisis.  Almost six out of ten business leaders expect that they will have to take additional measures in 2010. Hiring stops, technical unemployment, more temporary contracts en further lay-offs are the most probable of such measures.

A quarter of the companies that completed the survey had to lay off employees in 2009. This year only 8 percent of companies expect that this will be the case. Most companies – about two thirds – actually expect that they will hire new employees; especially commercial, technical and engineering profiles.

One third of the companies expect that their turnover in 2010 will be higher than last year, on average by 7,6 percent. Most companies (54%) are expecting a status quo. The remaining 15 percent think that this year will be worse than last year and they expect a drop in turnover of 8,2 percent on average.

All results of this survey can be found on www.jobat.be/2010.

There are now 7.292.300 internet users in Belgium, which means that internet penetration is now at 70%. Since 2000, the number of internet users in Belgium has almost tripled. With these numbers, internet penetration in Belgium is well above the European average (EU27) of 60% and above the internet penetration of countries such as France (69%), Ireland (67%), Germany (66%) and Italy (52%).

Internet penetration is especially high in the Scandinavion countries (Denmark: 84%, Norway: 91%, Sweden: 89%, Finland: 83%) and in The Netherlands (86%).

Looking at the rest of the world, internet penetration is also high in the United States (74%), Japan (75%), Korea (77%) and in Australia and New Zealand (both 80%).

Although internet penetration is much lower in China (27%), in absolute terms there are more Chinese internet users (360 million) than in the USA (228 million).