In February 2017, Altavia acquired a stake in Ubiq® as part of its strategy to strengthen its Social Media offering. This start-up has created an SaaS Social Media optimisation and management solution for chain retailers. This investment is already bearing fruit one year later, with Ubiq® and the Altavia Group through Cosmic, one of its agencies in Paris, already completing three collaborative projects.
The founders of Ubiq®, CEO Nicolas Vouland, and COO Richard Maupas agreed to talk to us about these accomplishments.
Can you introduce Ubiq for us, briefly?
Richard Maupas: We founded Ubiq® in 2014. Ubiq® created the idea of “Social-to-Store”, since we help retailers make the most of local social communities with the aim of bringing foot traffic into stores and growing their businesses. We provide a double solution, with a service dimension: overall management of social networks, social media strategy, community engagement, advertising campaigns, and software to coordinate the social media accounts of franchises and chain retailers in local customer catchment areas using our platform.
How did the collaboration between Ubiq and Altavia Cosmic begin?
R.M.: We came into a context that required a multi-functional solution. In the retail sector, Social-to-Store is an up-and-coming demand that is continually growing and Ubiq® has already asserted its legitimacy in this area. In fact, the CEO of Cosmic, Sydney Palti, included Ubiq® in the leading brand and retailer operational strategy for their sector, starting in the middle of the second half of 2017. We have collaborated with them on three client projects.
Can you talk a little bit about these projects?
R.M.: We worked for Philips Lighting, the professional arm of Philips lighting products, with the goal of engaging the electrician community. We worked very closely with Sydney: going out and engaging with this professional target audience over Facebook. That may seem surprising, but independent tradespeople use Facebook a lot, for both professional and personal reasons.
What action was taken to capture this audience on Facebook?
R.M.: We implemented a strategy to reach French independent tradespeople working in the electrical sector through the Philips community. This operation, which was rolled out throughout France, with advertising campaigns and a contest, was overseen entirely by Cosmic and Ubiq®.
Nicolas Vouland: We also joined Cosmic in creating a Social Media strategy for the Ateliers Pros Orange, Orange’s professional workshops. Orange organises these meetings in its local agencies, offering training for tradespeople who want to learn how to use social networks to boost local businesses.
What was your scope of action as part of this operation?
R.M.: We managed location-based advertisements for each agency, keeping to the training calendar set by Orange. This campaign was launched at the end of the year, and will mostly take place in 2018. In terms of positioning, the approach is very important.
In the telephony sector, there is a lot of competition for B2B targets. In fact, the strategy Orange is using in its Pro Workshops helps meet the demand from tradespeople for social network trainings so that they can reach out to customers and local prospects.
What was the third project you worked on?
R.M.: Just recently Ubiq® and Cosmic have started supporting Habitat in the management of its Facebook communities on two levels. First of all, we’ve taken over the organisation of the brand’s pages worldwide, whereas they had previously been managed non-centrally.
N.V.: We set ourselves the goal of consolidating the Habitat community on a global level, bringing together the fans that make it up while also make sure that each page was able to keep its independence in terms of editorial style.
R.M.: The second phase of this project gets at the heart of Ubiq® business areas, rolling out local pages that are associated with different Habitat points of sale using our SaaS Social Media management platform, which Cosmic will use on a daily basis.
What upcoming projects do you have in 2018?
R.M.: Given how complementary our areas of expertise are, Cosmic has been asking us regularly to help them flesh out their Social Media proposals. Our 2018 schedule is already quite full, but it’s going to get even more intense. We’d like to collaborate like this with other Altavia Group agencies, and we’d like for them to embrace our technology as well.
Now, more than ever, Facebook is an essential part of retailers’ local Media & Marketing mix!