Embodying a brand's DNA
Charlotte Prevost-GosselinGroup SEO Manager Prisma Mediashares with us her global perspective on editorial departments, their work and editorial direction across various distribution channels. She discusses France's favorite brands and how they communicate with their audiences, such as Gala on TikTok, Harper's Bazaar in fashion, and Simone, a brand present only on social networks.
Prisma Media is France's number 1 magazine publisher. It represents :
Net sales of âŹ309 million in 2021,
40 million French people in total audience,
146 million magazines sold per year.
Photo: Number 1 French magazine Harper's Bazaar on a table by Georgette a des couettes.
Transcription
S.B.
Hello, hello Charlotte!
C.P.G.
Hello, SyphaĂŻwong.
S.B.
Welcome to the Assonance podcast, even if it's not really a podcast, we'll see how it goes. But in any case, an interview produced by Assonance. Today, I'd like to invite you to join me with Charlotte as we talk about what a brand is, why we buy a brand, why we can be proud of it or hate it. I don't see why not. Can you introduce yourself?
C.P.G.
Yes, of course. So, Charlotte Prevost-Gosselin, I fell into the world of SEO a little over 10 years ago, a little over 17 years in fact - that's getting on a bit - when I was working as an offline marketing director in the United States and was asked to overhaul the brand image of a hotel chain. And so I had to learn that branding was multi-channel, particularly on the web. So I jumped into this business and I've never left it. I came back to France to do digital traffic acquisition. So I really specialized in digital after the United States. And then, I realized that I had the impression of doing everything, but not performing well in just one area, and I said to myself, SEO is always changing. There are lots of things to learn and so I decided to specialize in SEO thanks to an agency called Apposition, which trained me well, extremely well, and after Apposition I went into the media. So I worked for Next Interactive and for Prisma Media since 2018.
S.B.
What exactly is Prisma Media? I have the impression that it's big, but that we in the consumer world don't hear that much about it.
C.P.G.
Prisma Media is a press group with a real personality. When I joined Prisma, I said to myself, wow, the grass really is greener elsewhere, because it's a group with a real personality. It's an embodying group, because there are embodied brands, particularly magazine brands.
I think you know Télé Loisirs because it's a magazine that reaches a huge number of French people, and now an application that reaches a huge number of French people. I don't know if we're going to watch the TV program. There's Gala, Voici, Femme actuelle, Cuisine actuelle, Capital, Géo, National Geographic, Néon Magazine and so on, because there are about 22 brands, 23 since we bought Milk, but they haven't yet come under the Prisma umbrella. And they're all multi-channel brands, meaning that there are magazines, but there's also everything that's digital, and very broadly so. There are photos by real photographers, there are videos, since we have 500 million video views a month. There are dozens of podcasts, and we have a strong presence on social networks, notably with Gala on TikTok. So it's a group that contains a lot of magazine brands, but not just magazine brands. We have Simone, for example, which is a brand that's really only on the social list. Brands with a real personality behind them.
S.B.
Finally, there's a prisma and a bit of schizophrenia. There are all the possible personalities of France in one group.
C.P.G.
Yes, that's right. In fact, Prisma reaches 8 out of 10 French people. So it's huge. We speak to practically the whole of France. We're also a group with values that are very close to human values, and I think they're indispensable today. Prisma, for example, is a partner of ADAPT, an association for the social integration of professionals and disabled people. They are signatories to the diversity charter to combat discrimination in employment. We're based in Gennevilliers, so we're also quite active in the town of Gennevilliers. We have ninth graders who come to Prisma for their internship, and we help them afterwards. When they're more advanced in their studies and looking for a job, Prisma is involved in a huge number of events, particularly in the health field, where we'll be working in a facilitating environment to ensure that our magazines, once they've finished their life cycle in the Relais H or in the sales magazines, can be distributed in hospitals, for example. So it's a group that's very committed, and that's another reason why it's quite strong, because Prisma Media is actually a lot of brands, and touches a lot of French people.
But it's also a group that lives alongside the French for shared values. So we remain in the same frame of mind of having a group with a strong personality.
S.B.
In the doctor's waiting room, I could have a stack of magazines, 10 of them, 8 potentially from Prisma. In my head, I have the impression that these eight magazines are extremely different, even though they all come from the same source, from a group that has its own values and its own way of working. Even if they work specifically for each of these brands.
C.P.G.
It's interesting what you've just said, because the editorial teams aren't the same. We really do have a Capital editorial team that will develop its content in a DNA that's unique to Capital and that won't really be the same as Harvard Business Review, for example, where there's really an expertise of engineers etc. who will really go very deep, who will write very, very long articles on a web business review. I think you also go to the hairdresser's and you'll find Galas and here are some that also have their own DNA. Some might be surprised to know that Galas has no legal budget for lawsuits, for example, because all the information published in Gala comes directly from the stars.
So each brand has its own DNA, and when you read a title, you can see the editors behind it and their state of mind.
S.B.
So they're not really colleagues from one editorial office to another, are they?
C.P.G.
No, not really. So, we have a lot of working groups on how to work remotely, how to manage your teams, how to be with this post-Covid in a state of mind taken by the media. But when you work for a brand, you work for a brand DNA, you have a magazine tone. And indeed, there are very few bridges. But this means that recruitment has to be quite specific when you're applying for capital. It's not at all the same people who apply for femme actuelle. The people will be different. Recruitment is really by brand. At Prisma, we're looking for editorial expertise. At Femme Actuelle, we don't recruit a journalist. We recruit a journalist who is specialized and expert in health or astrology or slimming, versus Capital. We really do have journalists who specialize in real estate, in everything financial, so they're all about money and the financial business. So it's really journalists who are experts in their field for a brand.
S.B.
It's interesting because you see we wanted to talk about the coffee table magazine aspect, this magazine that you put on your coffee table to say what a cool person you are, but I was thinking when you put any press title on your coffee table while there are guests and you've chosen this particular press title. You're saying something about yourself, I think... You see, if I put on L'Ăquipe or if I put on LibĂ©, it's not the same thing. If I put on Femme Actuelle or GĂ©o, it's not the same.
C.P.G.
Absolutely. In fact, the Coffee table magazine aspect, first of all it's a magazine that interests you and for which you have a great deal of respect, and on which you expect them to say something about you. So if on your coffee table you put a Harper's Bazaar, for example, which is a new Prisma brand, you want to say, "I am, I'm interested in designers, creators, I'm really interested in fashion, but not mass-market fashion, I'm interested in designer fashion, I'm interested in all the finesse, I'm also interested in the catwalk and all the models, I'm also interested in the world of fashion, so everything that's around it, the inspirations and so on. Versus if you have a Harvard Business Review, which is an excellent magazine with very comprehensive articles on leadership, management, something like, let's say, csp++, it also says something about you.
And when you go to the hairdresser, you don't expect to get a coffee table magazine that's full of text, but full of pictures. So you go, you can have, well then all the people magazines, but you can also have magazines like Geo. that give you a little more upscale look at the salon and that will allow you to travel during your hairdressing session.
S.B.
When you put a magazine on the coffee table, you have a kind of affirmation of that brand. You choose it, you put it down, you leave it. But when you're reading the thing, let's say on the subway, maybe you position yourself a little too, because there's also this phenomenon of people always putting covers on the books they read on the subway to make them neutral in fact. But precisely because of the way they look, etc. But what's interesting here is the voluntary aspect. Because you were talking about respect for the brand, but I think there's also this exchange aspect that you have with the person who's going to notice the magazine.
Typically for Harper's Bazaar, if I have a guest who says "Ah, you've got Harper's Bazaar, so cool!" I'm going to feel good saying to myself "Ah, this person I invited recognized the magazine, effectively, she's part of my social sphere, we have tastes in common, interests we can share."
C.P.G.
It's a really good example, because Harpers' Bazaar in the United States is the iconic magazine par excellence. Harpers' Bazaar has a 150-year history. So across the Atlantic, it's really a very well-known magazine in France. The closest thing to it, in fact, is Vogue. And Vogue today, also for reasons of reaching sessions, appearances on Discover, etc., is going to be much broader. It's really going to expand much more into other themes. Whereas at Harpers' Bazaar, we're really focused on an identity of... We're going to decipher what's beautiful, what's elegant, what's chic. And we're really going to stick to a notion of quality and quality experience. And by the way, I don't know if you've had a chance to look at the last four Harper's collections. In fact, we've had more because we really wanted to have different covers, even for the first issue, there were three different covers. The front cover really identifies the brand, and we're already immersed in the beautiful and the pretty. And it's true that Harper's...
It's quite interesting that it's only coming out in France today, because after 155 years in the United States, France, the country of fashion, still had no variations of the brand. So we're pretty proud that Harper's Magazine Internationale has chosen us to develop this brand.
S.B.
But how does it work? Because it's all about licensing, isn't it?
C.P.G.
Yes, it's a license. We have a license from Harper's, who really trusts us to launch the brand in most of France and for most French people. But then we have to transform this awareness on our territory. We know what they're talking about in the US, we know how they infuse their brand DNA, but in France, we don't have the same reading. And our French readership won't have the same expectations. So it's up to us to translate all this Harpers DNA into French territory, to meet the exacting requirements of this brand in France for the French.
And it's very useful, to be honest, we've done quite a few tests, and it's Olivier, the editor-in-chief, who infuses this DNA into the bazaar rethink. In fact, we did a few little tone tests, saying to ourselves, here we are...
S.B.
It must be very subtle.
C.P.G.
We don't want to be another women's brand that does magazines and digital. It's true that at Prisma we know how to do women's magazines and digital. And with Femme Actuelle we have France's leading women's brand. And here we wanted something different. We really wanted to embody chic, fashion and elegance at a truly quality magazine level.
And when you have a Harper's, you have a 300-page magazine. So we have a very, very fine magazine.
S.B.
You need a solid coffee table. Yes.
C.P.G.
That's it! And the amazing thing about Harper's is that it's always a pleasure to come back to. And that's the secret of coffee table magazines: they're not magazines that end up in the toilet because you've already seen them. They're magazines that look good and are part of your decor.
If it moves from the coffee table to another piece of furniture, in fact, it's going to move from the coffee table to your bookcase, but the one you put in the window.
S.B.
But it's interesting what you said about the tone test in relation to the brand, where we realize that even if we have, even if we know we have certain values and a certain will, a certain identity, how do we translate it, transpose it so that the public understands what we want to convey in the end. We're chic, okay, but how do we make it chic? How do you make a 300-page magazine chic? How do you make them understand that it's chic and not just another fashion trend magazine?
C.P.G.
It was really the subtlety of deciphering the audacity we wanted to have. That's really what it's all about. What's interesting when you're in charge of SEO, is that you always give recommendations on the digital side, saying that you have to have a headline, that you have to make 60 signs, or at least you have to have a nice key in the first 60 signs. And when I was working with Emmanuelle Paul, who's in charge of Harper's digital editorial, she said to me, "Well, that's not Harper's". So we don't want to be like everyone else. We have a personality, we want to say things and we're going to say them with a Harper's tone. So ultimately it's up to us as SEOs to adapt by saying, we want to talk about certain subjects, but we're not going to do it the same way on Harpers or another magazine. On Femmes actuelles, we'll tell you how to wear high-waisted pants according to your morphology. On Harpers bazar, we're not going to talk about morphology at all. So we're not at all the same. We're talking about an expression that, sometimes, you can't buy.
S.B.
But I can see myself in what you're saying, because it's true that we, you see, at Assonance, are in an advisory role. I mean, we're very editorial, etc., a bit by taste, because we like that, editorial. But in our consulting role, it's true that we're frequently confronted with this kind of situation where we have to arbitrate between what the volumetric indicator would tell us, what would be best to generate traffic, what people want from the product, from marketing, the brand's identity. And in the end, I think that's what's a bit interesting, this side where everyone brings their own elements, requirements and criteria, and manages to come to terms with all that, because the decision isn't necessarily pro-SEO, and sometimes I think we tend to forget that....
We're focused on our objectives and also on what we're ultimately accountable for. And it's natural, when it's your job, to be focused on your own criteria. But that's precisely where I find it most interesting. Somewhere, it's when the SEO criterion is set aside, not necessarily set aside, but in any case used a little more subtly. Often it's the projects that are also the most interesting, or the most innovative, or the ones with the most personality.
C.P.G.
It's true that I agree with you there. In terms of SEO, we've heard a lot about E-E-A-T in particular. And I must admit that at Prisma, it's very easy to evangelize the teams on EEAT. When we talk about business expertise, this notion of experience, of you've tested it, you can testify to it. This notion of authority, with recognized brands. And even less recognized brands, but if I tell you I'm going to bring you a magazine called Miaou, you'll know what I mean. That's it. But in fact, what's quite interesting and quite easy, in the end, is to work with brands...
S.B.
hound dog. Here you go.
C.P.G.
who really want to embody our values. And so, we're really into this notion of trust and that allows me to go back to this notion of trust that we really want to have at Prisma with our web surfers and our readers. Today, we're in a world that's testing AI a lot, and we're also seeing a lot of people around us saying "oh, this is an easy article, we can test it and say "hey, write me a paragraph about this" and... We're also testing it at Prisma, we're not going to lie, but we're testing it mainly to determine the flaws in AI and to say to ourselves "Prisma, what's this all about? Can we have a charter where we're really going to issue transparent information to our web users, to tell them that our articles are made with a journalistic conscience, that we're going to check our sources, that we're going to look for information and that the content is really written by a human being? So we're also widening this gap to achieve quality and really keep this incarnate tone in creation.
S.B.
Yes, it's true that it's not easy. You see, we who are editorial providers, typically, I think between... because ChatGPT, it came out at the end of December, something like that. First quarter of 2023, I haven't had a single meeting, I'd say interaction of any kind with anyone in my professional environment who wasn't asking me "so you're not too scared, how's it going to go?".
C.P.G.
Yeah, that's it.
S.B.
Which is a legitimate question, because it does raise structural issues in terms of market positioning. And it's true that on our side, the position we've taken is that we won't abolish AI, but we have to be aware of what it can't do too. All the things it can help us with, we'll do, but all the things we think are important to keep to ourselves, such as pure editorial work, determining whether a source is good or not according to our own criteria, we know we want to keep to ourselves. And in the end, I don't think it's so interesting to wonder what an AI can do, because technically it can do everything after a while, if you teach it to, and so on. But there's also what we want to keep for ourselves. So I understand this value aspect too... Saying "yes, we want to do things in a certain way, that implies certain things" or saying "no" to methods we don't want to use just because we don't feel like it, can be a perfectly legitimate justification. But you see on brands like Harper's Bazaar typically, where I imagine where you have a designer's voice, a creator's voice, where ultimately every article and a little bit becomes a prescriber of a trend. So I think it would be wrong for the audience, for the readership, to say "that article was generated".
C.P.G.
That's about it. Then, LIA, we test it in a concept of how we can save time so that journalists can concentrate on what they like to do. And that's kind of the logic behind it. So we tested AI-generated paragraphs. Honestly, today, even with GPT-4 chat, expert writing is still the order of the day. And you see, on a 2000-word article, we have at least two hours of proofreading to check the sources, the data, and in fact, it often takes longer than if the journalist had written the article himself. So this kind of process at Prisma couldn't possibly... In any case, it wouldn't interest journalists. And then...
S.B.
In fact, I think... There's a level of trust because you trust what they say.
C.P.G.
Exactly. And I think that the media, in general, have a card to play in a world where everything can be transformed, transformable. Whether it's videos, photos or text content. We saw it with some amusement when Trump was made to say whatever we wanted. Nowadays, that's what the media are doing too, saying "well, no, actually". In real life, it's not like that. And that's what was really said. And you come and read the news with us, because we don't tell you what's really going on just to get clicks, we tell you what's really going on.
S.B.
Yes, in the end, there's a sort of widening gap between all the content we... I don't like to say low-end because I don't like that term in general, but this fast content and the content on which we take time, because verification, finding a particular person to write it or to intervene, and I see finally that there is an aspect of time, ratio time that is important. Whether it's on the creative side or the verification or editorial side. I think that the more resources we have, the more tools we have to speed up creation, the wider the gap between things that can be done quickly and things that take time. It's a bit of an industrialization phase, of intellectual tasks, but well, that's a whole subject.
C.P.G.
Then you have magazines like Harpers Bazaar where to write an article and really set the tone, you have to go and see the catwalks. So you're not in a writing mode all the time. You're also into images and emotions. You really have a lot of feeling, in fact. As a journalist on this brand. If you take another brand like Harvard Business Review, these are really expert publications, so it's really a lot of hard work, etc., which will become almost a bible on a given topic. So you can't just write anything, maybe you can use AI to make summaries of what you'll find in... in Harper's Bazaar or Harvard Business Review, but in any case these articles are really in-depth and written with the business expertise of such and such. There are a lot of media brands, and we also have some in-house where journalists write. Really, it's their reference work, where they write, they do telephone interviews, they stay in what we call a newsroom. In other magazines, you have journalists who really go out into the field, interviewing their contacts, going on photo shoots and so on. And so, inevitably, the brand's DNA is affected. We have brands that produce much less, but with enormous quality, and we have brands that produce more, with subjects that are really treated from different angles, so that every situation is covered, referenced, structured and sourced. And so... In two cases, we have two different incarnations of the information you want to share.
S.B.
Yeah. In the end, the same information can be processed totally differently and then I think, there's a side, not uniqueness, but a little singularity, I'd say. I mean... I mean... Yeah.
C.P.G.
In fact, in my team, on brands where we have similar themes, for example, Voici, Femmes actuelles, Gala or Téléloisirs, which deal with People, I don't have the same people. Because in our SEO recommendations, for example, we need to capture the brand's DNA and say, well, ah here I can offer him this, I can offer him this tone, I can recommend that he write about this people, Galah not at all. He's not going to write about that TV show, he's not going to write about that celebrity, he's not going to garden around that person, and the same goes for TV or femme actuelle. There really is a DNA that we have to graft ourselves onto. And we can't give the same recommendation to different brands, even if it's on the same theme.
S.B.
It's funny because you see, we, for example, as an agency, often wonder about the level of competition between the brands we work for. And sometimes, they're in the same business sector, or even in the same customer segment, I'd say. Generally, we ask them directly because we can have problems, but it's true that from time to time, we get the impression that they're close brands, when in fact they're not, because typically you're between two travel brands, the customers of an all-inclusive, quote-unquote cheap, all-inclusive family, not at all the same as those who sell tours. And yet both have all-inclusive offers, both sell all-inclusive travel, and that's when you realize that they're not at all targeting the same people, that they don't at all embody the same values or level of service. Because you can say that behind the value of Harper's Bazaar, which is to have quite in-depth articles, there's also a bit of a notion of service, which means that I expect someone who writes for Harper's Bazaar to have been to the catwalks. In the end, I expect him to be able to pass on that experience to me, whereas in another magazine, which I leaf through at the hairdresser's, let's say, and which tells me what size pants to wear, what shape pants to wear, depending on my body type. It's not that I'm expecting anything, but I think I'm going to learn something from a misunderstanding. My approach is already totally different.
C.P.G.
Yes, that's right. After that, the service is manifold. When you leaf through a magazine, you know you're leafing through it because it's light, because it's going to make you laugh, because it's light and because in this ultra-violent world, at some point you need to disconnect and have a bit of fun. And that's why you flipped through the store, even though there are some pretty serious exclusives.
S.B.
that we've been waiting for.
C.P.G.
(12:26.899)
The tone is exactly what's going to make you go on vacation while you're leafing through your magazine. When you flip through a femme actuelle, and we've really stepped up the pace on health in recent years, all our articles are reviewed by a health professional. You also have sources on the documentation used, so you know it's going to be all-public information. So it's very understandable for the average person, but behind it, you'll find real information, and that's where you leave behind the tone of entertainment. So really, you know what to expect from a magazine, and you know it just by looking at the cover.
S.B.
But it's a job in itself, you know, I think it's important to remind people who are going to listen, to look at what we're doing, that in fact there's no leveling off, there's no minus or minus good. The fact that it's light is also work. And it's a job in itself, and it's a job for people who are experts and who have the know-how to make sure that it's a light job while still learning things, but still entertaining, even if it can no longer tell things about life, the life of a star or whatever, and that even serious subjects can be treated a little more lightly, but that's all know-how behind it and that there's no value judgement on this light, not light, light, serious side, because I find that this aspect of quality content...
The word quality can be very different depending on the person's objective. What you see, for example, at Harpers Bazaar, you were typically talking about possible SEO recos if we went digital. But at Harpers Bazaar, maybe if we go digital, there'll be an SEO who'll one day say no, this isn't quality content, I don't have enough of this keyword, whereas we feel that the work we've done is quality.
C.P.G.
It's interesting to work in a group where all the different areas of expertise work transversally with the brands. As a result, you don't have any business expertise, whether it's editorial, social networking or SEO, and you can't impose your choice on others. In other words, if I go and see Emmanuelle Paul and tell her that this subject is really very important, that there's really potential in the Harper's Bazaar target market, she might not use a classic eschiophrenic title, but she'll treat the subject with Harper's DN, and what's also quite interesting is that the editorial line isn't identical depending on the reading channel, i.e. you're not going to have exactly the same tone, or in any case, you're not going to be totally in the same communication, in the same department, if you're proposing an editorial strategy in magazine, if you're proposing it in digital, and if in digital, you're proposing it on your site content or if you're proposing it on a social network.
S.B.
All right!
C.P.G.
You don't have the same tone in Gala magazine or on TikTok, for example. You don't have the same tone on Femme Actuelle, digital, or with the Simone brand on social networks. So we also have the ability to develop this service according to the different brand communication channels. And so you also have a multitude of communication choices which must necessarily translate your ADL, but which can be translated differently depending on the channel you use.
S.B.
But I like the idea of saying that, in the end, the most important thing is to pass on the DNA, so that consumers, let's say consumers in the broadest sense, see who the brand is, what it wants to embody, what it embodies, but that doesn't prevent you from modulating the way you do things to better reach your audience in the end.
C.P.G.
Yeah, absolutely.
S.B.
Harpers, I think that someone who has the courage to take a 300-page magazine in their hands isn't necessarily in the same position as someone who scrolls through TikTok. I guess, because I don't know anything about TikTok, so I can't say.
C.P.G.
Exactly. And we're not addressing the same target. There's another Prisma magazine called Flow, which is really in this vein of saying let's take the time to read it, let's look at the pictures, let's look at the little descriptions, let's laugh when it's entertaining, let's be serious when we need to be. And we really do consume the magazine in several stages, coming back to it at different times in our lives. With digital, we're really in the moment. And there, we don't necessarily take the time. We're really in nibble mode. You know you're going to click on a news item because it's on a site you like, or you're not going to click on it because you know you're going to be bombarded with ads or they're going to ask you to pay to read the article. It's all very unpleasant. But you're really in the moment and nibbling at information, a bit like you need to feed yourself right now. So we're really not on the same life dynamic.
S.B.
But what makes the brand you choose to put on your coffee table, among all that, is that you really choose it. You see, there's a study by a Frenchman called Arnaud PĂȘtre, which came out in 2007, a study in the field of research, and which says that one person a day is exposed to 15,000 commercial stimuli. And even in 2007, we don't have TikTok, we don't have Instagram, we may have fewer ads, we don't have Discover either. So today, this trip, this figure, is certainly at least x10. But finally, among all this, all these exposures, either a commercial message, or a brand, an ad, a logo hanging out on, in a business, all that.
In fact, you still chose a magazine to put on your coffee table. In fact, you're affirming it, you're kind of positioning yourself in it. I see the same thing. I went into a decorating store, or at least a furniture store, and they handed me the catalog and said "here, you can put this on your coffee table, it's also decorative". I was encouraged to affirm the brand that was literally handed to me to put on my table, to say "Ah, that's a brand I like, I'm one of the people who buy that brand and I like that look. It's a bit like the syndrome if you're 50 and don't own a Rolex. It's the very social side of things.
C.P.G.
There was a bad buzz a while back about a reality TV personality who was extolling the virtues of buying empty books to hide magazines or whatever inside. And that made me laugh, because I thought to myself: there really are people who don't take responsibility for their reading to the point of buying empty books to hide them in. And what's quite interesting is that we, in the Prisma universe, are quite confident that with our subject proposals, we never really need to be hidden in an empty book.
S.B.
You're never ashamed. It's true that hiding something you read is... It's pretty special. But yeah, and I think that... I think it's interesting because you have this side where you want to... Okay, you buy a brand, you buy a magazine because you know that what the magazine is going to offer you is going to be interesting for you. You follow the information consumption pattern you want, so you either take your time or nibble, but in any case you know where you're going. And what's more, you feel so connected to this brand that you make it a bit of an identity thing. You want people to know that you read Harper's Bazaar, because you already know what it is, you read it, you show it off, you put it on the seat of your car without meaning to. But... - Don't do that, it'll turn yellow later. - But there you go. And then I think there's also this aspect where it's all the stronger because it's an object that you can put down and it can be consumed in different ways. You see, you were talking about discover, one discover I looked at the title, sometimes I've already consumed my discover in fact. Sometimes I click, okay that's fine, whereas this magazine you put down, you transform it afterwards. At first it's content, then you turn it into an object and it becomes a bit protean.
C.P.G.
Yeah, then you have appointments. You have magazines that you only buy when you take the train, when you go to the beach, when you have concooning parties, when you plan your vacations. You really do have magazines with important dates. I know that in your spare time, at Christmas time, there are appointments too. People think that there's almost always the same Christmas movies and so on. And so there's when I'll be able to see Les bronzés again, when they'll be showing Asterix and Cleopatra again. But you also have these notions of seasonal appointments where you buy your magazine at the time. And what's interesting is that you said, yes, we do have a difference in consumption. In the end, when you look at the people who choose their magazine, it's really a choice, i.e. they're already going to look at what's inside, they're already going to have leafed through it, and it's only once they've determined whether the magazine interests them, that they're really going to buy it to consume it. So there really is this notion of "try before you buy" that is developed at Relay, for example.
S.B.
Sampling. I take a sample before I buy. Which wouldn't be possible everywhere. You can't... In every shop, you... There are lots of things you can't eat beforehand. Theoretically, you can't eat 3-4 grapes before you buy the bunch. Well, yeah. That's stealing, lady. But reading a little isn't stealing.
C.P.G.
That's it.
S.B.
What's really great is that there's so much to say about this in general, because what's funny about brands, what I like about the notion of a brand, is that you take it, it has its own DNA that it wants to put across, but everyone does what they want with it afterwards.
C.P.G.
access to culture in French.
S.B.
You can also affirm a brand to hate it, to say this brand, I talk about it a lot, but because I hate it and I hate its values. And you can also... It can be linked to positive things as much as to very negative things, where... And that's... And that's where it's interesting, because you... You can do whatever you want, but you can't really control it in the end.
C.P.G.
There's always emotion and a notion of affect with a brand, whether it's positive or negative, although I hope it's more positive, because that's what generates the purchase. But there's always this notion of affect. And what's really interesting is that you get the impression that journalism is still journalism, and that the profession isn't changing much. And in fact, when you really get down to the nitty-gritty, you see that it's a profession that's changed completely. We don't have the same writing techniques, we don't have the same... even if we keep that DNA, the profession has evolved so much and we're making it evolve so much with tests of... ah bah you've got to write a little more with keywords in it, ah bah you've got to write on those subjects that interns want to read, that's what they have questions about. Ah well, you've created a hot article, but in fact, the coronation of Charles III, you need to make it live, because there are people who aren't in front of the TV, who don't particularly want to watch TV, but who want to have this chronological breakdown, and they want to see this information from where they are. So there really is this... this evolution in the profession with the different channels. In the same way, a journalist who develops video is not doing the same job as in the past, when he or she just made a video to illustrate an article. Today, this video is communicated on social networks, where it is consumed in other ways. And consumption isn't the same. If you're on Facebook, if you're on Instagram, if you're on Pinterest, if you're on TikTok.
It's really very, very broad, and I think it's a profession that still has a lot of room for development, and it's very enriching to work with journalists on the different themes, because I'm lucky enough to work on almost every theme in the world, but we still see a real enrichment in writing story scenarios, because let's not kid ourselves, Prisma is a media group that tells stories.
S.B.
Beautiful. I think we'll end there. Because it's getting a bit long for the people watching or listening to us. Who perhaps don't have all that time. Maybe I'll have to cut some extracts for them, to put them on TikTok, specifically for them. Maybe, we don't know. Maybe, thanks to you, I'll become a multinational media company.
C.P.G.
That's all I wish for you.
S.B.
I don't know if I have the energy. Anyway, thank you Charlotte, thank you very much for your time. And see you soon. You can find Charlotte on LinkedIn, but if you don't, from time to time, you can run into her at trade shows and conventions. She's very nice, so offer her coffee and chocolates.
C.P.G.
Oh doesn't have too much chocolate. Thanks to you.
S.B.
Not too much, not too much, not too much. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
