BrandWatch by Michel Gutsatz

A blog? Why?

In the course of my consulting activities , I often have to study various brands and try to understand their strategic choices with regard to customer expectations and behaviour.

This blog is, in fact, a notepad, where I offer to pursue, in the form of analyses, 'musts' and 'must nots', the destinies of various brands that exist in the world.

If you want to get in touch with me, please do so by mail [email protected] . 

Customer Co-creation: a Marketing Revolution ( + an application in perfumes)

Brandwatch resumes its posts with a new objective: share with its readers some fundamental issues of 21st century marketing and applying them to a real life case study - Le Jardin Retrouvé, the family niche perfume brand we are relaunching with a unique online business model. Twice a month I will post on topics like Customer Engagement, Choosing a digital supplier, Reinventing Direct Sales.. Today I have decided to discuss Customer Co-creation

I remember in 2000 saying to my boss, the CEO of Bally (I was then Global HR Director) that the future of luxury marketing would be in forms of customer co-creation. He told me I was wrong. Of course in 2000 he was right: luxury brands have always been built like oracles driving believers to their retail temples. But times have changed and customer co-creation is now (should be) on the agenda of marketers! Why?

Because competition has increased fiercely and new product development (NPD) has become - in all industries - a major issue: how can a brand be sure that the new products launched will be in line with customer expectations, customer needs, customer wants? How many products launched per year can be considered as successful (40%? 50%?) and how much money is spent on unsuccessful NPD? 

In fact for a new product to be successful two essential types of information are needed: (1) information about customer needs & expectations  (2) information on how to best answer these needs and expectations. The fundamental problem here is that customers have been changing rapidly (think Millenials! Think dwindling brand loyalty) - and that brands have insufficient knowledge about them. Traditional marketing (and luxury brands) considers customers as passive entities. Customers now consider themselves as active and relentlessly want to be known as a person and respected as such. What do they want? They want to share their ideas both with the brands they love and with their peers (brands do not imagine how much is said about them and their products out of their reach!).

The 21st century is also the time where creation is paramount: we glorify the creative process and customers want to be part of it. An increasing number of customers have become experts - they have acquired skills and knowledge that sometimes are superior to the brands' internal teams. And they share this knowledge and this expertise with like minded persons on the internet: never forget the internet is where people share passions.

Personalisation, expertise, communities: these are the 3 reasons why I think that customer co-creation is the new marketing paradigm of the 21st century (including luxury brands of course).

Now let's see how we can apply this to the perfume industry! This industry is highly competitive, with hundreds of new launches each year and no known formula for success (the standard business model being the 'tent pole': a successful perfume pays for the unsuccessful ones!).

The Le Jardin Retrouvé team has decided to apply their knowledge of the 21st century customer to rethink completely what a new perfume launch should be. Let me recap our current Perfume Revival Project in 5 phases:

1. Everything started when we found that my father, perfumer Yuri Gutsatz, had left us 2000 perfume formulas! His lifetime work. And that some of them were so modern we had no idea which to relaunch! (Business case: this is phenomenal added-value to the brand equity. No creation costs).
   
   
2. So we decided to rebuild 4 of them - and to offer to our brand community (and their friends, and friends of their friends) the possibility to be the ones that choose the one to be launched. We therefore produced 500 sets of the 4 perfumes in sample size sprays, targeting the perfume experts on Facebook - with whom we have been discussing for over a year. 
3. Personalization: We talk with each one, ask them to register on a special website www.perfumeparty.paris and send the 4 perfumes to them. (Our major finding: the more the relationship is personalized, the more the customer tends to register.)
4. They are now entering the voting phase: they will share these perfumes with their friends, groups will meet to smell the 4 fragrances and then each person will be able to vote. This is a perfect example of co-design where the brand offers to customers the products among which they will select the one they prefer (for a complete typology of Customer Co-creation see M.O'Hern & A.Rindfleisch: "Customer Co-creation: A Typology and Research Agenda", 2008). The voters are thus building a Le Jardin Retrouvé community around the choice of the new perfume to be launched.
5. The winner fragrance (or winners?) will be announced in May and all those that participated will have the possibility to pre-order this perfume in a Limited Edition version available 3 months ahead of the official launch.

 As a bonus you will find here our third teaser video - #PerfumeRevivalProject - Episode 3:

 

 

Le Jardin Retrouvé - the first ever niche perfume brand created by my father in 1975 - to be relaunched! (1)

For the first time on BrandWatch I have decided to talk about my family brand - and not about a reknowned global brand. Because we have decided to relaunch the brand created by my father in 1975: 7 perfumes created by my perfumer father will be available mid-october on our website www.lejardinretrouve.com. Time has come to present the brand, its roots and its new positioning - for the 21st century. This is the first of a series of 2 posts presenting this relaunch.

In 1975 - after having worked for 30 years at Roure Bertrand as a perfumer -or as he often told me as the "king's jester" for Louis Amic the Roure owner - my father Yuri Gutsatz decided to implement what he had been writing for years by creating the first ever niche perfume brand, Le Jardin Retrouvé ( a year before Jean Laporte's L'Artisan Parfumeur). He had been fighting for years in his perfume critics and in his columns the growing power of marketing, its crippling effect on perfume creation and he had been calling for perfumers to be reinstated as creators. In one of his famous papers "Perfumer, Your Name is Nobody" (a 1979 conference ) he noted that almost all the renowned perfume houses that created perfumes for all the perfume brands did not even list their perfumers in their personel!

He wanted Le Jardin Retrouvé to be the proof that one could market excellent perfumes, using the very best ingredients (that perfumers were not using anymore because of cost constraints) at accessible prices - without unecessary marketing costs, like advertising.

The brand was a true success in Europe, in the USA, in Japan. It was led like a small family business by my father and mother (she was in charge of marketing and sales) and was often talked about in the international press. Not wanting investors alongside them, they kept it small and it finally dwindled down to a handfull of fanatic customers that went on buying year after year.

What did Le Jardin Retrouvé bring to these faithful customers that others didn't? Whereas almost all perfume brands either tap into seduction (think how men are going to succumb to your sexy perfume) or into status (let me flout my Dior or my Chanel), this brand is only about comfort, affection and reassurance. It epitomizes the protective aura of a perfume.

We have kept these fundamental elements of the brand and we have tweaked them to be appealing to 2016 perfume customers. Three characteristics of the new business model must be highlighted - but only two presented today (!):

• Le Jardin Retrouvé will only be sold on internet: this is the best way to ensure that prices are kept accessible. This has led us to work with influencers worldwide. They are the journalists of today, they set the trends, they link us with our customers.
• Le Jardin Retrouvé has commissioned an artist, Clara Feder, to be its Creative Director and to create the packaging of its samples. She has brought the brand back to its original idea - the garden I return to. Her pictures (and the names of the perfumes, each a symbol of a garden) bring us back to the imaginary gardens of memory that we all have inside ourselves (and as you can see below Yuri Gutsatz's name is on the packaging).

  

I will present the third characteristic - the most disruptive ! - in my next post. Stay tuned! In the meantime those of you who are interested can go visit our temporary website at http://bit.ly/LJRSample and benefit from our exclusive offer of receiving 3 samples from our collection of 7 perfumes...

Tremors in the Fashion world: Latins vs. Anglo-Saxons

On 4th February, Burberry announced they were deploying what appears to be a real revolution in the world of fashion (see here the announcement on Business Of Fashion): the alignment of the dates of the fashion shows and those when any new collection would be available in their boutiques.
From September 2016 onwards the collections will be reduced to two each year, women's-wear and menswear shows will be merged and products will be available in boutiques at the same time. In the wake of this change, other brands announced their wish to align themselves on Burberry: Tommy Hilfiger, Tom Ford, Rebecca Minkoff, Vetements, Mulberry, etc. On 24th February, Ralph Toledano, chairman of the French Ready-to-wear Couture and Fashion Designers Federation announced that it would change nothing in their current schedule, followed very quickly by Gucci and all the Kering brands.
Christopher Bailey, Managing and Creative Director of Burberry, legitimates this choice by a desire to bring the brand closer to its clients: he does not see why products should not be immediately available or why fashion should continue to distinguish between autumn/winter and spring/summer when fashion is global (and relates to both hemispheres). Ultimately, according to him, all this requires only an optimization of the supply chain: "When you break it all down, it's just a shift in your supply chain - that's the crunch". I also think that he could have cited the lower costs that such a decision implies, especially at a time when Burberry's results are lagging (in the first 6 months of 2015: Sales and earnings stable / decline in licenses 13%).
But in reality, it is something else altogether: we are witnessing the great comeback of luxury and a redefinition of the conflict Italy & France v. the Anglo-Saxons.
"We have designers, retailers, and everybody complaining about the shows. Something's not right anymore because of social media, people are confused," said Diane Furstenberg, president of the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) announcing they were considering the eventuality of a "See Now, Buy Now" Fashion Week.  It is indeed an American initiative, presented as one being made under the pressure of social media and consumers. This is a crucial point: one has only to recall, for example, that during the last fashion show Tommy Hilfiger set up an "Instapit": In addition to the space reserved for professional photographers, Tommy Hilfiger organised a space for instagrammers, to allow them to take photographs of the show under the best possible conditions and publish them live on Instagram (see here) and US shows are now often open to the public (albeit with an entrance fee). American Fashion shows are now organised as democratised "entertainment".
The reactions of the luxury brands (in Paris and Milan) – which project themselves as "creation driven" – relegate the image of American brands to one of being "marketing driven": it gives them a unique opportunity to reaffirm their status as luxury brands, practicing real rarity management.  And thereby to conclusively distinguish themselves from the American brands (and Burberry) often projected as affordable luxury. We are therefore seeing a general repositioning of brands within the luxury sector.
But this does not imply an inflexible position on an immovable model on their part. Prada makes two models of the bags it presents in its shows available immediately in its boutiques. And Karl Lagerfeld reveals (on BoF) that Chanel's organization is far more subtle than one imagines: "Chanel makes six collections per year, but I make already one — the capsule — that is not shown to the press, to nobody. The day it comes out is the day the stores get a document. Now I want to do something else — perhaps it's too early to talk about it — to make a special collection only for the [Internet]. Fifteen things, you buy them and you get them immediately." A vision that is much more sophisticated than the "See Now, Buy Now".

Nike: How to become a Visionary Brand (1)

Let us continue our analysis of Nike that we started last week when we looked at the birth of the brand (Nike: Birth of a brand): how a brand of sports shoes, built up from the outset as an Expert Brand (one that knows athletes best, as it said on the first shoeboxes: "Nike sports shoes are manufactured to the exact specifications of champion athletes throughout the world") became a Visionary Brand from the late 80's.

To find the answer, it is worth studying a chart: the evolutions in Nike and Reebok sales between 1980 and 1995. Why Reebok? Because Nike completely missed out in the "aerobics" movement that emerged in the US in the early 80's. Locked in their purist and rigid idea of sports and athletes, Nike executives regarded this movement as dancing, only requiring casual wear: For them, aerobics was not a sport. They were reluctant to enter the "sissy fashion" market. Reebok - a company in total disarray at the time - quickly grasped the interest of this market and capitalised on it very quickly – in particular with the launch of an elegant model (the 'Freestyle'), stylish, supple and comfortable – and white. Within the space of five years (1986) Reebok overtook Nike in the sports shoes market.






But we see that Reebok's dominance was short-lived: in 1990 Nike took over the top spot in the US market and then widened the gap. How does one explain this new domination?
Of course there was the 'Air' technology, the arrival of Michael Jordan (late 1984) and the launch of Air Jordan. But stopping short at a single product, innovation or athlete was not enough. The real revolution came through advertising - but it took several years to truly achieve it.
In 1983 Nike launched the first advertising campaign for a sports shoe brand on television in anticipation of the 1984 Olympic games in Los Angeles ... but without displaying a single product. The reason was simple: none of the Nike products was truly competitive. It was decided (with Chiat/Day, Apple's ad agency) to feature the athletes - Carl Lewis, John McEnroe, Mary Decker, and others.

But this initial effort was not enough: in 1984 Nike laid off 400 people, about 10% of its employees. Then 500 people again in December 1986. And the rise of Reebok continued.
The real accelerator was the meeting with the Wieden & Kennedy agency in 1987. Legend has it that Phil Knight, during his first meeting with Dan Wieden, said to him: "I'm Phil Knight and I hate advertising".

We'll see next week how the work of this agency transformed Nike into a Visionary Brand – building on the values of the brand ​​and giving them a strong cultural dimension (the ad 'There is no finish line' shown above dates back to 1972 - all the values ​​of the brand are already depicted here).

Nike: Birth of a Brand

Nike is now a global brand with a turnover of $ 28.7 billion in 2015. It was on the 18th of June 1971 that the first Nike shoes went on the market in the four shops under the banner 'Blue Ribbon Sports'. The turnover in 1972 was slightly under 2 million. But as the first annual report post IPO in 1981 stated - the year when sales reached $ 458 million: "Since that time, revenues have grown at a compound annual rate of approximately 85%, while net income has grown at nearly 100% per year". Why was an unknown brand able to become the world's first sports brand - demoting Adidas that dominated the sports world in 1972 far behind?

Two books tracing the first twenty years of the trademark help us to better understand how Nike was constructed as a brand: "Swoosh: the Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There" (J. B. Strasser & L. Becklund, Harper Business, 1991) and "Out of Nowhere - The Inside Story of How Nike Marketed the Culture of Running" (G. Hollister, Meyer & Meyer Sport, 2008).

From the outset two elements appear as fundamental:

1. A tribe: that of middle-distance and long-distance runners from US universities. It was around one of the most famous teams - the University of Oregon, coached by Bill Bowerman - that the core of the original company BRS was constructed. The company recruited only athletes or former university runners - who understood what runners needed, and sold the shoes directly to the athletes and their coaches. "BRS was a company run by athletes, for athletes". The shared culture within this 'tribe' enabled the brand to "adhere" as close as possible to the expectations of its consumers. Knowing the customer / consumer had therefore been Nike's strength from the outset.
2. The pursuit of performance through the product: a permanent tinkering to make the shoes better - often to the detriment of quality.

The same approach was then developed when the brand (very quickly) tackled other sports: tennis and basketball. Nike developed through the penetration of the sports world and the search for promising young athletes. In tennis, by sponsoring Ilie Nastase and John McEnroe - the two "bad boys" of the circuit. In basketball, by sponsoring the coaches of the university teams (and supplying their teams with shoes). But running remained its core business for a long time - thanks to a fundamental cultural movement that turned Americans into runners: Jogging. Jogging had become a means of keeping fit, and Bill Bowerman had been one of its pioneers since 1963, by proclaiming its health benefits. Nike thus benefited from a double movement that allowed it to grow strongly in the 70's: the conjunction of athletes (runners) and the social and cultural movement of jogging - which enabled the brand to break out of the athlete circle. At the heart of both there was one man: Bill Bowerman. Nike's fantastic growth between 1972 and 1981 therefore was driven by a dual cultural engine: an internal culture (that of distance and middle distance runners) and an external Culture (jogging and fitness).

Mobile payment: the revolution comes from China

WeChat has just launched its 'Wallet' - on a model very close to that already offered by Alipay, the mobile payment app from Alibaba.What does it consist of?  A real revolution – when compared to mobile payment methods available in Europe and the US.
Firstly, you find the usual mobile payment functions - credit cards, a wallet topped up by credit card and the option allowing you to make a quick payment using this wallet. This last function, 'Quick Pay' is new: it generates a QR code that can be scanned by the vendor thus allowing you to pay for the purchase.

 

Then there is a section "Powered by Tencent" (Tencent is the parent company of WeChat, Alibaba's strongest competitor in digital) regrouping 10 apps developed by Tencent:

• 'Transfer' - Transfers money from the 'wallet' to any of your contacts on WeChat.
• 'Mobile Top Up' - Replaces prepaid telephone cards.
• 'Wealth' - Invests your money by clicking on the offers whose returns are displayed and guaranteed.
• 'Buy-QQ Coins' - A virtual currency used in online games.
• 'Utilities' – To pay telephone, gas, water and electricity bills.
• 'Public Services' - To access public services (different in each city) such as: making doctors' appointments / paying fines / display of information about air quality / incidents, displays the traffic situation via road cameras, etc.
• 'Card Repay' - To send money to cover overdrafts on credit cards and avoid bank charges.
• 'Red Packet' – Concretises the Chinese tradition of 'Red Envelopes' when you wish to make gifts to relatives or employees.
• 'Go Dutch' – To share a restaurant bill with friends.
• 'Tencent Charity' - To make donations to philanthropic organizations linked to Tencent.

Illustrated below, is how one makes an appointment with a doctor using the app:

And investment offerings proposed daily:

You can also access 5 other functions outside Tencent:

• 'Order Taxi' - To order a taxi - via the joint Tencent and Alibaba app DidiKuaidi.
• 'Rail & Flights' - To order train and plane tickets.
• 'Specials' - This function accesses the e-commerce site JD.com and finds offers at preferential prices.
• 'Movie Tickets' - To buy cinema tickets.
• 'Group Buy' - To make bulk purchases at bargain prices.

If one word could sum up the Chinese mobile payment approach, it is: INTEGRATION. You have within your 'messenger' (think Facebook or WhatsApp Messenger) all payment functions that so far have been available on as many different apps (that of your bank, your electricity supplier, your telephone company, your favourite taxi or VTC service, etc.). So rather than juggling 10 or even 15 different apps, WeChat offers all these facilities in one place, a place where the Chinese spend the most time each day: the private social network. An extraordinary example of work conceived to solve the concerns of the consumer who seeks, above all, 'convenience' and 'user-friendliness'. The future of digital is being prepared in China.

Naming: AccorHotels Arena – what is it?

Paris has a multi-sports complex at its eastern entrance that was built 30 years ago - the Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy. It has just been renovated and the landlord, the City of Paris, has just given it a new name: AccorHotels Arena. The Accor hotel chain acquired a 10-year 'naming' right over it. I propose an analysis of this strategy: Will it be advantageous to Accor?

Let us look at it from two angles:

1. The coherence between the site and the brand - if the sponsor's sector is directly related to that of the site (in this case, sports), the brand will come out a winner. Many insurance companies (for example, Allianz in Nice and Munich, MMA in Le Mans) have invested the sports domain - believing that there is a direct link between practicing a sport and sports insurance. Will not the first reaction of those visiting the Arena be, 'Oh, here's a new hotel!' What relationship is there between sports and the hotel industry?
2. The public's practice of giving their own diminutives to such buildings – in other words, the name by which they are familiarly known. Since 1984 this complex has had two different names:

• Its 'administrative' name, POPB, which is the acronym of its official name;
• The name it is commonly known by: most people call it simply 'Bercy'.

We see in this a two-step move towards simplification: On the one hand, from the Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy (much too long) to POPB (unpronounceable), and on the other, to 'Bercy'. The public thus gave it a short and simple moniker that also indicates its geographical location. What will be the diminutive of Accor Hotels Arena? The answer is clear – either 'Arena' or 'Bercy'. In all evidence 'Accor Hotels' will simply fall by the wayside and people will pick the simplest name.  

What can we conclude from this? In both cases, the name is ambiguous (is it a hotel? What name should one retain?), compounded by the large logo where the hotel's name takes precedence over the name of the site (Arena). Could there have been another choice? Yes, of course: it would have been much more elegant and effective to call it ARENA by ACCORHOTELS.

Hyundai enters the luxury segment (!): The real story

Hyundai has just announced the creation of a luxury brand, Genesis - whose first two models had until now been marketed under the Hyundai brand: Genesis and Equus. Hyundai here is merely following the business model introduced long ago by Toyota (with Lexus) and Nissan (with Infiniti) and more recently by Citroen (with DS). Japanese brands realised long ago that it is impossible to develop a medium-end brand into a premium or luxury brand: Consumers have a definite concept of car brands and they clearly distinguish the mass market from the premium. This latter segment has been defined and invested by German brands (Mercedes, BMW and Audi) - and it is practically impossible to access it from the lower rungs. Renault lost a lot of money in a vain attempt to develop its brand into high-end sedans (remember the Avantime and the Vel Satis).

However the Hyundai approach is far from being as clear as it claims! "Hyundai did such a good job in executing its Genesis sports sedan and Equus luxury model and subsequent treatment of their owners that the brand had no choice but to spin off its own premium brand", says Michael O'Brien, VP of Corporate and product planning Hyundai America. But this is merely an idealized rewriting a posteriori of the real story.

Hyundai has always been positioned as an entry-level brand. Much work had been done on the design of the cars since 2007 (introduction of the concept of 'fluidic sculpture'), which enabled the brand to position itself at the entry-level end of the medium-end segment with models like Elantra (from $ 14,000 in the US market in 2010) and Sonata (from $ 19,000). Its new design had given the brand an undeniable appeal to Generation Y – in particular when compared to American brands. The consequence was that the brand outperformed the US market by an average of 10% until 2011. Since 2012 however the trend has clearly reversed, Hyundai underperforming in the US market by about 5%. What is this due to?

In 2008 the US subsidiary brought out a strategic document according to which there was a "perception gap" between perceived quality and the actual quality of the brand - and that its perceived low quality "stigmatized" it. It deduced from this that Hyundai had to reposition itself and move up to the luxury segment - and decided to launch two new Genesis models (prices starting at $ 38,000) and Equus (prices starting at $ 58,000). The brand – with a good mid-range image – was torn between the $ 14,000 models and the models over $ 60,000! Consumers no longer understand the brand and move away.

The decision to create a new premium brand is the consequence of this major strategic mistake: One cannot manoeuvre such a move to the upmarket segment except by losing one's customers. Hyundai was thus obliged to create Genesis and market the two models in question under this brand name. Hopefully this wise decision will be positive and that the two brands will be able to develop, each within its own segment.

Dove: how does one become a visionary brand?

One of the key chapters of my new book 'Brand Dynamics' (written with Jane Wang, a professor at CEIBS, which will be published by Palgrave McMillan end 2016) relates to the construction of a brand over time. All brands aspire to become a Visionary Brand - conveying a 'vision of the world'. We show that this is, in reality, the result of a long process - and we illustrate it with the Dove example.

Dove was launched in 1955 by Lever Brothers, with a single product: a soap. 25% of the formula of the soap consisted of a new ingredient - stearic acid – in other words, a cleansing cream. Dove was launched as a 'beauty bar' that moisturises the skin ("creams the skin") and not as a soap ("does not dry like soap").

Dove was thus unmistakably launched as a Performance Brand ("Creams your Skin" - which changed over time to "moisturises"). In the first film the miracle ingredient is strongly highlighted: the brand is as much an Ingredient Brand.

For 20 years the same message was repeated, but a major innovation took place in the 70s: the brand asked clients to relate their experiences to promote the benefits of its 'Beauty Bar'.

These testimonials grew - and gradually incorporated the idea that using the products of the brand that make them more beautiful enhances femininity and self-esteem.

The brand thus acquired a core element of its identity: the proximity to real women. Thus when Dove launched its "Campaign for Real Beauty" in 2004 it stayed true to its values. It merely recognised that the representation of female beauty had evolved: a social norm of beauty had been established. Dove therefore chose to draw on its values ​​(we help real women to build their self-esteem) to put forward the idea that every woman can be beautiful (without seeking to conform at all costs to this social standard).

The 'Sketches' Campaign (2013) is therefore consistent with the brand's values, its history AND showcasing of a contemporary vision of beauty. The Dove storytelling is now that of a true vision of the world: the brand's mission is to help each woman build her self-esteem.

Dove thus evolved over the last 50 years from an Ingredient Brand + Performance Brand to a Visionary Brand.

Modernity is English

Both on BrandWatch and in my MBA and Executive MBA courses, I keep repeating that a brand in this 21st century cannot build itself unless it places the consumer at the centre of its strategy. By this I mean that a brand must, above all, think like the customer ("put yourself in your customers' shoes!").

The brand concept would also apply to a territory: the brand FRANCE is a brand just as is the brand GREAT BRITAIN, brand PARIS or the brand LONDON.  So, if they wish to construct a brand, each of these territories has to walk a mile in their clients' shoes. But do they really? For brand FRANCE and brand PARIS the answer is an emphatic "NO!" when one compares them to brands LONDON and GREAT BRITAIN.
On a recent trip to London, in August, I experienced first hand how far ahead GREAT BRITAIN / LONDON are of France / Paris where service is concerned. Here are three significant examples - showing that to be customer-oriented one has to first think like the customer and attune the steps of the process to those of the customer.

Case 1: The customer wishes to enter the country without having to stand in a long queue
LONDON / GB: When I reached Stansted I saw signboards as I stepped out of the plane informing all travellers from the European Union, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein who possess biometric passports that they could use the 'ePassport Gates' for passport verification and exit. The procedure is quick and simple and allows you to enter the country within minutes: the passport is scanned and the gate opens automatically. There are 15 gates in Stansted.

FRANCE / PARIS:  There is also a similar system at French airports called PARAFE, but it is reserved exclusively for French biometric passport holders.  Besides, there is generally only one, or at the most two, Parafe entrance gates. Enough said.



Case 2: The customer wishes to pay for his taxi with his credit card
LONDON: I take a typical black English taxi in which I find (similar to those in the yellow New York cabs) a card-payment device in front of me, behind the driver, with a sign saying all credit cards are accepted (including American Express).

PARIS: Other than the G7 taxis that generally accept credit cards, most other Parisian taxis refuse payment with a credit card (and, out of decency, I shall not repeat here the drivers' comments regarding the American Express card!).



Case 3: the customer wishes to find a parking space (and also pay for it)
LONDON: Several signboards put up on public roads tell the driver that he can download the free app, ParkRight, that shows him all the parking places that are available in the area: private and public car parks, residential parking lots AND even in the street! In fact 3,000 sensors have been installed across the city to show in real time where parking space is available in the area. It goes without saying that the customer can also pay for his parking using the app.