WEBVTT

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I'm going to talk about transparency,
transparency in general,

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which could be transparency in philosophy,
in politics, or in technology.

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Transparency leads
to a certain serendipity.

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A distinctive serendipity.

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This serendipity is a weapon that can be
used practically anywhere on the Internet.

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It will destroy many
of the brands all around us,

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and it will destroy these brands,
as it attacks our imagination,

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because our imagination is the land
of the brands around us.

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I'm going to do a demonstration.

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Let's take an imaginary:

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Vermeer, a 17th century Baroque painter
we're all familiar with,

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and there we have a brand
that we're also familiar with.

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A very old one that is 41 years old.

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It has been with us for four decades.

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And now I'll show you how,
with a little imagination,

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we can destroy a brand.

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In reality, this is nothing else
but a food-processing giant

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that produces yogurt in a factory.

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That has nothing to do with art,
let alone with Vermeer.

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What I just did,

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and what will definitively make you wonder
every time you see a "La Laitière" ad,

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was a little thing many Internet users
already know about:

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every day on the Internet,

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these unexpected messages are hammered
into you in a serendipitous way

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so as to destroy brands.

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This summer, you probably didn't miss

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that reminder that all brands
have a political dimension.

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And don't listen to politicians
that will tell you

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that it's the fault of the Internet
or of social media.

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Politicians are the first to use
transparency to solve a critical problem:

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confidence.

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When an intense crisis of confidence hit
the French political world,

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the first thing they did
was to pass a law on transparency.

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It didn't really work, but politicians
forgot the dimension of transparency

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which is that transparency comes from
technological determinism.

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Transparency can also be used
by technology experts

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as a political response.

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You're familiar with Wiki-leaks,

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and it didn't escape you
that because of the Wiki-leaks affair,

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we no longer count on policy

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coming from transparency to impose
a reality and to destroy a lie.

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And it also didn't escape you

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that Wiki-leaks means
lots of internet users.

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These internet users
are called Anonymous.

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Anonymous is utterly fascinating

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because it's the first real
social movement of the 21st century.

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It's a movement distinctive
to the 21st century

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in the same way syndicalism
was distinctive to the 19th century,

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in the same way syndicalism was
distinctive to the Industrial Revolution,

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Anonymous is distinctive
to the digital revolution;

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And following the Wiki-leaks affair,

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the Anonymous were part
of all the big social protest movements,

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in the Arab world, here in France,
the United States, Berlin,

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in Paris, China, Istanbul,
or South America,

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Anonymous was in all the major events

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that touched populations,
until recently, in France.

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Anonymous is really interesting

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because it heralds the social debates
of the 21st century.

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And these debates
will oppose states, as we've seen,

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but also businesses,

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since Anonymous is already opposed
to a plethora of businesses.

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Here is one of the most well known cases.

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Four years before Sony was attacked
by Kim Jong-un and his formidable pirates

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(Laughter)

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four years before this sad episode

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that is easily worth as much as
Saddam Hussein and anthrax combined,

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Sony was attacked
by different kinds of enemies,

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in what was known as a digital Fukushima.

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Sony was attacked by Anonymous,

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helped by another
group of hackers, called LulzSec.

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And LulzSec followed
a very simple procedure:

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they took what used to be, at the time,
Sony's confidential information,

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such as credit card numbers,
user names, and passwords,

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and they made them public,
allowing endless pirating to happen.

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Users on PlayStation Network are like you.

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They always use
the same user name and password.

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Once I have your user name and password,

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I can access anything: the Amazon account,
your Paypal, your company's intranet.

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And if you work for the CIA,
this is a serious problem.

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This had dramatic consequences for Sony.

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Here we see Sony's share price
over a three-month period.

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First off we have Fukushima
- this took its toll on their share price-

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secondly, there was Anonymous.

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Thirdly, the arrival
of the infamous hacker group LulzSec

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who in a manner of speaking
instrumentalized Anonymous and the masses.

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Compare this to Nikkei, the equivalent
of CAC 40 in the Japanese market,

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and you'll see that, first of all,
Sony and Nikkei follow the same trends,

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and secondly, well, it all falls apart.

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After analysis,

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we see Sony has lost 3.5 billion
in its stock market value in this period,

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of which two thirds
are attributed to Anonymous.

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In the end,

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this digital Fukushima will cost Sony
1.7 times the real Fukushima.

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That's huge.

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And among the things
that deteriorated Sony's value,

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right off the bat
we have its brand, the Sony brand.

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So let's imagine that brands are valued
in the same way as companies

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in the stock exchange.

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A business's trademark is a part
of its worth in the stock market,

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especially when it is widely known.

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Today's problem is
that we are going back to a world

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where a company's brand
is its Achilles's heel.

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Not counting brands
that already have stock market value,

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there is an astronomical quantity of them

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whose prices can sometimes reach
ridiculous amounts.

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This year, Apple's value
has exceeded 100 billion dollars.

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If you take the 100 biggest
brands in the world,

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their total worth would be
2.9 trillion dollars:

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an enormous bubble.

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An enormous bubble
built on the relationship

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between brand equity
and confidence equity.

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This brand equity is calculated
somewhat scientifically,

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astonishingly enough,

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using the consistency

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between a company's practices
and the value their brand.

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And that's what will attack the masses.

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And they're going to attack
places we all know well:

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Facebook, Twitter, things like that.

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All of you have a Facebook account,
maybe a Twitter account, too.

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And maybe you've come across
this serendipity, two years ago,

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when the Rana Plaza
collapsed in Bangladesh,

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killing hundreds
of working women and children,

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and among the rubble and bodies
were found Benetton labels,

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highlighting the complete inconsistency

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between the values of the brand,
and the company's actions.

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The trademark disappeared.

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30 years of communication thrown away.

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You couldn't have missed this serendipity

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during the horse meat scandal.

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Again, the masses
are armed by serendipity.

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And in the Arab world,

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you couldn't have missed this serendipity,

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lasting all summer,

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that provoked a collapse
in Coca-Cola's market shares

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in the entire Arab world.

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Today's issue is
that businesses are becoming

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more and more attached to their brands
in a way that is inspired by Dorian Gray.

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On the one hand, we have a brand that is
public, beautiful, young, dynamic.

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On the other hand, a company

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that's rarely public, rarely young,
and rarely dynamic.

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On the one hand, we have values,
on the other, we have habits.

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On the one hand, we have a brand's imagery
on the other, we have reality.

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On the one hand, we have consumers,

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who are imagined abstractions
of publicity agents,

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and on the other,
we have citizens, you, me, all of us.

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Nobody here can be reduced
to a simple consumer,

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at least, not without a serious lobotomy.

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(Laughter)

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The issue we find ourselves in

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is that little by little, this barrier
between public and private,

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which we've all seen change with Facebook,
and the adolescents who use it,

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this barrier also exists for businesses.

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And little by little,

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the private domain of a business
is becoming more and more public.

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And under the impulse
of the crowd, little by little,

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the private workings
of the business will become public.

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Today marks the beginning
of a digital revolution,

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which will force brands to apprehend
transparency, without fighting against it,

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but understanding
and manipulating this transparency,

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and taking part of it, one way or another.

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The digital revolution will force brands

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to interact with the masses,
rather than put up with them.

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The digital revolution
will force trademarks

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to integrate this famous serendipity.

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To make it theirs, not to be victimized.

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And finally, the digital revolution
will force brands

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to share the imagery
which was once exclusively theirs.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)