CANAL+ Africa continues its rapid expansion, and you have significant communication budgets to support this growth. What are your main priorities?
CANAL+ has indeed experienced significant growth in Africa in recent years, and communication is one of the key drivers supporting this growth.
CANAL+ has become a brand that is firmly rooted in the daily lives of Africans, with over 95% brand awareness and a very good brand image, particularly among the 10 million households already equipped with a CANAL decoder. Our priority is to continue to develop loyalty to the CANAL+ brand among both subscribers and future customers, and to make the brand increasingly accessible while remaining desirable and aspirational through the quality of the content we offer and our ability to innovate both in our products and in the way we communicate. This is reflected in our "Every day together" communication platform, launched over a year ago, which will take on even greater significance this year as CANAL+ celebrates its 30th anniversary in Africa.
Although we are among the top five advertisers in many countries, our communication budgets remain very controlled (less than 1.5% of our revenue). we rely mainly on partnerships with local or pan-African media such as France 24 or TV5, visibility on our own channels (our subscribers spend more than 60% of their time on our channels), and digital media, which allows for high ROI investments. Another key to our success is our organization, with an Africa division (led by Tristan Calas, Africa Manager in my team), which coordinates a team of experts at headquarters and 15 managers in Africa who are experts in their countries. This division is responsible for coordinating and implementing our communications strategy to ensure consistency of messaging, measuring the effectiveness of our actions, and creating synergies and pooling resources where possible.
How do you divide your advertising activities between subscription sales campaigns and promoting audiovisual programs or events?
The focus of our communications is to showcase the richness of our content, and we have many stories to tell around our key themes, such as sports, which are of course essential, but increasingly around our series, such as CANAL+ Original (e.g., the Mami Wata series, which was recently very successful), or our channels dedicated to education and youth, such as Nathan TV, which was launched a few months ago. But every time we talk about content, it's also an opportunity to remind people that the price of CANAL+ packages is getting lower and lower, or to support our major promotional campaigns at key times such as major sporting events or the end of the year.
When you communicate, do you have any preferred media? How are your budgets distributed among the different media?
Logically, as a content brand, TV accounts for more than 40% of our total visibility, largely driven by visibility on our own channels (CANAL+ channels, of course, but also channels such as A+, Nollywood TV, and Novelas, which have very high audiences in Africa) as well as on local channels with which we have significant partnerships. Digital is obviously becoming increasingly important and accounts for nearly 15% of our investments. Finally, billboards and radio remain key media for promoting our offers and promotions as part of our "drive to store" strategy, and we are also keen to innovate with these media to promote our content in different ways. For example, we have a partnership with the JC Decaux network, which provides premium quality billboards that are visible at night.
Similarly, how do you divide your investments between pan-African and national media? Are there any countries that are more commercially important to you and that are systematically used to complement pan-African initiatives?
Beyond our numerous partnerships, the vast majority of our investments are dedicated to national media (particularly TV and advertising networks), but increasingly also to non-media activations that allow for greater proximity and regional deployment.
The strength of our organization is that we run four to five major annual campaigns that are rolled out simultaneously in our 25 countries with the same key message, visible on our own media as well as in national media. In addition, each country runs campaigns dedicated to supporting local issues, whether in terms of sales promotion, country news, or CSR strategy, which is the most important aspect of our communications. It is therefore the complementarity of all these actions and our organization that makes the CANAL+ brand visible every day and at the heart of the news.
In terms of communication, how do you use digital technology? How much of your budget is invested in digital?
As mentioned, digital is an essential medium in paid strategy, particularly on social media, which is very effective in terms of coverage, but we achieve a very high level of organic reach through our community management strategy implemented in all our subsidiaries, in line with current trends. During the last Africa Cup of Nations, we saw how CANAL+'s Facebook pages were at the heart of the conversation! Finally, we are increasingly calling on influencers in our digital strategy because, beyond promoting our products or programs, this is part of our strategy to identify and promote talent and content creators in Africa.
You work with Havas, but are there other agencies you sometimes collaborate with? What are your most important selection criteria?
We do indeed work mainly with the Havas group, notably via the BETC agency, with whom we create our main pan-African campaigns, and the Havas agencies in Africa, which manage our media strategy and the creation of specific campaigns. We sometimes call on other agencies in Africa for specific expertise in certain markets, notably the Voice agency in Senegal, and more recently McCann Senegal, with whom we have just developed our campaign around our new app. CANAL+ is a brand whose DNA is creativity, so above all we look for good ideas that will help us tell our stories in the best possible way, both in terms of creation and media strategy.
You are launching the MyCanal app in Africa. What is your main objective and what resources are you putting in place?
Indeed, our big news at the moment is the launch of our new CANAL+ app in Africa. Launched a few months ago as a test, the new version of our app is now available free of charge to all our active subscribers, allowing them to watch all its content at home or on the move via their smartphone or tablet, with a rich catalog of 25,000 replayable content items and 200 live channels. Now it's impossible to miss your favorite game or series, even if there's a power outage or you're stuck on the bus or in traffic.
The app has been completely adapted to the constraints of the African market, with the option to consume content in "data light" mode to limit internet usage, or to download programs to watch offline.
This launch marks a new turning point in our strategy to position CANAL+ worldwide as an essential digital platform, with Africa at the heart of this strategy. To this end, we are launching a new campaign in 25 countries with the message "TV finally has its app," featuring commercials that humorously highlight different situations in which the app can be used, reflecting the daily lives of our subscribers!