Cultivating innovation

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The Lagardère group once again demonstrated its ability to renew itself and propose innovative solutions in 2010. Specifically, Lagardère fully embraced the digital revolution, a source of opportunity for all four of the Group's divisions.

Innovation at the Lagardère group

Print on demand: launch of Lightning Source France

In late 2009, Lagardère Publishing and Lightning Source formed a joint venture to set up a print-on-demand book service for the French market. Operating from Hachette Livre's book distribution centre in Maurepas, our unit has been up and running since May 2010.
Print-on-demand is based on digital technology that is capable of printing one to several hundred copies of a book to normal quality standards within hours of an order being received. This means that publishers no longer have to keep titles in stock, since books can be printed at any time. Our services are available to the Group's publishers, as well as to publishers distributed by Hachette Livre Distribution, and there are plans to extend the service to all publishers in 2012. We also have a number of other projects underway. For example, we will soon embark on the task of printing nearly 15,000 books stored in digital format in the Gallica digital library of the French National Library (BnF).

Grégory Laurent
Director of Lightning Source France

• For more information www.lightningsource.fr

Be, a new global media brand

In March 2011, we celebrated the first anniversary of Be, our 360° media brand targeted at women between the ages of 20 and 35. This adventure is part of the brand management approach developed by Lagardère Active. It consists in focusing on marketing segments in which our division holds a leadership position through the deployment of a particular brand over a wide range of platformsand media - a feat of which few other media groups are capable.
Be is available in the form of a weekly magazine with a paid circulation of more than 170,000 copies. We have also developed a website - Be.com -, which has an active following of nearly 122,000 registered users, as well as an iPhone application, which has been downloaded over 70,000 times. There is even a weekly 26-minute ‘Be' TV series aired on the June channel and on Be.com, along with a web radio station dedicated to the brand.

Nathalie Beguinot
Be Brand Manager

• For more information www.be.com

HDS Retail North America wins Best Store Design award

HDS Retail North America was the recipient of the 2010 Best Store Design award for its USA Today Travel Zone sales outlet at the Indianapolis International Airport.
This award was sponsored by the Airport Revenue News journal, the main North American trade publication covering the airport concessions sector.
Our store's design offers travellers a friendly and comfortable setting for shopping. We also offer customers a convenient and informative environment in which they can recharge their electronic devices and keep up with the latest news and information on a television screen.
The Airport Revenue News award - the first ever awarded to HDS Retail North America - is the result of our teams' efforts to create a unique, contemporary environment. It establishes our company as a leader in retail design.

Gerry Savaria
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of HDS RNA

• For more information www.hdsrna.com

IEC in Sports and Dailymotion open a new window on athletics

IEC in Sports and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) initiated a pioneering partnership with Dailymotion for the 2010 IAAF World Indoor Championships held in Doha, Qatar in March 2010. For the first time in the history of athletics, the general public was able to watch the competition both live and on demand (VoD). The entire championship was broadcast by our partner, which held the exclusive broadcasting rights for those countries in which the TV broadcasters were not the rights holders. However, in countries in which the broadcaster had acquired these rights, Dailymotion constituted a complementary offer.
This innovative partnership demonstrates the growing importance of the digital media in covering sporting events. It also demonstrates our capacity for innovation by bringing athletics to new distribution platforms.

Jonas Persson
Chief Executive Officer of IEC in Sports

• For more information www.iec.se

The offers developed by the divisions for digital tablet devices

The launch of the iPad touch tablet from Apple has met with phenomenal success from consumers worldwide.
For publishing and media professionals, the iPad - along with tablet devices in general - offers many new publishing and economic opportunities. In keeping with its reputation as a pioneer, the Lagardère group is developing a range of products and services specifically targeted at this new platform.

A rich and diversified offer

Since the iPad's global launch in April 2010, Lagardère Publishing has successfully positioned itself on this market with a range of thousands of English and French books that can be downloaded from the online Apple Store.
Lagardère Publishing also markets such applications as Bescherelle, le dictionnaire des synonymes (a dictionary of French synonyms), Le guide du routard travel guides, a cooking course titled Mon cours de cuisine (published by Marabout) and an illustrated French dictionary (Le Dictionnaire Hachette Illustré). In addition, Numilog has launched an e-reading application in partnership with a number of French booksellers. The emergence of tablet devices makes it possible to reach new categories of readers and also enrich books with music, photos and video. Moreover, this platform is expected to contribute to the development of the digital book market.

New opportunities for brands

After pioneering the Paris Match application, which came out right after the release of the iPad in the United States, Lagardère Active is now making a number of its leading brands available in digital format. The content of the magazine, Paris Match, was enriched with exclusive videos and a soundtrack to add a new dimension to the news. The ELLE à Table application offers magazine readers a true sensory experience of the culinary arts through original stories revealing the secrets of well-known master chefs. And it is slated to be enriched soon with new content and services. The Gulli application allows the whole family to watch the programming of the leading French children's channel, free of charge, either live or via replay. In addition, the division recently launched an application for the weekly Sunday newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche.

Over 400 magazines available for download at the Relay Kiosk

HDS Digital, a Lagardère Services subsidiary, is the European pioneer in print-media downloads with the 2006 launch of the "Kiosque numérique" (the Digital Kiosk) on the Relay.com website, which registered 2.5 million downloads in 2010. The company has been pursuing a single objective since it was founded: to simplify the reading of digital magazines and make them as accessible as possible to the greatest number of people.
In this perspective, HDS Digital has developed a free application for the iPad - the "Kiosque Relay" (the Relay Kiosk) - which enables users to download and archive over 400 French magazines in a digital library. Items can be purchased individually or by subscription, just as on the Relay.com website.
The application is also available for Samsung's Galaxy Tab.

• For more information www.relay.com

Sports-oriented applications 

Pr Event, a subsidiary of Lagardère Unlimited, has launched an application that enables users to watch tennis matches live during such tournaments as the IF Stockholm Open (ATP), the Skistar Swedish Open (ATP) or the Collector Swedish Open (WTA).
Sportfive, another of the division's subsidiaries, has also developed applications for certain clubs competing in the German Football Championship, including two games: one for Borussia Dortmund and one for Hamburger SV (in partnership with Sportainment). It has also released the official application for Hertha BSC Berlin (in partnership with Motain). This application provides general information about the club, a ticketing service and allows users to watch matches live.