How to adapt your prospecting to the new “Oui pub” regulations?

1. What is the “Oui pub” device?

The content of the “Ads yes” provision, and its objectives

“Oui pub” is an experimental device that emanates from the law of August 22, 2021 on the fight against climate change and strengthening resilience to its effects, known as the “Climate and Resilience Law”, whose measures are inspired by the proposals of the Citizens’ Climate Convention.

In concrete terms, the measure aims to fight against waste linked to printed advertising distributed in mailboxes (so-called “unaddressed” mail). Once the measure comes into force, advertisers will be prohibited from distributing catalogs and flyers in mailboxes that do not have the “Oui pub” sticker: in other words, a priori, practically none, because whoever would voluntarily choose to receive paper advertising?

The measure is justified, given the pollution and waste generated by this advertising format: in 2019, more than 894,000 tonnes of unaddressed printed advertising material was distributed, a large part of which is not read (study by the Ademe, “What conditions and what potential repercussions of a pilot operation yes to advertising at the scale of a community?”).

Experimentation and implementation planning of the device

Why does “Oui pub” go through an experimentation phase?

The experimentation phase will make it possible to measure many parameters, which once known, will make it possible to deploy the provision more effectively, and with more support on a national scale:
environmental impact
impact on employment
consumer behavior
reduction of community costs related to waste treatment

For the experimental phase, fifteen volunteer communities (out of 25 applications) were selected by Ademe and the Ministry for Ecological Transition, representing a population of 2.5 million inhabitants. Here is the list of the 15 communities selected for the “Oui pub” experiment:

• Grenoble Alpes Métropole (Auvergne Rhône-Alpes)
• Ardèche Drôme waste treatment union (Auvergne Rhône-Alpes)
• Intermunicipal association for the collection and treatment of household waste in Basse Ardèche (Auvergne Rhône-Alpes)
• Joint Intermunicipal Syndicate for the Collection and Treatment of Household Waste in the Pays de Fougères (Brittany)
• Syndicate for the Recovery of Waste from Corsica
• Troyes Champagne Metropolis (Great East)
• Metropolis of Greater Nancy (Great East)
• Urban community of Dunkirk Grand Littoral (Hauts-de-France)
• City of Sartrouville (Ile-de-France)
• City of Bordeaux (New Aquitaine)
• Mixed Intermunicipal Syndicate for Collection and Valorisation, Libournais Haute Gironde (New Aquitaine)
• Agglomeration of Agen (New Aquitaine)
• Ramonville Saint-Agne (Occitanie)
• Community of communes Ubaye Valley Serre-Ponçon (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur)
• Joint Syndicate for waste treatment and recovery, municipalities around Cannes (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur)

What is the schedule for implementing the “Oui pub” measure?

• April 30, 2022: start of the experiment in the 15 communities, with an information phase and organization of the test methods
• September 1, 2022: entry into force of the measure in the 15 selected French cities
• July 2024: Presentation of the results of the evaluation report to the Government (with integration of a comparative study of the environmental impact of print and digital advertising campaigns)
• January 1, 2025: End of the experiment (and potential national deployment)

On what indicators will the experiment be evaluated?

The experimental device will be evaluated on 4 levels, in order to take into consideration the impact on all the actors concerned:

• Environmental impact: discarded advertising materials, paper consumed, transfer to digital media, etc.
• Economic impact: reduction in costs for advertisers, impact on sales, reduction in waste management costs for communities, impact on jobs, etc.
• Behavioral impact: level of adoption of the “Oui pub” mention, transfer to other media, etc.
• Impact of understanding the measure: stakeholder involvement, citizen satisfaction, etc.

The impact of “Oui Pub” on the communication systems of retail chains

Since 2004, the rule in France was that of “Stop pub”: that is to say that mailboxes with the “stop pub” sticker did not receive printed matter without an address. The “Oui pub” measure therefore goes much further by reversing the principle: it now requires an active approach (an “opt in”, in fact) to receive these letters.

The impact will therefore be very significant for the brands for which this medium remained the main communication channel to generate traffic at the point of sale (apart from certain brands such as Franprix and Monoprix, which have already gone paperless). It will be a question of completely reviewing the local media mix to continue to remain visible and to generate traffic in stores, but via digital media or SMS.

Is this a bad thing for these advertisers? Probably not. For many of them, no estimate of the real impact of paper mail on drive-to-store had been made and unaddressed printed matter was therefore maintained, for “security”. But today, digital levers and SMS offer more guarantees in terms of measurement, and at a lower cost (ecological… and economical).

2. Beyond “Oui Pub”, a second factor of change: cost reduction

Covid-19 caused a slowdown in the economy, and paper pulp, like other raw materials, experienced a period of shortage, with production plants in the paper industry having been shut down. The level of production did not then follow the economic recovery. As international trade has also become greatly complicated, and the cost of energy has also increased, the increase in the cost of paper has been very significant. The Union de la Filière Papetière (Ufipa) thus estimated at the end of 2021 the increase in paper pulp at 60%.

Faced with this increase, many distributors had already questioned the relevance of unaddressed mail in the advertising mix, favoring digital and SMS.

3. Alternative levers to paper mail to generate point-of-sale traffic

SMS: an effective and sober lever

As we indicated in this article, the least CO2-emitting channel is SMS: 0.014g of CO2 emitted by SMS against 240g for a flyer. In addition, SMS is probably the most effective drive-to-store lever: today, 95% of SMS messages are read and generally within 3 minutes, and SMS makes it possible to refer to a link generating the route to the point of sale.

Dékuple offers a turnkey solution to reach your target in the catchment areas of your points of sale.

For BUT, the Dékuple Ingénierie Marketing agency and Converteo (Dékuple group) set up a catalog digitization test in order to stop printed catalogs and demonstrate the performance of digital channels and SMS, targeting catchment areas of ten stores. SMS proved to be the best performing channel in this test.

The digital levers of drive-to-store

• Facebook Ads: Facebook Ads Manager allows you to create targeted and geolocated ads through the “point of sale traffic” objective in order to boost physical visits.

• Google Ads: geolocated Google ads are one of the most effective levers, because they allow you to target Internet users in their search journey, on desktop or mobile. The campaigns are also very simple to create and directly exploit the network of points of sale registered via Google My Business. In addition, Google offers the possibility to measure the traffic generated at the point of sale and to exploit this conversion as a means of optimizing drive-to-store campaigns.

• Waze: The Waze application also offers an advertising format suitable for drive-to-store. Of course, Waze being mainly used in a situation of displacement, and generally by motorists, this is not always relevant (one does not go to his optician in an improvised way during a car trip!). But in the case of mass distribution, for example, the medium is interesting because it allows users to be reached on the move, potentially on the weekend or on vacation, and therefore looking for a place to do their shopping.

Track In The Shop, by Dékuple: a turnkey drive-to-store campaign offer with measurement of the traffic generated

It is important to measure the real impact of drive to store campaigns, and the attribution of each lever to the traffic generated. This is possible thanks to the identification of individuals going in the immediate vicinity of the point of sale and a cross-check (“matching”) with the targeted individuals, whether via digital media or direct marketing channels. This identification, to comply with the GDPR and the directives of the Cnil, requires the use of a trusted third party who will carry out the identification on the basis of a proprietary “identity graph”, and with anonymization of the individuals. a few seconds after their detection at the point of sale.