The first edition of Creative Lab Europe marked in September its two stops in Germany and Austria, where participants shared their projects with local prospects. We take a look back at this mission with Solène Jimenez, head of international business development at Arenametrix.

What better way to understand the trends of a market than to go directly there? This is the opportunity that companies the Creative Lab Europe mission had last September with an immersion in Germany and Austria, between Düsseldorf and Vienna. Organized by Business France with the support of Bpifrance, the program supports the innovative cultural and creative industries of the French Touch to accelerate their internationalization. Among the participants, Arenametrix wishes to extend to other countries its ambitions, unchanged since its launch in 2015: to bring together on a single platform the data of clients of cultural structures in order to better understand their audience to better meet their expectations.

The company, already present in the Benelux and the United Kingdom, was already planning to turn a little more towards Eastern Europe. " Creative Lab Europe has arrived at the right time for us. The mission allowed us to see what we could reuse and what we had to change from our strategy in Benelux to go to Germany and Austria », Explains Solène Jimenez, responsible for international business development. To identify these opportunities, the representative ofArenametrix was able to test the interest of local prospects during pitches. " These are things we could have done on our own, but it would have taken much longer ».

La French Touch, an avant-garde in tech

While the cultural and creative industries play a strategic role across the Rhine - 1 in 10 companies came from Austria in 2020, while they employ 1,2 million people in Germany in 2018 - their digitalization remains a key issue. " I had the feeling that France was ahead on this subject », Admits Solène Jimenez. A particularity that she specifies " specific to centralization and data analysis ". Behind this potential delay, Solène Jimenez evokes the culture of the countries and a different vision of data processing, a detail that she was able to understand once there. " The issue of data protection is very sensitive. GDPR is the same since it is a European regulation, but it is not perceived in the same way. […] There is a real reluctance to set up projects on data analysis ". However, this did not slow down Arenametrix, which was able to take advantage of its qualified meetings to reassure its potential partners and which sees the opportunity to develop in a still little exploited branch.

French companies can count on the digital turn that cultural establishments are gradually taking. As in many other countries, the Covid-19 has indeed " accelerated understanding of the challenges of digitization »In Germany and Austria. Berlin and Vienna also affirm their support for players in the cultural and creative industries following the health crisis. In March 2021, through its Neustart Kultur recovery plan, the German government deployed 50 million euros to encourage the sector.

Bringing together La French Touch companies with Creative Lab Europe

While Creative Lab Europe brings together local prospects and French companies, the mission also allows French start-ups in the cultural sector to meet. Although their targets are the same, the different solutions they offer erase all competition. " We continue to send us interesting news and contacts »Says Solène Jimenez with a smile. " These are all kinds of relationships that have been set up informally, which allow synergies in the fields of digital and culture. ».

The manager nonetheless emphasizes the importance of knowing a minimum of the target market before embarking on the mission: " It is better to participate in this type of meeting when it is in a market in which we have already spent time, and on which we can then make resonate the meetings that we have had ". The company is therefore taking its time to expand internationally: while Canada is one of its future goals, it has chosen not to participate in Creative Lab North America this November to focus on its new opportunities abroad. Rhine. The Creative Lab Europe is already meeting in 2022 for a new edition in Austria and Switzerland.