Jordan Times - april 2001 - Promotional group to optimize Web marketing
	The Star - march 15th 2001 ebizproduction launches business-oriented web site, multimedia CD on Jordan

Enter ebizproduction, the French specialist in new technologies, marketing and promotion which has recently come to conduct business in Jordan after a successful launch in Lebanon.

“Our core operations are web marketing and marketing solutions based on new technologies,” said Yann Rotil, partner and communications head at ebizproduction.

With specialised products like a multimedia business card, a unified website and a traditional book directory, ebizproduction wants to launch the First Jordan project and maximise the impact of new technology in marketing.

“The objective is to make First Jordan the most powerful communication and promotion tool for Jordanian companies, both on a local and international level,” reads a statement from the company.

Rotil tells the story of a Lebanese pharmaceutical company that had a well-designed and professional website but which no one visited. The counter for the site, indicating the number of visitors, read in the 70s, a ridiculously low figure for such an investment intended for promotion.

“If no one's looking at it then its' better to make brochures and mail them to specific customers,” Rotil told the client when he saw the clear failure of the Internet campaign.

Rotil explained, “everybody in the business community knows how to use e-mail and everyone has a website and that's a good thing, but it's better to have visitors to these sites.”

With such problems in mind, ebizproduction applied their expertise in bringing people to websites.

“The know-how for top-indexation and increasing the number of visitors on websites is our speciality. That doesn't exist in Jordan at the moment,” said Rotil.

By ensuring a priority with Internet search engines, ebizproduction clients appear within the first ten results amongst hundreds of thousands in an Internet search result.

The company has a knowledge of what the automated search programmes look for in the structure of a website and they provide this in their design. An obvious feature is the name of the project itself, www.1stjordan.net, a title that uses a numeral which appears first when searched for in an alphanumeric database.

There is also the innovation of the multimedia business card; a credit card shaped CD-Rom playable on any CD player.

As an interactive medium, the card is small, easily distributed and can hold up to 100 MB of capacity. The Lebanese project had a business card listing over 300 companies, all containing a company description, profile and contact details.

“The square CD is an attractive shape and maximises the marketing impact,” said Rotil.

The multimedia business card is actually a French invention which began in 1998, he explains. “At first the demand in France was low, but then it started to circulate for big companies and as people started to trust and learn about such CDs, the demand grew.”

Finally, the company provides a traditional book-based index of their client companies. “The book is still important because there is a generation of important decision makers who don't follow the new technology,” he said.

Both the book and multimedia business card will be distributed free of charge to decision makers in Jordan and abroad, says the company.

First Jordan won't be a simple compilation of Jordanian businesses, but a promotional cross-section of leading companies, explains Rotil. Divided into 40 areas of economic activity, the guide, both on-line, in the card and in a printed directory, will have a write-up of that sector, company contact details, descriptions and a listing of ongoing projects.

“We are selective in who is represented and want to maximise the feedback a company can expect in our project,” said Rotil.

During the Lebanese phase of the project, over 300 companies were signed as clients in six months. As for the Jordanian phase, 70 companies have already been recruited to the cause in the first three months.

With the second phase taking place, ebizproduction has plans to expand to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Ultimately, the first project website in each country will be grouped under the First Network Project. The company publishes information in English and French with plans for Arabic content in the near future.

“Even if a company doesn't have a website, we can design a small web-listing with the description and contact details of the company which can then be made available on-line and on the CD-Rom,” said Rotil.