Emily’s (in Paris) guidebook to Social Media Marketing
Marketing lessons from Netflix’s latest romedy
I binged Netflix’s latest favorite drama “Emily in Paris” last weekend. This series has 3 lead protagonist — Emily Cooper, Paris (both are evident from the Series name) but also Social Media. Emily’s success in Paris is mostly because of her Social Media skills. She is an ambitious GenZ who jumped at the opportunity of working in Paris. Her job was to build a Social media strategy for a small marketing agency in Paris. The series tries to portray Emily as an ambitious girl who has the skills but lacked cultural knowledge of Paris essential for building relationships and gain respect. And as she traverses the ups and downs of living in a new country, she takes her Instagram followers with her. She is authentic, relatable, and witty — a good recipe for social media popularity.
Since this is a fictional series, certain aspects of it may not be applicable. But it does give a good lens into a social media agency and influencer marketing world. It also gives some large companies small missing nuggets to plug in their current social strategy to bring back the creativity in this platform and gain greater engagement. Below are some key themes from the show which can be good tips to revitalize your social media strategy
1) Building Brands with Personality
In the series, her followers started growing after she moved to Paris. Is it all because of Paris, partially.. but my thoughts are, a change in her surroundings attempted her to share more on social media, making a colorful instagramable life story series. People in similar situations, or longing to be in one, inside or outside of Paris started relating to a young girl, in a new city, gaining new experiences, and building relationships inside and outside of the workplace. Her excitement, her sadness, her desires, and her pleasures all become relatable.
2) Social means Nimble and Agile
Do you relate to big companies having long processes to place a request just to post a social tile? Do you relate to the different rules and processes just to make a social post on official handles? But social media is best when it’s spontaneous, real, and opinionated. Emily in the series had these reactions and opinions aligned to brands. It rarely had some strategy, it was spontaneous and real.
I understand companies cannot be reckless with Social media as they have a brand to uphold and a strategy to execute. That’s where big brands can leverage socially active employees. While brands need to be careful about opinions and social stands but when employees have a voice on social media, brands should promote the voices they like. Since they are individual employees who are entitled to their own opinion, they can be quick and spontaneous. Eventually, those employees whose voice aligns with that of the brand then becomes the face of the brand.
3) Look for Influencers in your Fans
Emily is invited for a lunch hosted for Influencers by Duree Cosmetics. It was a realistic peek into a crowded world of influencers. Influencers have replaced traditional marketing agencies. It’s really hard for brands to find their influencers though. Emily with a growing follower base and a fan of Duree cosmetics wins the challenge and gets the opportunity to be the brand ambassador for Duree.
Your true Influencers are your fans and product users, who have original opinions about your products but it’s more important to love your brand vision and mission. It’s easy to find Influencers today as there are many upcoming and established professionals with a huge follower base. But sometimes it’s better to look at your upcoming fan base to select your influencers. They have grown with your brand and sometimes are in a better position to tell your stories.
4) Diversity brings Fresh Perspective
Emily has a fresh perspective on different brands. Part of it was because she came from an American culture trying to fit into European culture. She is sometimes blunt and other times witty, but is successful in pointing out the subtle but obvious differences. Her take on female body parts with male pronouns, her pun on fitness, or even her food experiences are subtle opinions but good posts to build followers and instigate discussions.
Companies need these fresh perspectives in their social media feeds. The increasing diversity of thoughts and cultures within a company’s social team easily gets the creative juices flowing and allows teams to give a new flavor to the same boring posts.
While Emily ‘gram’ was a good fun entertaining way of story telling but some of it may even be practical or motivating enough for marketing firms to go back and re-visit the strategy as we are gearing up to step in 2021.
