Social media marketing tips from Netflix’s Emily in Paris
Any thin, white woman dressed from the Sex and the City closet would go viral. But what if you aren’t all that?
In Netflix’s Emily in Paris, American marketing executive Emily Cooper is seconded to Paris to work at the luxury marketing firm, Savoir. The traditional operation is in dire need of a turnaround, and Emily, overflowing with New York enthusiasm, prefers to stab them with a social media syringe rather than hook them up to a slow releasing IV.
Her strategy is appropriate – Savoir is in a desperate state. It is unfathomable that a luxury marketing firm is asking the “What good is social media?” question, which has been answered in practice every day for the past decade.
Indeed, if the borders weren’t closed and we were wearing anything but loungewear, we might have turned Emily in Paris off after yet another cliche about the French reluctance to join the modern world – inside and outside the office. But timing is everything.
The show seized the moment for viewers in a locked-down world unable to travel – and who are creating an e-commerce boom that demands the kind of online marketing Emily offers.
It’s a definite change of pace from the doomsday portrayal of social media in The Social Dilemma documentary or in the dystopian series Black Mirror, and that’s needed.
For everything that is true of the dark side of social media in The Social Dilemma, Emily in Paris shows everything that is true and possible of the best of Instagram and more. In fact, the show is a series of examples about leveraging savvy social media campaigns to transform any marketing disaster into a triumph.
At an e-commerce summit run by The Australian last week, experts argued that COVID-19 has flipped us up to five years into the future when it comes to buying and selling online: the role of social media strategies in brand performance is more crucial than ever. Both legacy and virgin brands can take cues from the series when it comes to the value of personality in marketing – although Emily’s exponential growth of followers on Instagram is essentially impossible. (Read: No one is following #roomwithaview and only the likes of Jennifer Aniston and David Attenborough see this growth on their Instagram debuts).
But the idea that a marketer – like Emily – should craft a personality via social media posts rather than relying on brand authority and traditional advertisements is well made. And yes, in real life, any very thin, white woman dressed by famed Sex and the City costume designer Patricia Field would be adoringly followed on Instagram.
But what if your company does not have an Emily?
Not all CEOs can or should be the personality of a brand. Nor all founders or directors. The key to choosing a personality is not to rely purely on status in the company. Instead, focus on the energy they can inject in a chaotic social media feed and the mood they can convey around the customer’s experience with the product.
When The Washington Post wanted to expand its well-established premium political news brand on social media, it did not ask its editors to carry the message to billions of teens on TikTok, but turned instead to a young video producer called Dave Jorgenson.
TikTok – a descendant of memes; easy to digest, repetitive, addictive – is probably the most difficult social media platform to master, especially for a legacy brand. Jorgensen is an outstanding personality, able to mix the absurdism the platform showcases without denting the Post’s reputation for accuracy and newsworthiness.
The newspaper knew it had to bring its reimagined journalism product out from behind the paywall so it could be sampled by new readers, but rather than displaying a few paragraphs from the top of the stories, it set a lively ambassador onto TikTok.
It’s not easy for more established brands and industries to mutate their shopfront for social media, but brands of any age should be wary or rushing to delegate a “face” to the brand: you don’t need to put the “person” in personality.
Australian start-up darling Canva is an outstanding example. A 10-second scroll of their Instagram shows few human faces but a collage of brightly coloured icons and images.
A core Canva product is social media templates, and the product does the talking for the company.
Authenticity will always cut through the noise on social media. This lesson in adjusting tone is well canvassed in Emily in Paris. The voice and prestige of a brand should always be maintained, even if the tone is adjusted to speak to new audiences.
Savoir’s fashion label client Pierre Cadault knows he’s in trouble with an ageing demographic of his customers. But he’s stuck at the high end of fashion, an elegant dinosaur.
With one Instagram post, Emily extracts the brand’s high-class perception from an exclusive soiree for legacy Parisians by snapping and Instagramming a dress on a hotel floor, clearly after it was hastily removed in a sexual rendezvous. The traditional voices at Savoir feared this single Instagram post could destroy decades of reputation building for Pierre Cadault. But 177,000 likes later and the brand projects a new tone to aspirational younger audiences. The designer dress is still photographed in a luxury hotel next to other luxury items. It is safe in its premium world, but the brand has a new edge, thanks to that Instagram image.
Emily’s risky leap from legacy pays off in Pierre’s case, but she’s alert to risks to reputation, red-flagging a perfume campaign for its sexism.
(Another cliche here as the French males insist a woman walking naked on a public bridge under the gaze of several men is sexy, not sexist.)
Emily warns that even if French audiences see it that way, Americans will not.
Lesson number three: context is everything, but in social media land, any content can be taken out of context. Even if something sits on your website safely nestled in appropriate context, there’s not much stopping it from being misconstrued, shared by people who don’t share your mission, or injected into communities you didn’t prepare for.
Brands beware. The atomisation of content on social media could mean a product hidden on your online store finds its way to a niche thread ready to buy your entire inventory - hoorah! It can also mean an article on your blog written by a contributor long gone is unearthed and ridiculed against modern standards. Sharp social strategists consider ways to support the autonomy of content so that there’s less room for it to be manipulated. The big lesson from the show is that Emily’s marketing tactic – pivot quickly - is perfect for 2020. If your business is looking for new audiences, expanding social media growth or just starting up, it’s time to be as courageous and connected as Emily.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout