Five Lessons Marketers Can Learn From Emily In Paris

“Digital Marketing the TV Show!”

In case you’ve been busy and, let’s face it, how many of us can say that at the moment, the new ‘can’t miss’ show streaming via Netflix is Emily in Paris. This light-hearted comedy tells the story of Emily Cooper, a twenty-something Marketing Executive who is unexpectedly catapulted to a role within a newly acquired French agency specialising in luxury goods. Emily describes herself as the ‘American eyes in the French office.’ The show has been criticised for its portrayal of cultural stereotypes and unrealistic view of France and Paris. The show is pretty tongue in cheek however I’ll leave you to make your own mind up!

As a friend of mine commented on watching it’s, ‘Digital Marketing the TV Show’. Emily in Paris explores a lot of ideas around digital marketing and actually, there are lessons we can all learn. For that reason, I’d recommend anyone working in Marketing watches it!

1) Storytelling is key to building an engaged audience.

The show’s title comes from Emily’s Instagram account. On arrival, Emily changes her profile name to Emily in Paris and rapidly gains fans and followers by essentially telling the story of her adventures in Paris. Her posts attract the attention of key influencers including Brigitte Macron.

With hundreds of posts and blogs claiming to teach us how to gain 10,000 followers in a month etc Emily’s simple approach that engaging stories that create an emotional response are the best method of gaining genuinely engaged followers keen to like and share organic content.

2) ‘Influencers don’t care about your brand’.

Has the influencer model simply taken too big a bite of the marketing pie?

Rather controversially Emily tells the CEO of a cosmetics brand who is focusing their marketing budget and efforts on an influencer-based strategy. Apparently, the agency model is antiquated and overpriced. Emily argues that influencers are driven by different priorities and are actually more interested in self-promotion and swag bags! This struck me as an interesting argument as so many brands continue to chase the influencer model.

Perhaps we should be recommending developing brand advocates rather than paid influencers. This goes back to lesson number one, engaged followers are more likely to be genuinely engaged with brand content as opposed to following an influencer many of whom promote numerous products. Who can forget the pinnacle of influence marketing gone wrong that was the Fyre Festival! Has the influencer model simply taken too big a bite of the marketing pie?

3) Have your elevator pitch ready.

Emily as the new girl in town finds herself in a variety of environments and in one particular episode is introduced to the founder of a trendy hotel chain. Emily grabs the opportunity to rapidly pitch an idea to produce a signature scent for the hotel chain about to open a new property in Paris. The pitch sparks enough interest to get the card and then secure a meeting. You never know who is around the corner as have the pitch ready to go.

4) Don’t be afraid to be controversial.

The French agency creates an advert for a new perfume which Emily feels is sexist and will alienate a large percentage of the audience. Emily quickly posts the ad to Instagram with the poll question ‘sexist or sexy?’ The poll sparks debate and massively increases social impressions by over 200% and is picked up by two large news sites.

How many times have we been afraid to say anything that might spark debate? This reminds us that done in an intelligent way a mini-campaign can create a talking point. By capturing a narrative in an innovative way rather than just jump on the band waggon of the latest social talking point brands can lead a debate rather than grabbing the coattails of social movements. However, as the Pepsi, Kendal Jenner racism ad demonstrates, brand social activism done badly shows the potential for a very negative reaction from customers.

In addition, the poll was an innovative way to test the reaction and audience sentiment for the approach. As Emily notes in the discussion on the Ad-‘it’s what the customer thinks that’s important’.

5) The customer journey has more than one track.

Taking Emily as a whole her campaign includes social, earnt media, paid media, on person and UGC. Ok, it’s a bit of a stretch to describe Emily as her own campaign but that, in a nutshell, is the point of the show. What it reminds us is that successful campaigns don’t have a one size fits all approach. There numerous ways to engage with an audience and we as marketers have to avoid become focused on any particular platform or types of content. A successful campaign will allow for multiple touchpoints that engage with our audience.

“Market — Sell — Build — Market”

I previously recommended The Context Marketing Revolution by Mathew Sweezy and Emily in Paris is a perfect example of Context Marketing in action. We can no longer rely on the outdated view of a linear marketing funnel and the Build — Market — Sell approach. The new model is the one used by Tesla among others that is Market — Sell — Build — Market approach and this is illustrated perfectly across ten episodes of Emily in Paris.

As marketers, the show reminds us that our industry is constantly changing and by hamstringing ourselves to ideas, processes and platforms we will hold back our clients and companies. By evolving and opening ourselves up to new ideas we will be more effective in the role and improve results accordingly.