“To build a brand, you need social media engagement. It’s not just about the number of followers. It’s about content, trust, interest and engagement.”

I’m sure you must have heard the above quote somewhere. I noted it down while binge watching Emily in Paris for the second time.

Emily in Paris, as the title suggests, is about an American girl named Emily working in a marketing firm in Paris. With my recent developed interest in marketing, I watched this show with a critical eye.

In my opinion, Emily has all the qualities that are required in a marketer. She is an opportunist, a fast thinker, an innovative person and most importantly, she knows how to network. From her 30 second successful elevator pitch about a perfume in an art gallery to her pitch to one of the biggest designers in Paris through an example of Gossip Girl, who would have thought of that so spontaneously? I certainly wouldn’t have.

We all know the power of networking, how one conversation with a random stranger can get us to the wildest of places. Emily made use of the opportunities that came her way to the best use, a little conversation about pink flowers with a stranger not only landed her the biggest deal with a hotel group but it also added a champagne house to the new list of clients of her firm.

Being creative and a quick thinker are the most common traits of any successful marketer. Coming up with on the spot social marketing campaigns such as sleeping under the stars for Hastens bed or sabotaging the venue of Grey Space to launch Pierre Cadault’s new collection, Emily did it all. Notable ones also include posting a promotional story about Duree (a cosmetic brand) where she talks about the features of the lipstick along with a pun; “Duree is smudge proof, even when you’re berry hungry” as she takes a bite of off a strawberry from the decorations behind her.

Although I really admire all the traits that were potrayed by her as a marketer and the campaign ideas that she put forward were amazing, her social media game was weak. She jumped from 48 followers to 24.9k followers within a few weeks of staying in Paris. That may seem realistic to you but growing on Instagram when you are using no hashtags and not-so-great captions is nearly impossible. Nowadays, if you’re not different, you won’t grow big.

The pictures that Emily posted and the captions that she used looked below average to me. Posting a selfie of yourself on a street of paris is not going to increase your number of followers, it’s barely even going to fetch you any likes especially if you use one hashtag and that being #lonelyinparis. Yes, that is what Emily used and her followers increased from 200 to 230.

Honestly, I consider myself pretty good at witty Instagram captions. So, I decided to make a list of all the captions that Emily used on her Instagram that are not really going to work in real life.

  • A picture of the view in her room: #roomwithaview
  • A picture of a random lady with her dog: #mindthemerde
  • A picture of rain in Paris: Paris is weeping
  • A picture of her with flowers: Everything’s coming up roses
  • A picture of her drinking champagne with her friend: Drinking champagne in champagne
  • A picture of a burger in Paris: #cheeseburgerinparadise

Please note that all the above mentioned pictures with the caption were shown to have increased her followers by not hundreds but thousands.

One of the pictures was shown to have increased her followers from 230 to 1435. What was the pciture, you ask? It was a picture of a statue with the caption ‘Chiseled Abs’. sigh

Not to mention that there was no social media engagement from her end. No use of polls (except for once), questions, replying to comments, liking comments etc. It’s impossible to grow and be liked as an influencer on any social media platform if you don’t engage with your audience.

So, what’s my take on Emily in Paris. A good show with a good plot and plenty of interesting marketing campaigns but realistic? Not really. I guess what Emily’s co-workers, Luc and Julien said was actually true, “American movies are dishonest and have happy endings unlike French endings, Tragic.”