Marketing Like Emily in Paris!

I am a big fan of the Netflix show ‘Emily in Paris’. And not because of the romantic storylines or the Parisian entourage (although these are lovely). I’m mostly a fan because of how the marketing agency is portrayed in that series.

Emily shows us that marketing is creative and fun. Emily shows us that marketing is a craft, that it’s difficult, and that it is about people. In this blog post, I want to explain why focusing on people – on your audience – is essential in marketing and how online marketers tend to forget all about that.

I’ve looked up the definition of marketing. According to Wikipedia, it is an act of satisfying and retaining customers, while Forbes describes it as every part of a plan to turn a prospective consumer into a happy and satisfied customer. And that’s exactly what Emily in Paris does! She creates amazing campaigns and stories and is very successful in pleasing customers.

However, in current-day online marketing, we tend to focus less on the creation and planning of the marketing and more on the data and the measurement of effectiveness. Look at vacancies for online marketers. Requirements in these vacancies say ‘monitor and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure campaign success ‘ or ‘analyze key metrics and tweak strategy as needed to optimize performance’. Qualities required for an online marketer are often analytical and data-minded and not focused on the creation, ideation, or marketing production.

It makes sense to measure things, right? To evaluate your marketing efforts? That’s why—in this day and age—we need marketers with strong analytical skills. We can’t do without data-driven strategies to ensure the most out of our campaigns. That just seems like common sense. But is it really?

Online marketing – as opposed to more traditional marketing – makes measuring and analyzing the effectiveness of campaigns so much easier. Just think about it: how do you measure the effectiveness of a television commercial? That’s nearly impossible. However, measuring the reach of an online campaign on a website is much easier. Just do an AB test or check your analytics. But is it really that easy?

I don’t think we can adequately measure the effectiveness of our online marketing campaigns. On average, people have seven encounters with your brand before they buy your product. Marketing analysis usually measures one of those encounters—the very last one. You’ll end up doing AB tests and growth hacking because you can measure those things. And you’ll stop doing meaningful, creative storytelling campaigns because those campaigns cannot be measured as easily. But just because you can’t measure an effect does not mean it doesn’t exist.

Check out this article about how Nike decided to focus on data and how that worked out. From the article: ‘Nike invested a material amount of dollars (billions) in something that was less effective but easier to be measured vs something that was more effective but less easy to be measured.’

We should be more like Emily. In her marketing campaigns, she thinks about the audience and wants to understand the audience. I am not saying you should stop using data or evaluating and analyzing your marketing efforts. I’m just saying that your audience should drive your marketing strategy, not the data.

I’m a science girl. I did a PhD in criminology and conducted very quantitative research. One of the biggest sins in our field was being too data-driven. The theory, your ideas about why people do certain things, should come central. You should test those theories and hypotheses with your data. That’s how we – online marketers – should also treat our data. Data should not be the input of our marketing campaigns but be seen as our tool to evaluate our marketing efforts.

Your audience should always be at the center of your marketing. Who are the people that you want to reach? What do they like? What are their problems? What are their wishes and their desires?

If you want to do marketing research, focus on your audience. Execute user tests on your website, send out surveys, and conduct in-depth interviews with members of your audience. Make an effort to genuinely understand what your potential customers want and need. And, if you’ve discovered that, think about offering personalized experiences on your website. Ensure your content is tailored to your audience as much as possible.

Emily always tries to understand the customer for whom she develops a marketing campaign. What will resonate with this specific audience, for instance, a group of senior women? The hard part starts once she understands the audience: coming up with an out-of-the-box idea. Create a campaign that is different from what is already out there.

Marketing is a craft. It is hard because you can never use your ideas twice. But it’s also fun because you get to come up with the craziest campaigns. That’s what I love about the marketing campaigns in Emily in Paris. They’re all over the top, but the storytelling is fantastic and always fits the audience.

Instead of hyperfocusing on your Google Analytics and KPIs, try to get inspired and set up a fantastic marketing campaign. And how do you find that inspiration, you ask? Walk along the Seine, have a café in a Parisian bar, and fall hopelessly in love with your neighbor. After all, that’s how Emily finds her inspiration!

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