emily in paris gets a lot of flack flack from the american expat community who think she makes americans look ridiculous flack from parisians who worry the show objectifies their city and culture and today this social media marketer who wonders if future social media executives will be disappointed when they realize their first job isn't quite this glamorous you mean the the twitter and the snapchat social media marketing industry representation on tv and movies is still pretty rare to come by considering the job isn't really that old the only other show i can think of with a social media manager type main character is the bold type comment down below if you've seen it or if you'd like me to share my thoughts on that show someday but emily in paris is definitely an interesting ride and in case you're new here i'm latasha i've spent many years working as a social media marketer at agencies in in-house roles and as an entrepreneur for several years i even worked with a paris-based startup as their first social media executive so while i have my own first-hand cultural critiques of emily in paris i'll leave that part to the experts today i want to focus on what eip emily and paris got wrong and right about her marketing job oh and yes there may be spoilers in today's video so if you haven't at least finished season one i definitely recommend coming back after you do that let's start with what they got right in marketing you have to think outside the box ideas might be born in boardrooms but they really take shape out in the real world whether that's a physical or virtual location and i think the show does a good job of showing emily's agility from dreaming up gorilla marketing campaigns for her client pierre cadoux whipping out her iphone for the perfect candid shot to pulling in a friend to sing at a company event in season two the best marketers should think quickly on their feet and it doesn't hurt to be well connected too this is something i'll admit freelancers in particular could take a page from we often are so rigid about our packages or set number of hours available for a project but we really should be thinking about just getting the result for the client of course you've got to set boundaries to avoid being abused in that regard but when i worked for my french client in their nyc office it wasn't uncommon to play the role of event coordinator social media photographer and casting agent all in one day though juggling party trays of vegetables up a flight of stairs and heels wasn't really in my job description the end result is what mattered and those veggie trays led to happy not hungry influencers which led to millions of social media impressions for the brand which led to explosive social media metrics being reported in my portfolio today beyond that there's a lot that's just not realistic about emily's job first you can't just go rogue in the first season we see emily send a feminist message about vaginas by way of an instagram photo of her client product without consulting anyone about it luckily macron tweeted about it the client was overjoyed and emily's impulsive post was well received but it probably wouldn't really happen that way sure social media posts with political messages are more common these days and can be done right but they usually go through rounds and rounds of approval from the client the pr team and sometimes even the legal department it's also unlikely there would be no backlash or bad responses to such a polarizing topic and considering how new and annoying emily was at the time one of her managers or peers would have probably had a word to say about it on the one hand this is something perhaps marketing teams can learn from the show so many brilliant creative ideas die on the marketing room floor because of brand safety but then again it's more likely that we'd have more kendall jenner pepsi moments than retweets from the french first lady we see it again in season two little spoiler alert if you haven't started it yet but i'll just say not all influencers are good influences anyone asking to post a photo with an exclusive client product needs to be vetted and approved by the brand and honestly you're probably not going to be lugging around unreleased designer product in the first place though i will say it's a pretty realistic depiction of agency life to get lots of client samples i kind of miss those two you probably shouldn't date your clients i mean do i really need to expand on this one at one point someone sends emily lingerie to the office and i'm not saying it never happens especially in the startup world where things can be kind of casual but i don't think it's necessarily encouraged quite as much as the show makes it seem they briefly discussed married clients in season 1 episode two only for it to be revealed that sylvie emily's boss is the mistress of the married client in question as the boss she pretty much sets the tone and expectation for client relations and it just gets messier and messier from there on out whatever i mean it's tv it's supposed to be a bit of a fantasy so i won't judge this part too hard but i personally try to adopt a don't where i eat rule that's my husband's phrase in case you want to borrow it and i'd guess that most young ambitious career-minded professionals wouldn't really want to risk the opportunity of a lifetime for a night with a married client definitely not for a client's boyfriend lastly and most interesting to me her job feels kind of all over the place one of the challenges with marketing roles is that they're all defined a little bit differently depending on the location of the job the industry you're serving and the size of the company i think most social media managers would agree that emily really isn't one and to be fair they never call her that or really any title as far as i can tell she mentions being promised the role of senior brand manager after her year in paris but the truth is emily sort of straddles the line between pr gal social media manager and brand strategist throughout the show we see emily pitching brand campaigns meeting with clients and posting manually might i add to brand accounts from her cell phone in my experience i've seen social teams structured a little more like this first there's a strategist or brand manager aka the brains behind the campaigns this person or team will ideate social campaigns and pitch them to clients all i could find about emily's actual title is that she was sent to paris to quote bring a set of american eyes and ears to savoir so i'm guessing she'd technically fall under a strategist type of role there's usually also an account manager or someone who handles day-to-day requests and interactions with clients now it seems like emily picks up a lot of this work as well which is especially odd considering the language and cultural differences you'd think there would at least be a junior assistant to help out with some of those quick requests and then there's a social media manager who mostly sits at a computer all day scheduling posts responding to customer questions and creating some new content again now depending on the size of the team or account this person or team might also sometimes go on site to capture content but for the luxury clients that emily deals with i'd assume the agency would send a professional photographer not just some american girl with her smartphone regardless of seniority social media managers at agencies are usually pretty territorial about who posts to brand accounts and rightfully so the fact that emily just posts randomly from her cell phone is a serious faux pas i'm not just here to bash the show though here's the thing i think all marketing teams should really try to learn from the show social needs to be involved up front as i said emily is there in the room with the clients pitching ideas sharing what she's seen online and really being in the driver's seat in most of my previous jobs social was always the last to know about exciting new launches events or campaigns which was really hard i don't think social is everything when it comes to marketing but nowadays it's a lot i mean just for one event you have the social media ads driving to the registration page to think about the social graphics for that ad live coverage of the event you have to draft messages to have on hand for that live coverage and get them approved unlike emily you might put together an influencer wish list and posting guide perhaps pitch a retargeting campaign for attendees i mean there's a lot more than just queue up an email sequence or design a billboard today's marketing really does come alive on social media and i think part of what prevents marketing teams from giving it the respect it deserves is that social media teams are often made up of a lot younger people many of them women emily really does a crap job of representing millennial professionals she's got no decorum at all but not all young professionals are like this and they should be brought into the conversation a little bit sooner in my opinion that said i also hate ageism and i'm a big believer that the youngest person in the room shouldn't get the social media job just because they're young anyone can learn about it and be good at it if they really want to be okay so those are my thoughts on emily in paris from a marketing lens i want to hear what you think did you watch will you watch and do you feel like her experience is anything like yours if you're in marketing let me know down in the comments i'm gonna go finish up the last few episodes of season two and i'll see you next time if you're new here don't forget to subscribe i post mondays and fridays and i'd love to see you next time bye [Music] you
