Piera Valentina Toniolo recently joined Carlota Pico to talk about her role as regional communications and social media manager for the EMEA region at The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. Piera chatted about her previous role at Missoni, and her transition from the fashion industry to the beauty industry. She talked about the importance of authentic influencer marketing in both industries—a trend that doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.

Piera also discussed how global brands can foster closer relationships with audiences through local social media accounts, plus the challenges of navigating the nuances and restrictions of online communication in international markets.

You can watch the full conversation in the video above or on YouTube, and listen to the podcast on Apple or Spotify.

Rapid-fire recs

• Source of inspiration: Estée Lauder. “She launched her own company at a time when a woman was considered to be just a wife, or somebody behind a man. She used to say, ‘Telephone, telegraph, tell a woman,’ and this is a very empowering message, even today. She was an influencer before the actual influencers.”

• Useful resources:
  • “These days I get my inspiration from podcasts, Instagram and TED Talks.”
  • “#discover is a good hashtag—you’ll find interesting stuff there!”

• Favorite app: Instagram and Mapstr. “Mapstr is great. I use it a lot in Paris because I’m new to the city and want to discover new places. Every time I go to a place that I like and want to suggest to my friends, I just add it to my map. I get recommendations and suggestions from other people’s maps as well.”

Micro-influencers must be taken into consideration in addition to the bigger influencers. They interact with consumers and customers—often people they’ve met in real life—who are very interested in listening to what they have to say. However, pay attention to who you leverage as a micro-influencers because many of them out there are not as authentic as they want you to believe. It’s always a matter of research and good selection. We don’t want our influencers to be too branded; we want them to be authentic.

Connect with Piera and Carlota on LinkedIn.

This post was edited by Mary Kresge.

For more insights into authentic influencer marketing:

The world of influencer marketing – Jo Burford, global head of marketing

Optimize influencer campaigns – Alessia Coletta, global brand manager at Trainline

Influencer marketing in gaming – David Robson, global community manager at Deep Silver

To see the full transcript, click on page number 2 below.