Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Piera Valentina Toniolo, social media pro at Estée Lauder, on authentic influencer marketing:

Carlota Pico 0:13
Hi everyone, and welcome back to The Content Mix. I’m Carlota Pico, your host for today’s show, and I’m excited to introduce Piera Valentina Toniolo, who is regional communication and social media manager for the EMEA region at The Estée Lauder group and has over 10 years of experience in marketing and communications. Welcome, Piera, and thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix.

Piera Valentina Toniolo 0:39
Hi, hello. It’s a pleasure to be here with you, Carlota.

Carlota Pico 0:42
The pleasure is mine, Piera. Okay, so tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get to where you are today?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 0:48
Well, it’s a long story. Let’s start from the scratch. I’m Italian. I grew up in a small town near Venice and I had the dream of moving abroad in to New York, to the states to France, etc. So I’ve started studying literature in Verona. Then I moved to New York, and I finished my study there. And then I came back I worked a little while for a media agency and then for Missoni fashion group, as a digital PR, basically. I was working with the influencers and bloggers at that time. Then I moved to thhe Estée Lauder company–where I still am–in 2015. So it’s been more than five years now. I started working for Estée Lauder as a PR manager for Clinique. Then I took the role of PRN consumer marketing manager for Clinique and Lancôme. And nowadays, I moved to Paris to work as a digital marketing manager for Estée Lauder overseeing communication and social media, as you, as you just said, introducing me. So yes, it’s been 10 years working in communication and digital marketing. And I have to say it’s getting more exciting as we go.

Carlota Pico 2:19
Okay, what an exciting career, Piera. What did you study to get you to where you are today?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 2:26
I studied literature at first. And then I realized that I wanted to study something that could put literature and journalism–which was my passion–in relation to the current context. So when I moved to New York, I decided to take a course on digital storytelling. Basically focused mainly on social media on my own and earned platform. At that time, we didn’t speak about the influencers yet. We had the bloggers–it was 2012. So we had bloggers more than influencers. But then we started talking about people influencing other people. They rolled out Instagram and slowly by slowly we arrived to the influencer concept that which is still a big topic nowadays.

Carlota Pico 3:26
Okay, very interesting. And then Piera, let’s fast forward–how did you get your foot in the door at Estée Lauder group?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 3:35
It was by chance. I have to say I used to hang out with the PR manager of Michael Kors, which was just around the corner of Missoni in Milan. And she introduced me to the HR director of Estée Lauder in Italy, who was a friend and she was looking for a PR manager for Clinique. So it was by chance. I wasn’t interested in working for a beauty industry because my passion was fashion. But she told me to give the company a chance because it’s a very good one, a very interesting one, and they’re looking for somebody young, and very digitally driven, which you are. So try, go have an interview. And here I am!

Carlota Pico 4:29
Okay, beautiful. So on that note, let’s take a walk down memory lane. What have been some of your most memorable marketing moments to date?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 4:39
This is a very interesting question. I remember a very interesting campaign that we ran for Clinique. At that time, we weren’t able to measure social selling yet because the Instagram did not have the feature that allows you to go and check the people that sorry, let me explain that again. At that time, we didn’t use story on Instagram. So you were not able to track sales directly on the website. So we had to found out a way to engage with influencers, to bring people to our ecommerce, and to really be able to sell products on our e commerce on the retailer we were collaborating with, and on the brick and mortar, so in the stores. So we collaborated with a very broad the target of influencers, most of them young, many of them coming from the television, so with the very strong audience, and we asked them to run special offers for their communities. And nowadays, it’s something that you have seen like, tons of times, but at that time, no brands used to do something like that, especially big brands like Clinique, which I was working for. So it was very successful, we managed to grow the franchise by like 100%, in few months, it was a new franchise, but it wasn’t a big bet for the brand. And it became something huge in the Italian market. So this was a very successful case. And also we started that with a very, very fun party. We invited all those influencers–and there were like 100 influencers–across all the all the country. And we invited their top followers to this party, and it was like at Luna Park. We hosted the it at Luna Park, in the very center of the city. And people were able to win products by interacting with the with the Luna Park. And, and with us, it was super fun. Like we had lots of media, an incredible number of Share of Voice. So this is one of my best memories. And then of course, now I’m working for Estee Lauder for like six months now, so I’m starting collecting some new, exciting memories. And now we’re still super focusing on influencers. And my main focus together with influencers is all media, meaning social media, and trying to be as much locally relevant as ever, because there’s still a there is a very big brand that it used to have only the global account. And what I want to do is to make the brand, having local Instagram accounts, in almost every market, in every market that can really run an Instagram local account, because it’s very important I feel for the consumers to have some something that they can really relate to, and really close to them when it comes to a brand.

Carlota Pico 8:23
Yeah, I was actually just about to ask you that, but since you’ve already answered that question, let’s look at your biggest challenges today. What have those look like? And what did you learn along the way?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 8:35
I would say this is one of my challenges. But also it’s very exciting, because it’s something I’ve never done before. It’s still that in the region in the EMEA region used to not have a digital communication manager before I joined. So this is my, let’s say, biggest battle at the momentum. And I see that many markets are following me, they’re very interested in doing something like that being locally relevant to their consumers. We already rolled out for Instagram accounts since July, because we launched the Germany we launched in Middle East, in Swizterland and India. So basically, we chose to launch to Western markets and to emerging markets. And they’re doing very well. And what I see is that it’s the context, it’s very different from one country to another. Say for example, in Middle East, Snapchat is a big thing. In India, they don’t even have TikTok anymore because they had to ban it. So it’s very interesting from a personal perspective, and I think very interesting for the brand as well, let me say, and I mean It is, I would say. And then other challenges, one of the biggest challenges, not for me, and not for the brand, but for all the companies nowadays is this post-COVID situation, because we’ve been forced to stay at home, to work into a different context. We have seen that people are not going to the stores anymore, or they’re going but a lot less than before. I see yesterday, some data, and it seems like in the region, the reduction of people buying in store is up to 45%.

Carlota Pico 10:46
Wow.

Piera Valentina Toniolo 10:46
So it’s very big. So we need to shift our minds to an online-like mindset. So what we did in Estee Lauder, it was to host a virtual event, not only for the region, but an international virtual event for the launch of our main product, our mean skincare product, which is our Advanced Night Repair, it’s the, let’s say, one of the most famous products of Estee Lauder, over the years and now the brand just relaunched the product and reformulated it. So we had this huge virtual events and we had 1500 people connected at the same time. So it was something massive, and we had live activities going on, for people to interact with. We had education leads, teaching them how to apply the product. We had a dancer, teaching them a dancing class, inspired by the whole ritual that you use to apply the products to yourself. And then we had a face yoga teacher, and an in the end, we also added a competition for those people who attended the dancing class and decided to dance at the closing ceremony, the closing party with a DJ set. We had the prize for the first people who started dancing. So it was very fun. I mean, I have summarized this in a very fast way. But the event was super fun for everybody attending. We had a huge amount of contents published at the during and after the event. Speaking of Instagram stories, Instagram posts, Snapchat stories and TikTok videos. So really the influencers went crazy for that event. And it was a challenge. It was bit of a challenge. We have been working as a brand, and as a team for the consumer marketing team all together for months on end. But it was a huge success.

Carlota Pico 13:03
That’s so much fun. I actually follow you on Instagram. So I saw a part of the campaign in the making. And it’s fantastic to hear the behind the scenes info that you’re providing to me and to our audience. And thank you for sharing that experience with us. You mentioned TikTok and you also also mentioned influencers. How is it the Estee Lauder group incorporating TikTok in its social media strategy?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 13:28
We’re working with TikTok–not on an own media base–so basically, we don’t have any TikTok profile of the Estee Lauder brand–neither globally and neither locally. But we are working with TikTok stars. We’re trying to incorporate TikTok-ers in our strategy as much as possible. Also, because the younger consumers are on TikTok nowadays they they tend to not use Instagram as much as millennials. So if we want to talk to younger consumers, we we cannot escape TikTok–we need to take that into consideration. So starting from a strategy which was very branded and touched only working on Instagram and Facebook and YouTube, we have a enlarged our communication to TikTok and even Snapchat in some regions.

Carlota Pico 14:27
Okay very interesting. And then as for influencers, how do you decide what influencers to work with for every given brand campaign?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 14:37
We tend to be as inclusive as possible nowadays. So the decision is made based on some concrete growth areas such as the follower base of the influencer, saying for example, if you collaborate with a French influencer, you will want her to have French followers. I mean I’m not talking…I’m not even taking into consideration the discussion of fake followers, etc. We usually use tools to understand the which are real influencers and which are not. But now, it’s not more…it’s not really a big topic anymore, I would say, because you can define if an influencer is a real one or not. Now we we have the expertise to say that. So starting from the fact that we work only with real influencers, we try to use influencers of their couuntry that have a geography of their fan bases really connected to that country. So, this is the first thing. The second thing is the connection that every influencer is able to be that with her or his community. So we tend to take a look into the numbers, the concrete KPIs of influencers, and then we decide how to collaborate with her or him, and in which platform. Because the same person, the same influencer, can be active both on Instagram and on TikTok, let’s say for example, and you can use the same persona and you can adapt the message to the platform that she or he uses.

Carlota Pico 16:26
Definitely, and what are your thoughts on micro influencers?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 16:30
I think that micro influencers must have to be taken into consideration, if they’re not a macro influencer wanna-be. What I want to say is we are seeing many micro influencers very active on their communities, such as we consider micro influencers our beauty advisors. They have social media accounts and they use them every day. And they use those accounts to interact with their consumers and customers–people that they have met in the stores maybe before or people they have met online, but that the people that follow them–because they are beauty advisors–so they are very interested in listening to those people talking about the products and apply reach rituals or talking about how to create makeup tutorial etc.

Carlota Pico 17:34
Okay, and…

Piera Valentina Toniolo 17:35
So, yes, so we work with micro influencers and I take into consideration micro influencers, but I think that you need to be very careful when it comes to selecting micro influencers and nano influencers as well.

Carlota Pico 17:53
Okay, so then what about creative freedom? How much creative freedom do you give to your influencers to create their own content? Or do you really ask them to do certain activities in a certain way?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 18:07
I don’t want them to be too much branded. I want them to be authentic. But if they collaborate with Estee Lauder, they still have to follow some rules, some aesthetic rules, some i-touch rules, because this is still a luxury beauty brand at the end of the day, and some rules regarding hashtags and paid collaborations. Ethically, if an influencer collaborates with a brand such as Estee Lauder, she has to declare it. So that’s fundamental, say, for example. So the paid partnership that Instagram gives you, they have to use it. And the same for their aesthetic criteria. Apart from that, they are quite free to create their content, even if, before sharing those contents, we need to approve them.

Carlota Pico 19:05
Okay, and what about some of the most creative content that you’ve seen on social media lately? What has really resonated with you?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 19:15
This is a very good question. What I fear is that we are seeing trends. So in the same period, many influencers are talking about the same stuff and with the same aesthetic. So it’s difficult nowadays, to see people really acting out of the box. And this is what I usually try to ask to the influencers we collaborate with.

Carlota Pico 19:52
Okay, excellent. And now let’s take a look back on your career, if you could give your younger self one piece of advice about pursuing a career in marketing or social media and communications, what would that be?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 20:08
This is another very good question. I would tend to say, follow your instinct, but listen to elder people. Listen to people that have been in your shoes before you. And people that you know are clever ones. Because you might really use them and their advices one day. When I was younger, I tended not to listen to people, I was like this…I had my own idea, I had my own growth part in my mind and I really didn’t listen to people as much as I do now. So this is a, this is a suggestion I would give to my old self. And always believe in yourself–never, never let anybody let you down. Because there will be so many people in so many moments also, because it’s not only a matter of people, sometimes when, say, for example, when you move abroad, and you know nobody in a new city, you tend to be blue and you tend not to be the best self you can be also when it comes to job and creativity. So go out, visit museums, talk to people, spend time on social media, but not only, read the book, and try to to be as much as excited as you can by the things that surround you.

Carlota Pico 21:48
You’re making me excited about life. I want to go to a museum now. Yeah, what’s the best piece of advice that you’ve been given?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 21:59
Let me think about that. The best piece of advice that I’ve been given from a marketing perspective is always start by data. From a life perspective, I would say, always trust your instinct.

Carlota Pico 22:23
On that note, we are going to be moving into our next section of the interview, which are our set of rapid fire questions, your recommendations for audience. So I’d like to get the section start off with your source of inspiration, so an influencer that you really admire or professional role model?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 22:41
I would say is Estee Lauder. She was a woman. I know we’ve we’ve been discussing this about before–I told you already, I think–Estee Lauder was a woman who launched her own company in a moment of time when women were considered to be just wives, or somebody behind men’s shoulders. So she was an influencer before the actual influencers.

Carlota Pico 23:13
I love influencers that were influencers before there was a word for it.

Piera Valentina Toniolo 23:18
She used to say, “Telephone, telegraph, tell a woman.” And this is a very empowering message also today, I think.

Carlota Pico 23:30
That’s a beautiful message. Okay, and what about a resource that you’d like to recommend? So for example, book, hashtag, a group, a community or an event?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 23:42
Well, the podcast section of my iPhone is my biggest source of inspiration lately. Also, Ted is very interesting as a source of inspiration, I would tend to say. And Instagram! Instagram is if you know how to use it, and how to search for hashtags. It’s very inspiring.

Carlota Pico 24:08
So what’s your favorite hashtag?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 24:14
I’m more into beauty hashtags lately.

Carlota Pico 24:18
Like what?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 24:20
Have you haven’t tried the ‘discover’ hashtags?

Carlota Pico 24:23
No, I haven’t!

Piera Valentina Toniolo 24:26
Okay, this is interesting.

Carlota Pico 24:28
I’ll have to do that after this interview.

Piera Valentina Toniolo 24:30
Try ‘discover.’

Carlota Pico 24:33
Last but not least be it out what’s your favorite app or tool at the moment and why?

Piera Valentina Toniolo 24:39
Still Instagram, and Mapstr. I use that a lot in Paris because I’m new to the city and I want to discover new places and every time I discover a place that I like, that I really like and I want to suggest that place to my friends, I just add that place my map and I watch to other people maps for recommendations and suggestions. And it works for restaurants, cafes, hotels, museums–whatever. Very interesting. And very, very…I mean, there are other, like, just a few people are using that. But think it will grow.

Carlota Pico 25:25
Okay, so we’ll have to keep our eyes on it. Excellent, Piera. Well, thank you so much for joining us on The Content Mix. It was awesome to reconnect with you and to learn about your experience in marketing and PR and social media. And I hope that one day our travels will progress to the same city and we’ll be able to get over a glass of wine.

Piera Valentina Toniolo 25:46
Yes, of course. We have amazing glasses of wine here in Paris. So I’m waiting for you, or I’ll join you in Madrid! Hopefully.

Carlota Pico 25:55
Yes, for a nice, good Rioja.

Piera Valentina Toniolo 25:58
Okay. Yes. Thank you.

Carlota Pico 26:01
Thank you so much, and to everybody listening in today, thank you for joining us on The Content Mix. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out The Content Mix. We’ll be releasing interviews just like this one every day, so keep on tuning in. Thanks again, have a fantastic day, and I’ll see you next time. Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai