Emily to Paris
EF Ultimate Break
Social Stunt
When Emily in Paris premiered on Netflix in October 2020, it inspired a massive surge of interest in travel. After all, the premise of the show was an American girl finding adventure and love in a glamourous new city.
The timing caused some slight issues, though. We were in the #StayHome era of the pandemic, and the travel industry was hurting.
The Dilemma
The Opportunity
Fast forward to 2023 and the Revenge Travel movement. People had been stuck inside, glued to their couches, and living on takeout.
Couple that with season 3 of Emily in Paris. When Netflix announced that the new season would drop in December 2022, we knew that the timing was finally right to capitalize on the inevitable resurgence of interest in trips to Paris.
As a travel company, we’ve been sending Emilys to Paris much longer than Netflix has. So, on premier day, we did just that. We whipped up some posters, grabbed a camera, and dressed up like Emily Cooper. Then, a couple undercover Ultimate Break staffers we posted up in Harvard Square to find an Emily to send to Paris.
After a couple hours of people offering to change their names and FaceTiming their friends, we were finally approached by our lucky lady—a Cambridge, MA teacher who had never been out of the country.
We cut and edited the hidden-camera content to tell the story on social media, and the people did the rest. Our posts earned over 2 million views across TikTok and Instagram, the content was reposted by Travel + Leisure and picked up by ABC News.
Best of all, our site traffic for the month skyrocketed—up 75% YoY—an enormous lift during a historically slow period. As for all those travel dreams, search queries for trips to Paris were up 137%. Oh, and our new friend Emily went to Paris in June 2023.