The Do’s and Don’ts for Social Media Marketing

0:00And I think a lot of brands are afraid to say certain things because it opens up the door for more conversations. It's much easier to give a straightforward answer to something that's definitive versus saying, well, it depends.

0:16Hi, I'm Shuang Esther Shan, and this is Shopify On Location, coming to you from our space in New York City. Having a good product is key to a successful business. But how do you build trust in your brand and communicate your values? Well, Charlotte Parlomino has the answers. She's the co-founder and CEO of skincare brand Deux. And not only customers are selling out their products, they also turn to Charlotte for skincare guidance. Charlotte's honest and well-informed TikTok videos have generated roughly 8 million likes and counting. Charlotte is here today in person to share how she's been successful in social media and business.

0:58Charlotte, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to have you here in person and not just on my phone screen. So there's so much content out there, and I feel like skincare is also such a saturated market. So how were you able to create videos and content that really resonated with the community? Yeah. So I think when we were starting, I do like that you pronounce it the French way, Dieu. I am half French, so I did take my own language and then butcher it for English-speaking audiences. But when we were launching Dieu, it was myself and my co-founder, Joyce Dilemos, who's a cosmetic chemist with over a decade of experience, and another co-founder, Marta Friedman, who's really great at brand and community.

1:44And so what we wanted to do was create something that was clinically vetted and price transparent. And we didn't see many brands being – it's not that they weren't being honest, it's that they weren't leveling with people. And I think a lot of brands are afraid to say certain things because it opens up the door for more conversations. It's much easier to give a straightforward answer to something that's definitive versus saying, well, it depends. It takes a lot more work, a lot more education. But from my perspective, I'm 36. I'm looking for stuff that works and also things that make me feel good.

2:14I think that there's so much shame that's put into the beauty industry from so many different levels, right? You have shame that you aren't beautiful enough. You aren't young enough. You don't have perfect skin, but now we're also being shamed into, okay, well, this is toxic skincare and it's giving you and your family cancer. And you're like, okay, there's a lot going on here. What's actually happening. Can you level with me?

2:39We call ourselves a too much information brand. And in just sharing that story, I got my esthetician's license in 2020, sharing that journey, sharing what your skin needs, what it doesn't, how it's so varied and that quite frankly, our products are not going to be for everybody really actually resonated with people because it's real. And I think that that's something that is very innate to myself and my co-founders. And so it was very easy to get that branding across for us. I think what you and your team do so well is walking that thin line between educational content that's also entertaining.

3:12So how do you actually make sure that you're telling the story, you're getting the information across, but still staying entertaining? I mean, I think it's very inherent to who we are. At the end of the day, it's a skincare brand. We don't take ourselves super seriously. I think our products have real world impacts, right? I mean, I'm buying units in the tens of thousands. So when I make a decision on packaging, it actually does have environmental impact. So I do take it seriously in that sense. I take it seriously in the sense that everything is clinically vetted, but skincare and beauty is meant to be fun.

3:47It's been used as a tool of oppression for a really long time. And so to use it in a way that's actually more fun, not taking it too seriously, using it as a way to really educate people. I mean, I actually am more interested in science when it's used in ways that are relevant to my everyday life. And so we found that this is a great way to get people in.

4:12At the end of the day, like we are talking about science. We're talking about lifecycle analyses. We're talking about politics sometimes. And all of these things are just put in a more palatable way, I guess, because it's like an everyday item. Yeah. And I think the hard part is also you're talking about a very established industry and you're sometimes going against some industry norms. and injecting that honesty, how can fellow founders kind of lean into that for their own industry and not be intimidated to go against norms and call out things that they want to change? Yeah. I mean, I think coming with receipts is really important.

4:51I don't say things in a vacuum, right? Like one of the things that really frustrates me in the skincare industry are the claims of coral reef safe sunscreen. Yeah, that might be true. You talk to marine biologists out of Australia, and they're like, can you please stop saying this? It's a smokescreen. So I take that very seriously. I don't use that in my marketing. I see marketing as a tool for good, but it can also be used to distract. And so for us, this is very inherent to me. I've always been like this. I remember I met somebody that I was kind of friends with on the internet, and they're like, oh, wow, you really are exactly like you are on social media.

5:26That's why it's easy for me to do. I would say do the thing that's easy for you to do and that's inherent to you, because I think so often when we're in corporate environments, I worked in corporate for a long time, you are not allowed to bring your whole self to work. It's about a form of assimilation into the culture that you're being brought into. I'm allowed to bring myself to work now. I ask that the people that we hire bring themselves to work. And so this is who I am. I can't tell you to emulate me, but I can tell you to kind of strengthen who you are. Yeah. And another thing I really want to stress is a lot of people talk about you've got to sell on TikTok, but I feel like what you're doing is you barely got a storytell on TikTok.

6:04Exactly. I mean, that's a great, great salespeople are storytellers. And I think that, um, I actually got into a fight with my partner about this, about, I was like, I said to him, I was like, you're a great salesman and he's an art director and he was so mad. And I was like, I'm telling you that you're good at telling stories because you get people's buy-in when you explain to them something. That's all that sales is. And I think if you approach things that buy my product, buy my product, I explain the product, I give you all the details, then you make the decision. That's what we do. And that's why it doesn't feel, I hope that we don't feel too salesy.

6:39I hope that we feel educational and then you are empowered to make a decision. Yeah. This is the exact words I have on my notes. I'm like, you are really not selling. You're providing education and helping people stay more informed. Well, I mean, the thing is, I don't want you to buy my products if they don't work for you. Everyone's skin is so different. So you live in Canada. Come wintertime, your skin is extremely dry. Instant Angel, one of our moisturizers, is a lipid-rich moisturizer. My co-founder, Joyce, did the patent for SkinCeuticals. So she really understands not only barrier repair, but the actual ingredients required for your skin to kind of replenish itself.

7:16I actually don't think Instant Angel on its own is enough for people who live in Toronto, where the humidity is in the floor and it's minus, you know, I mean, when we're getting into Celsius, like minus like too much. I lived in Montreal. I was putting on like Vaseline and Nivea on my face and it was not enough.

7:35And so I would not tell you that Instant Angel on its own is enough. I would tell you in a routine how to use it and how it may work for you. And I find that when you do it that way, you have a high loyalty rate. But also when something doesn't work out for somebody, we just refund you and there's no hard feelings. I find that when a customer feels duped into buying something or like you sold this to me in the wrong way, there's a lot of bad blood there. And I don't want that with consumers. I want people to understand what our products do and what they don't do. Set your expectations. And if it doesn't work out for you, we always refund you.

8:08But it creates like a different playing field.

8:14and a different conversation where it's more open versus again those definitive lines where it's like this is the product it's going to work for everyone it is a holy grail i cringe when i hear holy grail i'm like holy grail for xyz skin types of course your videos do so well on tiktok and one thing i love is you're able to comment on things that are trending on the platform I remember when New York was in a haze from the wildfires or when everyone was using the age filters. So what advice do you have for fellow founders who are trying to capture on a moment and create content that's relevant to the trend, but also true themselves and their business?

8:55Yeah, I think if you feel like you could just talk about something for 10 minutes, then make a video on it and try to cut it down to two. That's my advice. Like for me, like when I saw the wild, when I saw the wildfires, first off, I mean, the environment is something that, you know, as a brand that creates product and creates waste, it's something I think about a lot. Um, and in that environment, so many people are like, what do I buy? And I'm like, I feel like these are starting because of climate change. Maybe you shouldn't buy anything and just rummage around your, what you currently have.

9:24And so that was kind of the premise for, for that video. Um, and yeah, whenever there's something topical, like with the beauty filter, I think that, you know, I'm 36 and I'm so young. Like I find it bizarre how media frames women approaching 40 as if like we're marching towards death and then it's like just disappear. I find it very strange. And I do think it has, you know, a lot to do with like how we listen to women, women's authority, and just generally what women are allowed to do within society. And so for that particular filter, the glam filter, the aging filter, all of these things, I like to just give people reminders and context.

10:05Because I hear from a lot of women in their 50s and 60s, and they're like, we really appreciate this because we're just not seen and we're not listened to. And then you have the perfect intersection of experience from media and tech. So what type of content really works on TikTok? It always changes, I think. So my background is I used to work at Hearst. I then worked at Snapchat. And when I was at Hearst, I did everything from advertising to editorial. I was a writer. And then I launched Snapchat Discover, which is actually how I learned how to video edit and cut videos on After Effects, was because we did not get a video team.

10:40It was me and a couple of editors, and I was leading it. And I was like, I guess I have to learn After Effects overnight. And that's actually what led me to TikTok, was because I was tired of editing my Instagram videos on After Effects. And so I was like, oh, TikTok has a better video editing suite. And so I just started cross-posting. And that's when things really started to blow up. And I just kind of leaned into it. It's always changing. I think algorithms are really fickle. So you have to really stay on point for your storytelling. I like storytelling things that are topical. I like talking about cooking and food stuff.

11:13This is on my personal Instagrams. But for do, it's always about telling stories, being really clear on marketing, and also So getting really geeked out on different parts of the story to where we got to where we are. I mean, one of our most viral videos right now on TikTok for Do's Instagram that has over 100 ,000 views is just talking about packaging and talking about non-mined aluminum and what that means and what that carbon footprint means and why plastic isn't evil, but how we use plastic sometimes isn't necessarily the way it should be used now that we have more information on it. And it's just like a five-minute video about plastic and aluminum, and it's doing incredibly well.

11:53And it's because it's about storytelling. We mentioned about you working at Hearst and Snapchat. I think a lot of our listeners are in similar shoes where they're in a great corporate job, but they have ideas running at the back of their mind. What's your advice for learning as much as possible from those corporate jobs and building up your skill set so that you are ready when you're launching a business? I mean, one piece of advice I got very early on in my career, because I can be quite combative, I'm not afraid of conflict, is that your career is long. And so I did remind myself of that throughout my entire career.

12:26And like, you know, when you are in these environments, contacts are really important. Keeping in touch with people is really important. Saving money is really important, which, you know, if I hadn't worked at Snapchat, I don't know if I would have had the basis to actually leave because I don't get help. from my parents or from a trust fund or anything like that. I have a lot of privileges, but those are not part of them. And so I really did save up my money so that I would have a couple of months of runway where I didn't know what I was doing. And then 2020 hit. So that was really kind of scary and sobering.

13:03So I worked quite a few jobs. What I would say, though, is that just because you're working at a job doesn't mean that you can't start thinking about where things would go, taking coffees, taking people out for meetings, sliding into people's DMs. It's how I've actually made some of my best business connections is literally DMing somebody. And so I would say that all of those things you can start thinking of while you're at a job. And also looking at what the company is doing that you would not emulate and you would not replicate is also extremely important from a cultural perspective, but also from a business making decision perspective.

13:35I think I've worked for a lot of companies where I'm like, okay, I could not be profitable for 10 years and keep raising money and, you know, have an Uber exit one day or become Amazon. But realistically, for consumer packaged goods, let me look at the history of other companies that have run and the most successful exits or the most successful strategies. They usually started off a little bit more profitable, a little bit more lean. Tech is different. Tech is a very, very different industry. So I think also know your industry and know that you're not going to copy and paste it. I think that with consumer packaged goods, right, so beauty, cosmetics, food.

14:10So many people are like, okay, I'm going to raise$100 million for a brand, and then we're going to hit critical mass, and that's when we're going to start to see money. We never operated that way. We always operated from – we have to be profitable from day one. Our EBITDA needs to be in this range, and we need to be doing things in this way. And I'm lucky that my background is in business. That's actually what I studied in university was business and poli-sci. I understood a lot of these terms, but also I knew how to make a P &L. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm so glad you raised that because especially in this economic environment, new founders are always stressed and they want to reach profitability.

14:45So what advice do you have for people who are starting out bootstrapping? How do they make their own runway last longer? Lean. Lean. You know, and I think that it's a blessing and a curse, the way that we run our business in the sense that I'm still doing social media. That is, we're hiring a social media manager. We're having interviews this week, right? To understand social media and to have that be almost like free marketing where you have somebody that knows how to make a video go viral, incredibly valuable. My co-founder Marta knows a ton of influencers. She's incredible at branding. And so all of our photo shoots and things like that, we're able to do that kind of in-house.

15:26I think that there's a critical point where that needs to grow, right? We're looking at retail next year. Obviously, our Shopify has been extremely successful. But as we grow as a team, we need to kind of branch out. But I think that when you're starting, and if you do not come from institutional money, if you don't have access to capital at a high level, I think what people don't realize is that you are going to have to be very lean. And so if you're used to a big corporate environment where you have a big staff that helps you out, I've never had that. I've always been kind of the scrappy person.

15:58Now it's on me to grow to delegation. So if you are starting a company and you don't come from money and you don't have that institutional money, get scrappy. It's incredible what you can do and build on your own, right? So TikTok, for example, it's like free marketing. If you can figure it out, that's what I would say. Be scrappy or find a co-founder that's independently wealthy. But thank you for being so candid and practical because I think that's very, very helpful for - None of my co-founders come from money, right? So it's like, and I don't think people talk about money very often. And I think that particularly women don't.

16:37And it's incredibly important to talk about. And also the privilege that we had in being able to raise money for that research and development for our first serum. It just took a lot of money to do the clinicals on that. So we did not pay ourselves, but we held down. I had like three jobs for the first couple of years. No, it's practical advice that's going to be. Bills are important. Going to be super helpful for our fellow founders. And we're going to chat more about how New York and the city has influenced the brand. I just wanted to take a short pause from our conversation to thank you, our amazing listeners, for tuning in to Shopify on location.

17:16We would love for you to subscribe or follow the show so we can keep on making amazing episodes like these. If you have feedback, please leave us a review. Thank you so much. Dia was born right here in New York City. It's also the place where you met Joyce and Marta. So talk to us about how the city has really influenced the brand. Yeah, I mean, New York is a place that will build you up and break you down. But in that breaking you down and you stay, you sometimes end up on the other end. I think that it was interesting. I was in LA last week and I was like, oh, I'm sleeping. That's so strange.

17:54I don't normally sleep. I have insomnia. And I think it's more that New York has this like palpable energy when you get here. And I think that that's very much so seen in do and how real we are. And I think that that's kind of, there's like a blunt honesty to do that's blended with this softness. That softness comes from my co-founder, Marta, who's in LA. And so it's critical that we always have her kind of, you know, keeping us kind of level and balanced. but that blunt rawness and realness that we bring to things, um, I think is very New York, right? If you're walking too slowly on the street, someone's going to tell you, right?

18:30And it's just like, it's that simple and it's not mean spirited, right? It's just like, Hey, you're in my way. No hard feelings. Kindly move.

18:44And so I think that that hustle really is brought into everything that we do. Cause I always say this. I don't think we could have built this brand. I don't think I could have made the network that I've made. I don't think I would have been able to do what we've done if it wasn't in New York. And, you know, I've lived in Brooklyn for 12 years now. And so even just looking at my career trajectory, if I had stayed, you know, in Montreal, which I love Montreal, if there are any Montreal listeners, Queen them all, best croissant, I think, in North America. But I just don't think I would have been able to have access to the people that I had access to here, which is really what helped catapult not only my career, but do.

19:21And, you know, even something as simple as like our logo and our branding, we met with somebody named Lee Schwartz from PSA Creative through a random connect from like the packaging space. And we pitched him an idea and he actually did our logo, our brand guidelines, like all these things. And I don't, I don't know how I would have met somebody like him, especially in the way that I'd met him, which literally this all unfolded within this span of like three days. And so that really helped us kind of like get legitimacy. And I think, you know, it's so core to how our brand presents. But yeah, I think that New York is a place of like connection and opportunity and excitement.

19:59And so when you're down, it doesn't last too long because you're like, all right, like I need to keep going.

20:11because so much of New York I feel like is about setting trends like whether it's food fashion skincare it's always pushing the envelope forward so yeah talk to us about being in the beauty industry within New York and how I guess the hub of it all pushes the company forward Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of amazing founders and amazing companies that are based out of New York. And I think it's, again, just by nature of like us all being in this pressure cooker and kind of on top of each other. But I would say that, you know, a lot of what we formulate and do, I'm very lucky to have a co-founder that is in STEM because it's very easy to be taken in by suppliers.

20:50So when you make a skincare product, you don't normally make the raw materials. The raw materials come from these large corporations, sometimes really cool upstarts. But Joyce reviews all the scientific literature, all their testing in vivo and in vitro, right? So in human and in test tubes. And we basically figure out what is the most promising to then make our formulas. And we really formulate based off of what skin needs and not necessarily trends. But I do think that's like a uniquely New York thing where you're like, I don't follow the trends. you're like, I'm making the trends. So I feel like that's also like very egotistical what I just said, but I also think it's like very, I think I can say that just based off of who my co-founder is because I, so many brands operate off of Mintel reports and marketing trends.

21:34And when people are Google searching, right, how many slugging brands have launched when I talked about slugging, you know, three, four years ago, and we are working on a barrier product, but we're going to launch it when we're ready and when the ingredients are truly unique and when there's something different that we can say in the market from a packaging perspective and a raw material perspective.