Social Butterflies: Christina Miller on Reaching Audiences and Objectives
Christina is the chief social officer of VML EMEA. She joined VMLY&R in 2012 as one of the first team members in the social department. Over the past eleven plus years, Christina has had the opportunity to create award winning work across a variety of categories — from quick service restaurants (Wendy’s) to lifestyle brands (New Balance) to CPG (Coca-Cola) — helping brands find the most meaningful ways to connect to their audience through conversation, content, and culture.
Christina was named in Forbes 30 Under 30, The Drum’s 50 Under 30: Outstanding Women in Creative in 2019, and Campaign's Future Leader's List for her work in marketing while at VML. Her work has been awarded by Cannes Lions, The One Show, Clios, and The Effies to name a few. She has also worked across various VML office locations, starting in Kansas City, then moving on to New York City and now residing in London for the past four years.
In her spare time, Christina loves to use her creativity in the kitchen where she loves to play around with creating new recipes.
LBB> What’s the most significant development or trend shaping the social space right now?
Christina> Dark social, or more closed community-driven experiences. People are looking to get out of the mass feed experience and connect in a more intimate, closed setting. The major platforms have started to create for these shifting behaviours with things like 'Close Friends' on Instagram, which we see becoming increasingly popular and a coveted place to connect for friends, fans, and the like. (Anyone else think they were really Billie Eilish’s Close Friend?!)
LBB> Every platform functions so differently - and the way they function evolves over time and there’s a lot of fun to be had on social, from shoppable livestreams to AI filters - so where are you finding the most satisfying or exciting creative opportunities right now?
Christina> Personally, I’ve been investing a lot of time in TikTok. Between the creator potential, the very much still viable organic opportunity and the plethora of paid placements, there is so much you can do here as a brand, with or without a full brand presence, which I love for smaller brands who might not be able to go all in, or for bigger brands who aren’t ready to show up in full.
The TikTok community is so highly engaged that if you get it right, you can really get an idea to take off. Pairing great insights and a true understanding of the TikTok behaviours with their media placements is a recipe for a great campaign. Minute Maid did a branded mission recently on TikTok with the idea of, “Give Us Nothing,” a very popular TikTok behaviour. The engagement was phenomenal, and fans had fun actually creating on behalf of a brand.
LBB> What does ‘craft’ mean to you in a social context?
Christina> Craft in social looks very different from craft in most other touch points. Craft needs to take into account the platform trends, the user behaviours, the 'language of the feed' in order to be truly crafted for today’s social world. That could mean using native transitions or trending audio in exactly the right way — and that could mean the content looks a little funky, but if you get the social codes, you’ve crafted it just right.
LBB> Organic, paid, influencers, social search — how do you approach figuring out the best way to reach audiences?
Christina> Start with the audience and objective, always. Some objectives and some audiences are harder to reach through organic alone for instance, so a paid-first or creator-led strategy is needed. Some of it certainly also comes down to resource and what a brand can realistically do, and then we shape a social plan that is best tailored to meet the brand’s goals, resources, and audience.
LBB> What are the biggest missteps you see brands making most regularly on social media?
Christina> Treating it purely as a distribution channel, a place where they are just dumping TVC cutdowns and key visuals without truly crafting it for the audience and the platform. Social is social. It’s meant to be a dialogue, a place to be a bit more human and connect one to one and one to many, but oftentimes brands stop short of that by pushing messages out versus creating something that will truly take advantage of all that social has to offer.
LBB> Inevitable AI question! How are you applying AI in your day-to-day role and what have been your key insights/observations about the best way to approach it in the campaigns you’ve worked on?
Christina> Yes! AI is going to be a huge help to us social people. We’ve started to look at it for insight and brief generation, helping us find key moments and data to back those for our brands to engage around across the calendar year. It’s a great tool to help inform the planning process.
LBB> When you’re not working, what social platforms and content do you personally enjoy engaging with and why? What creators, influencers and social communities do you really love?
Christina> I’m a big Pinterest gal. I probably get on Pinterest three times a day and will scroll through or seek out specific ideas for a while. I almost always use it to find a recipe for what I’ll cook for dinner. It’s such a happy place, and I think it’s probably an easier platform for me to not feel like it’s connected to work at all because it’s tangibly about what I’m going to make and do IRL outside of the office.
LBB> What advice would you give to people who are looking to get into social, whether as creatives, strategists or producers?
Christina> Be open to anything. Social is a crazy place, and you end up wearing about a million hats. Some days, you might be a producer on an impromptu social shoot; other days, you’re responding to fans asking when you’ll open a restaurant in their city or briefing influencers on a new campaign. It’s a mixed bag, and you have to be willing and ready to roll up your sleeves and dive right in — you never know where it will take you!
