Marketing Happy Hour - Strategies for Rebooting Your Brand's Social Media | Grace Tully of PayPal

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

In this episode, I sit down with Grace Tully, Social Media Manager at PayPal and a freelance fashion stylist, to explore how she balances two creative yet demanding career paths. Grace shares her journey to managing social media for one of the most iconic fintech brands, insights on PayPal’s recent social media refresh, and the story behind their “Surprise and Delight” series. From spotting trends for 2025 to leveraging her fashion background for social strategy, Grace reveals practical tips for building a brand presence and staying inspired. Whether you’re managing a side hustle, navigating legacy branding, or rethinking your approach to social, this conversation is packed with actionable advice. Key Takeaways: // Leveraging Career Overlaps: How experiences in different industries—like fashion and social media—can complement and enrich each other. // Social Media Reboots: Insights into the goals, challenges, and opportunities of revamping social media for a legacy fintech brand. // Surprise and Delight: The power of creative, customer-centric content and how to measure its impact. // Balancing Side Hustles and Full-Time Roles: Practical advice for managing time, expectations, and priorities when juggling multiple commitments. // Content That Converts: The questions brands need to ask themselves to create meaningful and effective social media content. // Trends for 2025: The social media strategies and shifts that Grace is most excited to embrace in the year ahead. // Warm Outreach Framework: Proven tips for building authentic connections and engaging audiences on social platforms. Connect with Grace: LinkedIn Follow PayPal: Instagram ____ Say hi! DM me on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - I can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠ Join our FREE Open Jobs group on LinkedIn: ⁠Join now⁠ Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Every day we just think about like, why would someone follow PayPal on social? And I would push every social media manager to think about that. A lot of the times it's easy just to make content to appease leadership or check a few boxes when it comes to marketing. Social is an entirely different channel. It doesn't function like any other channel, like.com, like email, CRM, et cetera. It is so, so different and it needs to be treated in that way. Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. I'm Cassie, consultant, podcaster, and your host.

Every Thursday, you'll hear episodes packed with insights from brand leaders on an array of topics from crafting effective marketing strategies and hitting career goals to building leadership skills and launching your own business. Inspired by those unfiltered happy hour combos with peers, this show is all about practical, empowering chats to support your professional journey. So grab your favorite drink and let's get to the episode. So I am so excited to have Grace here today. Grace is on the social media team over at PayPal. We're going to talk all things social. Of course, we're going to talk freelance gigs on the side of a nine to five. I'm super stoked. Grace, welcome to the show. What's up? I cannot wait for this. Oh

my gosh. You are so cool. First of all, like we'll get in. Obviously there's a number of reasons why you're cool, but we'll get into some of them today. i'm i'm so grateful to have you here i think you're just going to bring a lot to this show um so thank you uh but i have to ask you before we dive in what have you been sipping on lately what are your favorite beverages recently oh my god i am so excited to tell you guys about what's in my beverage but first i have have to say, because we're not on camera, Cassie's skin looks amazing. Oh my gosh. She is literally glowing. I look crazy at 730 in San Francisco, but she is glowing in the corner of this room.

I need to know what's on her face. But right now I'm sipping on Rook coffee, which has been popularized by Alex Earl, but real ones from the East Coast slash New York slash New Jersey know that Rook Coffee is the best coffee in America. And I literally just moved to San Francisco, but I just ordered a ton of it because I missed it so much. And it's really amazing. Right now I'm sipping on the mocha and they have a new peanut butter flavor, which I need to order. But Alex Earl loves this coffee because she's from Jersey. I'm not even from New Jersey.

I just know this coffee. You have been on the East Coast a little bit. I know. It's fine. When I went to New Jersey with some of my friends, they were like, you need to try this coffee. Everyone in Jersey drinks it. And I was like, okay, whatever. It's probably just some like normal coffee shop.

No, I was on the floor. It was so no way so caffeinated I am shaking every time I oh my god I'm good you guys are this oh my goodness order it order it order it okay ordered it here someone took my package and I was so devastated I emailed them and they were so nice and sent me a new package and we love small businesses and their social is amazing too. I would check out their social. They're so good at teasing their new flavors and have such like a cult following and are really like the king of coffee of New Jersey. So I'm a super fan. And if anyone works at for coffee, listening to this, I love you. Wow. Okay. Okay. Wow. I'm, I fan. And if anyone works at Rocafee listening to this, I love you.

Wow. Okay. Okay. Wow. I'm, I have to try this. You, you sold me. I'm going to definitely check it out. It's so funny. I follow Alex Earl and I don't think I've heard of this. I will have to check this out. Love a good coffee brand. That's amazing. If she's ever at home in the car, she's usually drinking Rocafee and she kind of mentions it later in her videos, but Ashton also likes it. Okay. Great, great publicity for them. I'm glad. Wow.

I'm going to, I'm going to definitely look out for this. Thank you for sharing that on a regular day. I appreciate it. Changing my day. I can't wait. I love new coffee brands. And then to answer your question. So I was telling Grace earlier. I love new coffee brands. And then to answer your question. So I was telling

Grace earlier, I have a ring light, so it definitely helps the skin, but I have to tell you, Grace, I recently tried the L'Oreal Lumi Glotion. I have it right here. I have it right here. Literally obsessed. It's so good. Yes. So I don't know if that's contributing, but I'm going to say that it is. I'm a, I'm a huge fan. So it's like $9 and it's incredible. So love. Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I'm, I'm again, super stoked about this, but I have to know a little bit about your journey. I mean, you are a freelance fashion stylist, which is so cool by the way, but you're also PayPal social media manager. So how did you, how did you get to this place that you're at right now? Wow. Yeah. Two totally different worlds. And I always look at

my life sometimes and I'm like, wow, what are these two really different fields that I've entered into and love so much. And I feel so lucky that I've found two things that I care a lot for. And I've always thought they were super different, but the more and more I work in these fields, I realized they're more similar than I thought. I guess I can start with styling because I've been doing that for the longest. Essentially when I moved to New York, when I was like 19 or 20. I was looking for a part-time job and I was just on Indeed scrolling and I saw a gig for an internship with Zoe Costello, who is Migos' stylist and she styles so many other amazing talent. But the gig was for Drake and the Three Migos tour, which was so exciting. I was like, oh my God, a dream job just landed in New York. This is so cool. And I got the job and just started helping out essentially

after school every day. I would go over to the hotel where they were all staying for the tour because they were doing about a month of press in New York for both the shows, but then also like photo shoots and interviews, et cetera. And I instantly fell in love I was never fashionable whatsoever like you would definitely gag if you saw any of my outfits from like high school or college or anything you'd be like what is this girl doing in fashion but I was just so excited to be somewhere that felt like really behind the scenes and exclusive and uh like really glam and then I quickly realized how hard fashion really is and it's it's like a super tough industry it can be really exclusive not in a great way um and it takes a lot of hard

work and long hours but I saw the good in it I really loved it um from there I started assisting different stylists based in New York I worked for Christina Asgrova and Rachel Wang who's an incredible stylist who whose work focuses a lot on sustainability. And it was my favorite thing in the world. I'm really obsessed with it. After a few years, I felt ready to take on my own clients and just did so much cold emailing. Cassie, I feel like I am the queen of cold emailing. It's my favorite thing in the world to craft a cold email that actually feels like a warm email and not like a weird attack or something that's just bragging about yourself. You have to like craft it in the right way that makes the potential client feel excited about what they could get from working with you. And the only person who responded to me at first was Teffy from TikTok. Oh my gosh. She's my favorite girl in the world. She's so cool. She doesn't even need styling. Like she's just so rad and amazing and kind. So I started

working with her like as a solo client, which was amazing for a few months and then started working with some other amazing like YouTubers and TikTokers that we all love. And then Teffy eventually referred me to Hannah Burner, who is America's sweetheart. She's the funniest girl in the world. Oh my gosh. And so I worked with Hannah for a while. And then I recently moved to San Francisco. So I'm trying to figure out what styling looks like here. I mean, people know San Francisco is not as fashionable as New York, which is totally okay. But I think there is definitely an opportunity here for some sort of styling work that I'm thinking about and figuring

out. But styling is so fun. Like it's so fun. It's a lot of work. I've loved working with like really amazing women who just like need that extra boost of confidence by working with a stylist or need to like take something off their plate by hiring a stylist. It's really interesting how this industry works and how styling can uplift a client so much and just move them from like good to great to amazing. And we've seen that with so many different celebrities. Once they get like an A plus stylist, their game just totally changes. So in that way I've always loved working in a group like on set with others like you it's kind of amazing when you work on a photo shoot and you're the stylist you meet like the the hairstylist the photographer the makeup artist the lighting the

production crew at like six in the morning and by 8 a.m you have to be best friends and ready to shoot something amazing that like the world will see. So it's kind of like a really weird little world that I've just totally fallen in love with. So that's styling. Wow. I already just so that's so cool. I love it. Yeah, it's great. It's a lot of fun. So stay tuned. We'll see what it looks like. I want to keep doing it. Yes, please do. And then social media, also a world I never thought I would really be in.

I studied art in college, so I didn't really know what I was going to do. I went to Santa Barbara City College and wasn't really sure what I cared about or what I wanted my career to look like. But then I moved to New York, went to school there, graduated. And I graduated during COVID like a lot of people just in my living room on a Tuesday at 2 p.m. just like close my laptop and it was done. I was like, okay, cool. Time to start my career. How do I do this? And then I joined this mentorship program called Here to Help. Started by this amazing woman, Fauna, who worked at Instagram. And it connected with me. It connected me with so many amazing, amazing people in the professional world. I met with people like at Instagram, at Apple, Google, these like big tech companies that I never thought I could ever work for. And they were just telling me about

their careers and how they all kind of like stumbled into these roles and how they love it and the impact they're making. I was like, this is awesome. Yeah. I want to go work at one of these companies. This is so fun. They're working on amazing projects. But I was still like this kind of unexperienced 22 year old, like in Santa Barbara, figuring out where I wanted to start my career. So my first job ended up being at Whaler, which is an influencer marketing company. And I just loved TikTok at the time. So it was kind of the perfect role for me. Then I went to Vox Media and I worked on so many cool accounts there, like Eater, The Dodo, PopSugar, The Cut, New york mag everyone's favorite instagram accounts um I did paid yeah paid social there and then I got my job at paypal which kind of was a journey it

took over six months uh this was really during like the 2022 tech boom when everyone was switching jobs and like people were just so intrigued by these cool tech jobs they could get. And I really never thought I could get one again. But I saw an opening at Venmo, PayPal owns Venmo. So I applied for that through a cold email that helped me get the interview. And I didn't get the Venmo job, but my recruiter directed me to roll at PayPal, the same one, just at a different company. And I got that role. It was as a growth marketer working on paypal.com

and creating signup offers for prospects. Basically that means finding anyone on earth who still doesn't have a PayPal account and getting them to sign up with an incentive. It was super interesting. And it was more of like a technical role, which I loved. Definitely no social media involved, but it was super cool and fascinating. And it was finally a job where I felt like I was learning so much from the people around me. I constantly felt like the dumbest person in the room, which was great. That's all I ever wanted was to be around people who were so smart. And I had an amazing manager, Anastasia, who kicked my butt and taught me what to do and really just made me so invested in the work

because we were reaching millions of people on paypal.com global sites it's super cool then after about a year my manager was like hey girl there's an opening on the social world you want to go I think because they just saw me always making tiktoks in the office and I knew I did styling work and was really interested in like pop culture and what's happening in the world right now. And I said no at first. I was like, I don't know. That's kind of scary and weird and different. And I love doing the campaigns I'm working on and I'm just like not sure question mark and she was like just do it just do it you should do it PayPal is an amazing company because

they give you a lot of room to try so many different things and it feels like a very flat organization you can always bring an idea to someone in leadership or you could ask for something big that you want and someone will always listen, which I really love about the company. So I took the job and I moved over to the social team. The social team was in a place where they were trying to figure out like, hey, how do we really, really switch this up? How do we become super relevant and talked about and enjoyed and loved? And we just want to build this incredible strong audience on social. And we kind of just like hit the reset button and felt like kind of like blind mice walking through like a dark tunnel. We were like, how do we do this? This is really difficult. This is a legacy brand on social. There's so many conversations on what

do we do? And it's a big question, right? Like how do you reimagine what a legacy FinTech brand looks like on social? So it's been a year and I feel super proud of the progress we've made, but that's just how I ended up in the role. I guess we'll talk more about social later, but it's been a journey. And I guess like I'm 26 now and I've been working for a while. I've always been working in internships or whatnot. But I feel so, so happy to be in this role, even though I originally didn't want to be, but how could I even think that it's like my favorite job in the world? Oh my gosh. Yeah. You just never know. I mean, and it's totally, thank you for being so transparent about just that hesitation to take on a role. I feel like all the time we hear go for it,

take risks, everything, but we don't talk about how terrifying that actually is to step into something so different. Uh, so thank you for sharing that. And just your whole story. I mean, I have a bajillion questions. Um, one question I, I have to ask this. You talked about cold pitching a couple of times and obviously don't have to share all of your secrets, but I feel like both our marketing professional listeners, as well as people more in the entrepreneurship space, this idea of pitching yourself or, you know, going out and reaching out to someone new, it's always a relevant, helpful tactic. So I'm just curious, do you have any tips or things that we can be thinking about when going to pitch ourselves to others?

Yes. Okay. I love walking my friends through this. So I'm just going to tell you like I'm telling a friend. Okay. Perfect. We need to normalize the warm email. A lot of cold emails are just weird.

And I get cold emails. I get DMs in my LinkedIn. I'm like, what are people sending? Like, this is crazy. So if I were someone, okay. So imagine you see a role you're obsessed with and you're like, I need to get this role. I need to get my foot in the door. I need this interview. This is what I would do. So one, you take the person's name and you find their email address. Sometimes you'll have to send the email like 10 times and just make sure the email delivers,

but I just go on like rocket email and it's not that hard to find someone's email. It's usually just like first.last.company.com. But you can figure it out. Sometimes, you know, if it's worked, if like a profile picture, I sound so creepy talking about this, but it's true and everyone should do it. Like their profile picture will populate in the, in the email like line. So, you know, okay, this is real person. This this is their email address I always add emojis to my subject lines so at the at the beginning and end like a little sparkle or if it's I don't know I think for my Venmo when I added like blue hearts um just a little something to make the email stand out more um I always subject title it something like like introduction for x role comma my name anything to so they can know like hey oh this is someone cold emailing for the role or warm emailing we're rebranding it

um for email content content I would say like hi x um like my name is grace I'm currently at x company uh I saw you're the hiring manager for this role, like indent. And then a few lines about like what you do and the value you can contribute. So like I've driven X at this company. I'm like super invested in, in like the space, blah, blah, blah. Anything so they can say, okay, I'm interested in opening up their resume. You don't need a whole spiel. I've seen warm emails that are so long, Cassie. You have to keep it brief and short. I'd say it's like the hello. It's the I'm so-and-so. This is who I am. Thank you. My resume is attached for your consideration. Love, Grace. I love love as a sign-off. That's it. That's it. It has to be super simple. And if they don't respond, it's totally okay. But I would be sending those like crazy to anyone.

And I would love to get, I'm waiting for the day I get the most amazing warm email from someone because it's hard to do. But when I tell my friends to do it, they always see amazing results and just sound like a regular person. Don't talk about yourself the whole time. You really want to think about what does this hiring manager want or need? What can I include that will make them excited for the next step, which is opening your resume or looping in the recruiter? So let's do more warrant emails.

And I think this goes beyond just trying to get an interview and get your foot in the door. Cause obviously like anytime you apply for a job, you really want, you need to be taking that next step of contacting the hiring manager, the recruiter, or someone at the company. Um, I think it goes for anything. Like one of my goals for this year, I really, I really want to reach out to more people just talk to them about like what they do, especially in social. I've found that it's a space where you really need community. And I re I sometimes it can feel like really

insular, like, Oh man, it's just me and my team against the world. But the social media manager community is so amazing and big. I'm like, okay, I'm going to start practicing my warm emails for other social media girls. Cause I want to know what they're doing. Just an easy way to connect to people without sounding like a cold robot. Yeah. Oh my goodness. I love this. And I love the rebrand idea too. I think that's, that's so good. Wow. Okay. Someone has to, someone listening has to send grace. One of these just, you know, for you. Yes. And then just get to chat with her and everything. Oh, such a good idea. I'm going to definitely implement that. Thank you for sharing. Okay. You mentioned too, about this intersection of fashion, styling, and social. I'm just curious to hear how you kind of see an intersection

between those. And the reason I really want to ask is because I think a lot of times, especially if we have big pivots in our careers or we do a couple of different things, sometimes it's hard for us to grasp this idea of what we can learn from one thing and take into another. And I think that's so valuable because a lot of times we discount what we've done in the past because it's not related to X, Y, Z, but I think there's so much to pull away from there. So I'm just curious to hear your viewpoint on that specifically with your journey. Yeah. You know, I really believe that we are just all of our experiences compounded. And for me, styling was obviously one of the biggest experiences I've had in my life, but really every job I've had before this role, like my first big

foray into big tech, big corporate America has informed the way that I treat people and work with others. And honestly, styling, huge for me, it's a big part of my life. But I think my job working at a restaurant in New York City prepared me the most for big tech. Working with a lot of people, like coming through the door, a really fast paced environment. And I know everyone says that on job title, on job descriptions, but like truly very fast paced, a lot of different personalities, big demands, like scary, big, fast nights where things are going crazy and you just have to deliver and go home at the end of the day. I worked at Charlie Bird in New York for a long time and that was my dream job, honestly, when I was in New York

too, because I was always seeing these cool celebrities and just working with awesome people and learning more about food, which I've always loved. But I think that role too connects so much with my job now and the people I work with. Social is definitely one of the most cross-functional teams, I think, at PayPal and I'm sure so many other companies. You have to work with like legal and partnerships and comms and risk and product and other marketing teams and so many people. Like I feel like my out of of office I'm always emailing like 40 different people because so many people touch social it's the same with styling like I said earlier when you go into a set and you're with 20 different strangers at six in the morning like you're rubbing your eyes because you're so tired but you just have to get along with everyone to deliver

an amazing product and sometimes if you're lucky like your friends are on set or people you've worked with before, but most of the time you're just kind of freestyling it. I think what's similar about all of these roles that I've had is I've always been working with big groups of people. And you have to find the joy in working with other people. That's like my favorite thing about my team right now. It's like, I love good people, good work. That's all I care about at the end of the day. One, am I working with people who are smarter than me, cooler than me, faster than me? Two, am I producing things that I love and care about? Like I love showing people's Instagram to my friends and my family and being like, I work on this. I love this. It's like anyone who works

in marketing. You want to show off your campaigns, the things you're working on. We just want to be proud about what we're doing at the end of the day. Styling is so connected to social, the more I realize, and it's helped me so, so much. Wow. I love that. And just this idea of customer service infused into our work. I'm such a huge advocate for that. And again, to your point, not discounting those serving jobs or if you worked at Starbucks or wherever. I mean, there's so much to pull from that. And I think genuinely human connection is so important and relationships are so important in any industry or any role. And so having a prioritization of that, I think that's huge. So kudos to you for that. Yeah, yeah totally and internships especially yeah I feel like all my internships have helped me so much and I want an intern so

bad one day I think I need I need some like 20 year old who's obsessed with the internet to just send me memes all day because now I'm at the age where I'm kind of like I'm obviously very tapped into the internet world but there's things that I miss like I don't even please cut this out if this means something bad, but like skibbity, what is this skibbity toilet thing? I have no idea. I keep seeing it. And I saw a TikTok the other day that was like young enough to know what skibbity is, but old enough to contribute to my 401. Yes. I don't know what skibbity is. So I'm trying to keep up. Yeah. No, I, aren't we all it's, it's just, we're all in this game together. It's, it's craziness.

Well, speaking of just keeping up and trying to stay ahead on what's happening. Social media is obviously a crazy space marketing in general, but you mentioned just this opportunity that you have working with a legacy brand on social media. What do you feel those opportunities are? I mean, recently we'll talk about this in a little bit, but you did do a major reboot on social for PayPal. So yeah. What do you, what do you just feel that you have ahead of you for this brand? And what are you excited about there? Yes. This is my favorite thing to talk about because I do think it's a really interesting dynamic. The opportunity is huge. For me, the number one thing that I realized when I decided to move to this team was so many brands are fighting for authority and trust on social in their everyday lives, like in all the content they do. And I realized like

PayPal already has that. And so that takes off like a huge burden. I think when it comes to building a brand on social, I see so many amazing small businesses, small brands, startups trying to earn that authority on social. That's so hard to do sometimes, especially for a small account. But I realized PayPal already has that authority. I kind of look at PayPal as like the big sister in the room when it comes to finances, like the person you would go to for advice on, oh, I have like a dumb question, but you feel safe to ask. That's how I see PayPal on social and like kind of in a nutshell. But I realized it would be such an amazing project to work on. I know PayPal, your parents know

PayPal, everyone does. It's a pretty ubiquitous brand and household name. So I thought, okay, that's cool. It has this legacy. It has this authority already. How do we make it really cool on social? Why would someone want to follow PayPal on social? And it connects to a bigger question that I'm interested in is why do we follow brands on social? Because oftentimes our feeds are just our friends and family or things where we really, really care about like celebrities or maybe like your favorite athleisure brand. And brands are more of like a visitor in your social feed. Like no one's feed is entirely brands. So the real estate is really expensive. How do you get into someone's feed organically? It is near impossible sometimes,

unless you are one of the greats that people are talking about. There's so many amazing brands on social who have rewritten what it means to be a brand on social. And that's kind of what everyone is pining after now. At least that's like what I've seen in the social space. So all those questions were kind of swirling in my head. And I thought that this was the right opportunity for PayPal to kind of rethink what social means to us. How do we show up? What's the content we want to make?

And every day we just think about like, why would someone follow PayPal on social? And I would push every social media manager to think about that when you're working on your content and your delivery. A lot of the times it's easy just to make content to appease leadership or kind of like check a few boxes when it comes to marketing. Social is an entirely different channel. It doesn't function like any other channel, like dot com, like email, CRM, et cetera. It is so, so different and it needs to be treated

in that way um but i was excited it's a totally different world and space and um i definitely feel like i made the right decision because it's fun to work on and now i can tell people hey like i work on paypal social and they're like what i don't even know people had social and then i'm like go follow it right now yeah because you're to see, and you're going to get value out of it. Yes. Yes. Well, okay. So speaking of this, a recent series y'all did was this surprise and delight series. I'm just tell me a little bit about the origin of that and what kind of impact have you seen from that? I hear all the time about doing surprise and delight with in-person experiences, but on social, I'm very curious how that worked for you all. Yes. I love joyful moments on social and this surprise and delight idea that we worked on, which is sadly no longer on our feed because we wiped our feed, but we'll talk about that later,

was born out of just the idea that money is really emotional and people want connection when it comes to money moments. So I have to give credit to Omar Moore, Lammy Abraham, Shiva Rostami, and Sophia Capretta for the Surprise and Delight series. They were big advocates for it. And Omar, one of my coworkers, he's on PayPal's partnership team, was like, hey, Grace,

we have this partnership with the Suns in Phoenix and we have some tickets that we can give away. We want to surprise and upgrade some folks. What can we do on social? And so we worked really closely together to go to Phoenix and pre-selected a bunch of people who had bought their tickets with PayPal to the game. And I was filming, and Omar was our influencer, and he just ran around the stadium, and we found these people and upgraded them to the PayPal suite, which was super cool. And it was just so joyful and fun to find people of like all different ages and backgrounds

who are just so excited to have this joyful moment when they did not enter to win. There was no sweepstakes. It was just purely a moment of surprising and delighting someone. It was awesome. I was like, this is the feel-good content that I love to see on TikTok. I love Hope Corps TikTok or any sort of video that will make me tear up. Surprise and delight will not make you tear up. But I'm just like, oh, this is sweet.

And I love seeing that come from a fintech brand when finance can feel very cold or scary or judgmental like we want paypal social to feel very warm and full of like these great money moments so the sun's video was the first one we worked on um then we did one with the mercury wnba team which is amazing because we all love women's sports and then i worked more closely with my colleague shiva to do this at a couple festivals because PayPal and Venmo are on site at these amazing live nation festivals. And we did it there too, which is so fun. And like super, like super low budget, super just like me with my phone,

like amazing video editor at PayPal. We'll work on it later. And I'm like, that's it. We just kind of do it. And that's how I think all great social should be like fun, easy, not that deep, just like, go do it. If you have an idea, just get out there with your phone. Everyone has an iPhone. Everyone can be a director. Yeah. Well, and I love what you said early on is just how money is emotional. So like thinking about what is the essence of your brand? Like what are some of these traits or things that come out in the consumer or whatever, and being able to kind of use that as inspiration to tie into some sort of campaign or experience. I think that's a really

important note for us to just kind of brainstorm ways that we can tap into that essence, I guess. Yeah. A hundred percent. All right. So you have alluded a couple of times to the fact that the PayPal social media was recently wiped this. I can't imagine, first of all, like having to go through an archive or delete everything and just this decision to do that. It's a big deal. So what were your initial goals with this reboot and what have been some of the most exciting or challenging parts about that process? Yeah. I call the reboot like our Renaissance moment, you know, like, or, or like reputation moment where like the feed is wiped and it's a really big deal and everyone's talking about it. And so I have to shout out Gideon Anstey on the comms team at PayPal. He is

a comms pro and such an ally to the social team here and gave us the idea because he's so good at like generating buzz and getting people talking so we we heard the idea from him and we thought yes like let's wipe the feed paypal uh just launched a massive massive campaign across the country you've probably seen it everywhere like on billboards the will ferrell commercial yeah sunday night football um it's everywhere, especially like thanks to our media team. They are so good at just blasting this stuff everywhere. Like in New York, I saw it when I was home in LA, I saw it on billboards. So we thought like this would be the perfect moment on social to rebrand and restart. Like that's also a big question too. When you work at a company that's

having a big moment, what do you do and this felt like the right fit for us um paypal social has been around for what like 10 years so I just had to manually go in one day and archive everything I think I asked meta I was like can we just like mass archive right no it's like honestly that's fine I'll put some music in I'll just go like disassociate on my phone for an hour and archive everything so we did that and then produced some content to really go along with this new commercial that we launched and restart. It's kind of awesome. It might be like every social media manager's secret dream in the back of their head. Can I just restart? And it's hard because you have to archive all

the great things you've worked on, like the surprise and delight videos, which were some of our top performers. We had to archive so many fun, different social posts and memes. Bye-bye. But that's how it goes in the social world. You can't be like super attached to your work sometimes, especially if it doesn't perform well or someone doesn't like it, you just have to move on. So archived everything. And we're just kind of like on this new journey of creating content with these different brand guidelines and expectations and goals. And I don't think we're anywhere near the finish line.

Like socially, you're constantly evolving. We're constantly improving our processes. So this is just the beginning, I'd say. And I'm really excited to see what it looks like a year from now. Yeah, that is exciting. I just a blank slate is so refreshing. I feel like. Yeah. Yeah. How now. Yeah. That is exciting. I just a blank slate is so refreshing. I feel like, yeah. How fun. Yeah. Is there anything, any trends or anything like that, that you see coming up, especially going into, you know, we're recording this the end of 2024, just going into next year

that you're most excited about or things that you personally want to try a little bit more anything there you can think of yeah I'm I feel like newer to the social community because I've only been on this team for a year but I feel like I've always worked in social in some way um so I'm really interested in what people are saying but I wrote some things down that I feel like resonate with me yes yes um also just from what I've experienced too I think internal creative studios are going to be a big push for brands like bringing a lot of talent in-house hiring like influencers or creators in house I saw I think set active was the first brand I saw do this with Sam um that like hilarious TikToker hiring him full-time as a creator I wonder if that's going to keep happening um because

that reach is just incredible and it's so valuable to to have someone in house who can make TikToks. Like I love making TikToks, but I'm sure there's someone better out there in the world who can do it. I think video will still be king, especially like episodic content. I love seeing what Gymnasium makes. They're this like super cool agency in New York who do a lot of that amazing episodic content on TikTok. They do like boy room, um, so many different, funny, longer form videos, um, that are just so funny to watch. And I think longer form will still be everyone's favorite too on TikTok. Like I saw somewhere that, um, people now spend 30 more minutes a day on TikTok than they do watching TV.

And we need to start tweeting TikTok in that way. It is like TV. I watch like SNL on TikTok. Yeah. I don't have like any subscriptions. I feel like I just watch TikTok. Um, I think LinkedIn is going to be hot. I am like a new girlie to LinkedIn. And I think that's how you found me is through my posts that went like a little viral because I was thinking about all the platforms and where there's still room to grow or like opportunity to gain a following. And I was kind of thinking through all of them. Like I always try to post on TikTok regularly, but I feel so busy that I never have time to sit down and edit my videos, which I need to do. Twitter, I don't think I'm funny like that. There's just always someone saying something so quirky on there. I'm like, damn, I see that, but I don't think I can write that.

Facebook, we need to bring Facebook back, honestly, in some way and maybe a different form. She needs a little rebrand. What else? YouTube. I'm just a consumer there purely, blah, blah, blah. When I was thinking of all the channels, I was like LinkedIn, but all my friends think it's so cringe to post on LinkedIn. Why? Why? Why are we all in this situation ship with LinkedIn where we're like, oh, you know, I like, I check it out, but I'm not posting, you know, we're not doing anything. And I was like, okay, I feel like there's some opportunity to just post like a normal person on LinkedIn without making everything sound like, oh, I'm so excited to start this new job

opportunity. Well, like, okay, sure. Everyone should post when you get a new job, but what are you doing at that job? Like, let's, I want to hear about it. And I'm so interested in talking to people about their jobs and what they do, but I can just access that every day on LinkedIn at my fingertips. And I learned so much. I think it's been a really helpful tool for my career. And I found the social media community there. And so there's so many resources and I follow, there's so many good followers. They're obviously like Rachel Carton. I follow on there, who was amazing, former Bon Appetit editor, who now is an independent consultant and I'm a paid subscriber to her newsletter.

She is so amazing. Everyone should get the paid version. But that's how I'm finding like the best thought leaders, you know, like they're thought leaders. They have a lot of great things to say. Jack Appleby, so many others who I love listening to you guys post on LinkedIn. It's crazy. Like when I did my LinkedIn post and it just started going viral all of a sudden, I was like, what? I think it's just because I was posting something that I would text a friend, you know, for reference, this was a post I did about the

new campaign and wiping the Instagram channel. And it did really well, which I was so shocked by, you know, one of my first few LinkedIn posts. So that was a great morale boost and made me feel energized to just keep going. Yeah. And now I have a little group chat with some of my friends who love to post on LinkedIn and we're just kind of figuring it out together. So I'm starting to set some goals just to get content out there. And I would push any social media manager to do the same. It's hard, you know, when you work in social all day to try to have a presence or some sort of brand on another social channel. Yeah. We're just exhausted by social all the time, but do it. I think it's worth it. And same, just like the

PayPal channel. I want to see what it looks like a year from now. Yeah, absolutely. And I totally second LinkedIn. I think for me specifically, like I am a huge consumer on Instagram and Tik TOK and I love like watching videos and everything, but I'm not like posting on a regular basis on there. But with LinkedIn, I am consuming, but I feel more inspired for some reason to actually post on there. I don't know what it is. Yeah. Wow. So you feel like more compelled to post something. Do you think it's just because like one, it's a totally different audience. We're not keeping up this brand image that we have on Instagram or TikTok, but two, I think, do you feel like it's just the visibility is good or what's driving you? That's a really good question. I don't fully know. Yes,

visibility in my opinion is great. I think the algorithm is still not super washed out to where you can actually, people can discover your content, but I don't know what it is. Like, I just love talking about business and career and everything. So I think that's part of it. Like it's, it's genuinely with what I'm interested in. That's what fits most. But also the people on there are so smart and talented and nice and everything. So I love just sharing things, but also consuming their stuff and connecting with people on there. That is the number one place where we've over the years found guests.

And those guests, a lot of times have turned into friends or business partners or people who have hired us for different projects. It's really exciting. I mean, there's so much just opportunity in general on there. Yeah. Yeah. I saw that there's 9 million people on LinkedIn and only 3 million people post. Wow. And I'm sure that's not even daily. Yeah. I think if you can post on your Instagram story every day about like your brunch or your concert or whatever, go post on LinkedIn too. Like it takes two seconds. And I think most of the time, like a lot of us have good thoughts that would be bangers on LinkedIn and we just kind of let them go.

Same for TikTok. All the time. I see so many TikToks that, you know, take five seconds to make. But if there's a hilarious social insight that people just get, it resonates with them and they love it. It's just like LinkedIn. If you have like a relatable work insight, share it. You know, people just want community at work a lot of the times, like after a bad day, sometimes I'll go on LinkedIn and I'm there's some

social media person posting about like a bad day working in social. Oh, someone gets it. You know, you just need to be taken out of your little bubble sometimes. And there's great community, great insights on LinkedIn. So let's make LinkedIn cool is my goal for 2025. I agree. I completely agree. I'm here for it. So I want to go back just to talking about the fact that you have this full-time role, but you're also working to build this side hustle. I feel like nowadays, kind of similar to LinkedIn, it's becoming really working to build this side hustle. I feel like nowadays, kind of similar to LinkedIn, like it's becoming really normal and cool to do that. Like before it was very much like you do your nine to five, that's it. You come home, you eat your dinner, like, you know, whatever. So talk a little bit about that and just what advice do you have for others just looking to

kind of manage both or kind of kickstart having something on the side of their nine to five? Yes. My number one gift in life is notion. Yes. It's like a new thing for me this year, but it helps me organize my life so much. So number one, get notion to, um, a lot of my friends and people I talk to are interested in side hustles. I was like, oh, I need to make more money. I want a side hustle. What do I do? And I try to think like if I never got into the styling world, what I would be doing, honestly, probably just be like working at a wine bar or something because I just like love working in restaurants and want to make some extra money. Anything can

kind of be a side hustle and there's no shame in what you do. I mean, money is money. And I've had so many side hustles. I think at one point when I was living in New York, I had six jobs in college. It was crazy. I had like two internships. I was doing the styling. I was in school. I worked at Charlie Bird and I was babysitting and I think something else. And my advice would just be like to send it and start now and send a warm email or start your own thing. People are so talented. And the advice I always just see and I hear in my life that resonates is just start now. Just start now, start now, start now. Just say yes. Progress is better than perfection. You are only one flop away from your biggest slay. Like just do it. There's no

shame. And so my friends are great and so talented. And some of them have amazing side hustles that I see like they're photographers or even just like doing pottery, just a fun hobby, whatever. Just do it. But when it comes to actionable items, this is what I would say is like, one, figure out what you're good at. And two, like, is there opportunity to make some money? What I've seen with my career is there was a point in my life when I was just so ultra stressed doing styling and my full-time job at the same time. Like every night coming home, sending a hundred brand request emails, running to FedEx before like my first meeting to drop something off, chasing after the UPS guy to pick up a dress. You know, I have all their,

all their numbers, all their names on my phone, all my old Williamsburg delivery drivers, because you just like are so under pressure to get clothes in on time um going to fittings whatever and so when I started this new job in social I was working with Hannah Berner and I just went to her one day and I was like Hannah I am so stressed I'm so stressed I don't think I can do this like full-time for you anymore and she was so accommodating and sweet and lovely and just gave me the best advice. She was like, Grace, when I was your age, I like took an unpaid internship when I was 25. And I looked at her, I was like, oh my God, now like what, six, seven years later, she is one of the most like

loved, funny, hilarious, popular women in America. And that really resonated with me. So I actually took a break from styling after that to focus more on this role at PayPal. And I still want to pick up on it or get back into it here in San Francisco. So that's all to say that if you're doing this side hustle and you're so passionate about it and it just becomes too much, be okay with simplifying your life. It's okay not to do everything and stress yourself out because that impacts your relationships, your performance at work, like your health. Always been something I've struggled to figure out like where I stand. Do I one, want to do everything because I'm young and I have all these goals and I just want to meet

people and have a party or two, do I just really want to simplify what I do and just be really good at one or two things? And I think I'm leaning more towards the second now after having done all the jobs and been stressed and had no time to do anything. Now I'm like, okay, I can really focus on this job because I love it and I want to build a brand for myself. But if the side hustle that I love so much also fits into that, I will totally do it, but it's probably going to be less frequent, which I'm okay with. Yeah, that's so good. And that kind of leads into my next question. I have to ask you, just what, is there anything you wish you knew earlier on in your career that you know now?

This is a good question. One thing I've been seeing a lot on TikTok that I truly believe in is biz res and I don't think I'm the queen of biz res at all but I just love kiki-ing with my co-workers and I think that makes a really big difference in the way we all work together is remembering that work is serious but it's not that serious at the end of the day and we're all real people again this is where I think the styling and like my um service industry experience comes in like you just have to treat people nicely and realize like no one is your enemy we're all one big team we all have like these worries and concerns outside of work and are trying to build other things um just be nice like Like that will take you so far. Asking questions, like don't be afraid to be the young voice in the room,

but also really like if you're young and you're listening to this, use that to your advantage in the corporate workspace. I think that's helped me a lot. Like people always turn to me and they're like, Grace, what does this meme mean? Like what are the TikToks that are trending? And I'm just so like flattered sometimes when people are asking me what's trending as if they think I know when I don't even know what Skibity toilet is or whatever it is. And what else did I say? Always ask for what you want in the workspace, but also outside of the workspace. I found this to be so true. I wonder too, if I just went to my team and said, Hey, I want to join the social team. They would probably listen and be like, okay, how do we get you there? Set goals. This is something

I found to be true among like my cohort of young female friends in the workspace is like, sometimes we can be so afraid to ask our manager for that raise or ask to switch teams or set big goals for ourselves. So just do it. Post on LinkedIn. Yes. Also, one piece of advice I really love is like the biggest risk you can take is no risk. I think this rings true for social, but also outside of social is just, if you're young and you're in marketing, like risk is often rewarded

and pays you back in dividends. It's worth the challenge, like switch that team apply for that job move across the country why not yes there's so much to see and do um and do the side hustle I think having my side hustle has made me more of a well-rounded person at work and people want to hear about it which I'm also flattered by and um it's just like fun just incorporate more fun into the workspace. I don't know. I think that's the advice is all over the place. Yes.

No, I'm still learning. I'm figuring it out. Yeah. Aren't we all? I mean, that was so good. And this whole episode was just filled with such good nuggets. I learned so much. So thank you so much for everything. And I want, of course, everyone to be able to stay in touch with you as well as PayPal. So what are the best places we can connect with you and the brands? Okay. So guys, follow me on LinkedIn, Grace Tully, because I love posting and I'm trying to be a LinkedIn thought leader, JK. Check out my shopping guide on my website, gracetully.com.

It has all the brands I've worked with as a stylist and also all the ones I love. So, um, there's a lot of great like outfits for the office on there too. If you want to check it out, wedding, summer, fall, et cetera. Um, and send me a warm email, grace s tully at gmail.com. Yes, please do let me know if anyone does. I'm excited to hear all about that. Uh, grace again, thank you so much for being here today. This was such a great conversation. Thank you, Tassie. And I'm ordering more Lumi Glow Shin. Yes, me too.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I would love your feedback. And if you're ready to take things to the next level, sign up for my weekly newsletter in the show notes. You'll get weekly career and marketing insights straight to your inbox. And if you have an idea for a future Marketing Happy Hour episode, shoot me an email.

Hello at marketinghappyhr.com. Thank you again, and I'll see you next Thursday.