Coachella: Aussie brand Little Green Panda made it into the most exclusive part of Coachella

EXCLUSIVE — A Melbourne-based brand has made it Coachella of Kendall Jenners Tequila company 818, thanks to the power of social media.

Sustainable packaging company Little Green Panda was founded in 2019 by Frenchman Manon Beauchamp-Tardieu, 32, while she was studying in Australia.

The company takes leftover sugar cane mulch from Taiwanese farms and processes it into biodegradable straws that don’t get soggy when wet.

Although the brand has been around for years and has slowly built a loyal customer base of Australian businesses, Beauchamp-Tardieu and her social media producer, Jas Cott, 24, knew the company could be taken to the next level.

Cott had her eye on Kendall Jenner’s Tequila Brand 818.

Her goal was simple: to put Little Green Panda products in her hyper-exclusive Coachella 818 Outpost event – ​​but the question remained: how would they get there?

Outpost is an exclusive invitation-only section of the Coachella music festival, hosted by Jenner’s Tequila Brand.

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Taking to social media, Cott put together a pitch deck and presented the 818 team with all the reasons why they should invite the brand to collaborate with them at the music festival.

The social media expert told nine.com.au that they had planned 20 days of content, but the tequila brand noticed this after just a week of posting.

“I liked number seven when they contacted us,” Cott explained.

“I created a PowerPoint slideshow outlining all the reasons why they should work with us… I gave all the reasons why I thought we would be a good fit and yes – it worked!”

Representatives from 818 Tequila reached out to the brand on Instagram and said they had seen their videos. They invited them to a meeting to discuss how the brand could get involved in the 818 outpost event.

“To be honest, I didn’t even really believe it. We were so scared to open the DM. We were obsessed with just looking at the notification,” she said.

Beauchamp-Tardieu added that initially they just wanted to send the straws for the brand to use, but 818 sent an invitation to the Outpost a few weeks before the festival.

“Outpost is so exclusive, we’re basically nobody, we were like, ‘We’re not going to get a chance to go in there,’” she explained.

“Then they sent an email saying we wanted to invite you both to come along.

“We were literally screaming… we were just excitedly yelling at each other on a phone call, we didn’t even have words to express it.

“Then we had to book flights and accommodation, everything was sold out. It was crazy. We planned this whole trip in two weeks.”

The brand supplied thousands of straws for use in the Outpost during Coachella Weekend 1 and Weekend 2.

Beauchamp-Tardieu added that without social media, her company would never have had the opportunity to collaborate with 818 tequila.

“It’s basically changed our whole lives. For a brand, the visibility you can get for free without having to pay for ads… It’s insane.”

“You can reach the other side of the world while you’re in Australia.”

Bianca Cipri, founder of social media marketing agency Be the Buz, told nine.com.au that Little Green Panda is a great example of how social media can be transformative for a small business.

She thinks Little Green Panda managed to reach Coachella because they used team-driven content.

“Founder-based and team-led content is really terrible, even with our customers; that’s what’s filtering through,” she said.

“People connect with people more than a logo. It builds that trust a lot more, and you have a visualization of who you’re talking to and who you’re buying from.”

Little Green Panda isn’t the only company using social media for growth and business opportunities.

“Every customer starts with knowing who you are as a brand,” says Cipri.

“Visibility is a huge thing right now, so appearing on social media and posting really gives you the opportunity to connect with potential new customers or clients.

“It gives those smaller companies an opportunity to really experience that exposure that they may not have had access to before.”

Little Green Panda is now considering expanding to the US, already in talks with US mega-store Walmart, an opportunity they say would never have happened without their Coachella experience.

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