Paris: A Case Study in Emotional Worldbuilding

On the way to Paris, I couldn’t shake the phrase “City of Love” from my mind.

Maybe it’s all the world-building and loyalty strategy work I’ve been deep in lately, but everything around me started to feel like a marketing feat.

And then the question started looping in my head:

Is Paris inherently romantic — or is it a masterfully manufactured myth?

I went down a rabbit hole in true Rain Man fashion: Did someone craft this narrative? Was there a tourism board, a branding brief, a copywriter who pitched: Let’s make Paris about love?

After all, in the 1970s, New York launched the now-iconic “I <3 NY” campaign to counter the financial collapse — one of the most successful and everlasting branding/marketing efforts of all time.

They unified the city’s visual identity through merchandise, built innercity pride through storytelling, embedded it into pop culture, and created experiential touchpoints around Times Square and other historic landmarks.

A full emotional ecosystem. A textbook case of world-building.

It made me wonder: if New York could turn crisis into culture, couldn’t Paris have engineered romance?

After a bit of Google searching and persistent prompting of Chatgpt to help me prove my point, I learned that Paris’s romantic identity wasn’t sparked by a single campaign. It was a slower and more organic adoption. An identity layered over centuries: through Haussmann’s charming architecture, through literature like Ernest Hemingway painting the city's desire, and my personal favourite, the art of Monet and the imagined tranquillity of his gardens - p.s. go to the Musée de l’Orangerie.

Unlike New York, this wasn’t marketing by design. It was a cultural energy, and Paris leaned into it, with the government and tourism boards doubling down on the romantic play - designing experiences, visuals, and language to reinforce it globally...not to mention hiking hotel prices every February 14th.

And what’s most fascinating to me is that other brands can enter the world of Paris and seamlessly play along. Chanel and Dior famously use the city’s emotional palette in campaign after campaign. The movie, Moulin Rouge, turned Paris into a pop culture symbol. Even more recently, Netflix’s Emily in Paris uses the allure of Parisian style to advertise brands left, right and centre.

Because once a world is fully built and established, other brands and companies want to be a part of it.

If world-building is the act of curating feeling: mood, narrative, language, ritual, and place, then Paris might be the most successful brand world ever built. Let’s break it down.

Mood: Curating the Feeling of Romance

Paris is an influencers, living mood board. Alfresco dining, candlelit cafés with bookshops attached, river walks, long jackets and sunglasses…everything is staged to feel cinematic. Brands know this and borrow its aesthetic. Fragrance campaigns like ‘Coco Mademoiselle’ show Kiera Knightley careering through various Parisian locations whilst exuding a fierce and sexy tone, whilst Fashion editorials and even travel ads tap into the ambient softness of Paris. It's not just what you see, it's what you feel. The mood is part of the branding.

Narrative: The Story Paris Tells (and Sells)

Romance isn’t just a feeling — it’s in the script. Films set in Paris rarely escape love plots - my favourite example of this is Ratatouille…yes, A movie about an animated Rat Chef in Paris still attaches itself to a fitting love story. Advertisements hint at the nostalgia. Artists paint emotion. From Hemingway to Dior, the city is basically a character in its own love story — a narrative so effective, brands insert themselves just to act as an extra.

Language: The Semantics of Seduction

French is called the language of love for a reason and brands use language to echo the feeling. Phrases like “je t’aime,” “amour,” and “rendezvous” have become marketing shorthand for intimacy. From perfume bottles to product launches, Parisian language carries a specific emotional code. Take Dior’s “J’adore”: just one French verb — “I adore” — that functions as both brand name and emotional anchor - you don’t need my impressive B grade GCSE French prestige to know that it just sounds seductive.

Community: Lovers and Locals

Part of what makes Paris work as a romantic world is that it has players, not just tourists, but lovers reenacting rituals. Proposals at the Eiffel Tower. Locking initials on bridges. One billion Instagram posts in front of Le Marais cafés and the Louvre pyramids. This isn’t passive tourism — it’s sort of performative. Paris gives the world a romantic script to play along to.

Place: A Spatial Experience

Paris isn’t just a backdrop — it’s spatial storytelling, and brands and artists alike leverage these places as immersive stages. The city becomes a showroom of emotion. Every detail — from architecture to that ridiculous bridge with the locks on — is part of the design.

What’s even more fascinating is how other brands step into the world of Paris. Whether it’s Jacquemus launching a pop-up truck painted in romantic pink tones along the Seine, or Louis Vuitton staging runway shows inside the Louvre, brands don’t just market in Paris — they market through it. They borrow the city’s emotional backdrop and let it do the rest. A simple installation in Paris doesn’t feel like marketing; it feels like cultural immersion.

The same goes for product storytelling. A lipstick shade named “Rouge Montmartre” by Lancôme or a Valentine’s campaign like Chanel Beauty’s “Nuit à Paris” instantly inherits the city’s codes of sensuality and elegance. Even a YSL lipstick described as ‘inspired by the golden hour on the Seine’ turns a product into a moment. Paris functions like a plug-and-play world — brands enter, adapt, and amplify their storylines using the city’s built-in lore.

This isn’t collaboration. It’s world integration and it works because the world of Paris is already constructed, so emotionally consistent, that any brand tapping into it becomes part of something bigger.