How this Melbourne-based brand made it into the most exclusive part of Coachella

EXCLUSIVE -- A Melbourne-based brand has made it to Coachella with Kendall Jenner's Tequila company 818, thanks to the power of social media.

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

The company takes leftover sugarcane mulch from Taiwanese farms and turns it into biodegradable straws that don't go soggy when they're wet.

While the brand has been around for years, slowly building up 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 Kendall Jenner's Tequila Brand 818 in her sights.

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

Outpost is an exclusive, invite-only section at the Coachella music festival, which is hosted by Jenner's Tequila Brand.

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Cott took advantage of social media, putting together a pitch deck and pitching to the 818 team all the reasons why they should invite the brand to collaborate with them at the music festival.

The social media whizz told nine.com.au that they had 20 days of content planned, but the tequila brand took notice after just one week of posting.

"I had gotten to like number seven when they reached out to us," Cott explained.

"I made a PowerPoint slideshow outlining all the reasons why they should work with us... gave all the reasons why I thought we would be a good fit and yeah – it worked!"

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

"Honestly, 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 at first, they were just going to send over the straws for the brand to use, but 818 extended an invitation to the Outpost a few weeks before the festival.

"Outpost is so exclusive, we're nobodies really, we thought 'we're not going to get a chance to go in there,'" she explained.

"Then last month they sent an email saying we'd like to invite you both to come along.

"We literally screamed... we were just excitedly screaming at each other over a phone call, we didn't even have words to express it.

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

The brand supplied thousands of straws to be used in the Outpost across Coachella Weekend 1 and Weekend 2.

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

"It's changed our whole life, really. For a brand, the visibility that you can get for free without having to pay for ads... It's crazy."

"You can reach the other side of the world whilst being in Australia."

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

She thinks Little Green Panda were successful in getting to Coachella because they used team-led content.

"Founder-based and team-led content is really killing it, even with our clients; that's the thing that's cutting through," she said.

"People connect with people more so than a logo, it builds that trust a lot more, and you have a visualisation of who you're talking to and buying from."

Little Green Panda is not the only company taking advantage of social media for growth and business opportunities.

"Every customer starts with knowing who you are as a brand," Cipri said.

"Visibility is a massive thing at the moment, which is why showing up on social media and posting really gives you that chance to connect to potential new customers or clients.

"It gives those smaller businesses a chance to really experience that exposure that they may not have had access to before."

Little Green Panda is now looking at expanding into the US, already in talks with US Mega-store Walmart, an opportunity they say would have never happened if it weren't for their Coachella experience.

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