Beautiful decor and thoughtful plating and presentation aren’t novel concepts in the restaurant industry. But the rise of Instagram’s photo-sharing influence is driving more restaurants to create strategically irresistible photo ops from over-the-top food to eye-catching physical spaces.

At French brasserie La Belle Helene in Uptown, our #1 ranked most beautiful restaurant in Charlotte, a branded bathroom mural is deliberately painted backwards so that it reflects correctly in mirror selfies.

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“The trick is to make the installation or idea a genuine means of connecting with the audience but also true to brand,” said Corri Smith, owner of local creative marketing and PR company Black Wednesday. “It can’t be cheesy. It can’t be a knock-off of something someone else did.”

Smith was the driving force behind that backwards bathroom mural at La Belle Helene and took home a 2018 Queen City PR Award for integrated communications surrounding the restaurant’s buzzworthy opening.

The idea came to her during the buildout when she snapped her own selfie in front of a blank white tile wall in the bathroom and realized there was a marketing opportunity in leveraging that space for such a predictable behavior. She suggested painting a reverse mural as a selfie backdrop and two weeks later it was on the wall.

“I was floored,” Smith said. “They took my idea and made it happen. That was a cool moment. And we’ve seen a ton of social engagement on it.”

Click here to view the original publication via Axios Charlotte.