Intelligence People: Jeni Lee Chapman of In4mation Insights

This week, we sit down with Jeni Lee Chapman, Chief Growth Officer of In4mation Insights. Here's her journey into social intelligence and thoughts on the future of the industry.

When did you first become involved in the ‘social intelligence’ sector?

Back in 2007 / 2008 when I was heading up the Brand Performance Group for TNS – Kantar. We had just bought the social media listening platform Cymfony and I was leading a workgroup to incorporate this kind of insight into our brand and advertising impact solutions.

At Harris Interactive I helped launch Research Lifestreaming in 2019, a platform designed to provide a representative sample of social media conversations. In 2012, I became the head of Gorkana US, a media intelligence firm and we had a stake in Brandwatch. We sold a white-labeled offering of Brandwatch inside the Gorkana platform. And now we are developing a groundbreaking approach to unlock the predictive power of social data! Never a dull moment.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

A singer… then a lawyer

What, in your opinion, are the key benefits of social data analysis for organizations?

Despite all the bots, and paid search out there… you are still able to tap into organic consumer sentiment, feelings, and ideas.  It is also real-time and with the work, we are now doing at in4mation insights, we are taking social media listening from high-quality qualitative insights to quantitative trend identification and prediction – which is really exciting. It also unites my long-standing interest and fascination with social both as a way to amplify a message as a PR or media professional with the ability to get consumer-based insights from social data as a marketer and marketing researcher.

What aspects of your work do you most enjoy?

The amazing intellectual talent and curiosity expressed every day at the firm. Both co-founders, Steve Cohen, and Mark Garratt, are award-winning marketing scientists.  They blow away all the analytics I have seen to date across the many amazing companies that I have had the privilege work for.  Also, I love the people here. Their commitment to transparency with our clients when we develop predictive models for them, is not something you often see. We want our clients to know what we do and how we do it.

What are the biggest challenges in your day-to-day work?

Prioritization! As a talent-focused organization, we have many amazing ideas – focusing on which ones to pursue takes discipline.

Are you worried about regulatory restrictions impacting on your work in the future?

No. We don’t use personally identifiable information in our predictive modeling and analytics work. That said, the impact of GDPR does have an impact relative to the amount of publicly available social content you can mine for insights.

Which social data analysis tools do you use? Do you have a favorite?

Converseon! They are our partner for getting research-grade structured data from what can be the messy, noisy well of social data.

Do you think the ‘social intelligence’ community needs its own professional body?

I think if there is a need to set of industry standards to ensure that clients know what they are buying.

Name a book you would recommend to others

Ken Alder’s “The Measure of All Things”

Name a social account that everyone should follow.

Humans of New York on Instagram. Beautiful, real and often heart-wrenching.

Which person, living or dead, would you most like to follow you on social?

Hmmm – I cannot choose just one so here goes -  William Shatner, Shakespeare, Amelia Earhart, and Michelle Obama.

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