What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
As the owner of GITR Innovation, I come alongside companies to help them innovate new ways of using social data. This can be to produce deep insights or inform company-wide transformation.
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
My background is in psychology, statistics and computer science. This combination got me interested in how we can combine AI and language to understand system one biases that people have. After publishing a notable paper showing how conversations can match Harvard’s IAT, I was hooked.
What’s been the project you’ve been most proud to work on?
Working with Converseon on a new generation Brand Health Tracker. It doesn’t only measure brands past performances but also predicts their future performance based on how well they are following the trend trajectories. This, to me, is a complete change in how BHT is done and thought about. It is now a strategic and tactical tool and an insightful report.
What’s the biggest misconception about your work?
Many people think social data doesn’t represent the population or any relationships only mere correlations. I firmly believe we can find critical drivers which change outcomes in social data. i.e. causality not just correlation.
Any nightmare clients? Why? (No names)
Related to the misconceptions some clients give the predictive and decision intelligence “a try” but without a conviction that there is true causality and we end up going around and around until we all run out of energy.
Is there anything that you’re doing with social data that you don’t see others doing? Any missed opportunities?
I still believe and propagate that social data can help build sophisticated models of peoples’ behaviours, which can then be used in the boardrooms of major Brands to allocate resources better and create greater ROIs than some traditional approaches.
Who has made a lasting impression on you? Any SI heroes?
Jane Quigley, from Converseon, has impressed me by her unrelenting belief that the mining of social data for insights can help every company. The proof is in the pudding. Just sit with Jane and discuss any of the categories she is involved with and you walk away more knowledgeable and a little wiser.
How do you think the social intelligence industry will evolve in the next few years?
I believe social media is entering into the consolidation phase. It wouldn’t surprise me if we see the likes of X, Meta and Microsoft playing more significant roles end to end within insights and analytics, primarily due to generative AI and the need/desire to capture greater revenues to fund the platforms as the ad apocalypse fallout continues.
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