What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
I am the founder of my own audience research consultancy - Convert Culture. My social intelligence projects use a mix of social data (listening and behavioural) to understand and profile audiences and trends.
Currently, I work primarily in publishing - speaking very broadly, a typical project involves researching audiences around an author, brand, topic or genre to unlock growth. With considerable marketing experience, I deliver all my projects with a view to how the insights might be used practically to inform the final campaign - from copy to advertising or positioning.
I plan to expand the business into other areas over the coming year. A natural progression would be to work with campaign and brand teams within the arts and other entertainment industries but also food, wellbeing and the charity sector.
What’s been the project you’ve been most proud to work on?
Almost every project I’ve worked on over the last 12 months has been different and new - in the use case and the approach - so I’ve been proud of everything.
In terms of complexity and results - I’m particularly proud of the recent cookery projects I’ve worked on using data from Meta - one to analyse a bestselling brand author’s audience to find areas for growth and the other to map several key audiences that are currently driving the cookbook market. Both unearthed previously unknown behaviours, attitudes and interests that informed the publisher’s strategies for several books.
In terms of pure “social listening”, I’m incredibly proud of the research and campaign I led for Cariad Lloyd’s book about grief - You Are Not Alone. I used social listening to create a map of the 'grief moments' people experience as emotions resurface and where they are expressed online. This guided every aspect of the campaign I then led.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve been almost exclusively working on fiction-related projects - and the “stretch” audiences that collectively make for a bestseller. This has been incredibly exciting. So watch this space!
What’s the biggest misconception about your work?
People love to try to simplify what I do - believing I can only profile one audience or work with data from one platform. I use different methodologies for almost every project and can examine almost any platform, audience, conversation, genre, topic or interest.
Any nightmare clients? Why? (No names)
No nightmare clients - but there is a learning process with this work to get the best insights. I *could* rattle off a quick report and deliver swathes of data but getting to something genuinely useful requires a bit of collaboration and back and forth in the project design phase and some time to make sense of the data. I’ll pull out the stops for clients where I can, of course, but for research informing extensive consumer campaigns, I need to start six months from the date they want the final campaign to run. This allows clients to take on board the research, work up creatives and book slots with their ad agency in plenty of time - to create a genuinely audience-led campaign.
Is there anything that you’re doing with social data that you don’t see others doing? Any missed opportunities?
I get the impression that many people are primarily working with public conversational data and focusing primarily on platforms rather than the audience.
I start with the audience, always. And I always try to remember the vast majority of people are not posting their thoughts publicly. People are more likely to express their needs and preferences through their actions on social media - not by what they say, but by what they do - who they follow, and what they like. And I go to where the richest, measurable data for an audience is that I feel confident is representative and then I might layer in other data sources. But I always start with the audience. Sometimes (gasp), I might not use social data, or I may use it as supplementary to something else.
Who has made a lasting impression on you? Any SI heroes?
I was impressed by Karen Vega-Porcelli from Paramount, whom Jillian invited to present to the SI Lab in Autumn 2022. A lot is going on in multiple entertainment industries that those who work on the campaign (rather than the brand) side could learn a lot from.
How do you think the social intelligence industry will evolve in the next few years?
AI will, of course, play a massive role in the evolution of what we do. I think those outside the industry perhaps believe that AI will mean they a) won’t need to look at raw “data” and b) it will allow marketing teams to make quick decisions themselves at the click of a button.
It will help us crunch the data better - and speed up *some* processes. It will provide a few pieces of information directly to teams that help them make quicker ad hoc decisions. However, I think insights will always require good analysts to spend time understanding the client’s needs and the human behaviours within the data.
If you’re waiting for a one-click tool to deliver clues about complex human motivations (which is the good stuff and delivers the most effective campaigns), you will be waiting a little longer.
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