Has the perception of social intelligence changed within your organization since you won last year’s SI Insider 50? If so, how?
First of all, I’m honored to be named to this list two years in a row, congratulations to this year’s award winners!
I’ve been in my role for almost 4 years now and each year we seem to gain more and more traction. There’s greater awareness, more maturity (personally and technologically), and most importantly, trust.
We’ve always had buy-in for social intelligence, but I think there’s more trust in my role and our data than there’s ever been before. That became more apparent this year.
We also have a lot more fun with our data! This year my team and I introduced what we call our “Culture Clubhouse”, where I highlight Web3 developments and cultural moments happening across social media. It’s insightful, it’s cool, it’s funny, and it just reinforces how powerful social intelligence can be (i.e., social listening to topics and brands outside our categories).
What’s the most interesting social listening project you’ve worked on in the last year?
That’s a tough one, especially since I enjoy many of the simplest and routine analyses I do. The biggest deliverable I had this year was the deployment of our (relatively) new social listening tool, Synthesio, which has been a great success.
I selected Synthesio in 2021 to become the bedrock for our global trend spotting tool, with the intention of bringing it to my day-to-day North American remit in 2022. Synthesio’s dashboards aren’t out of the box like most tools, I had to design everything myself, every widget, every filter, etc. This might deter some, but for an advanced user like myself it’s like being a little kid in a candy store.
Onboarding any new tool is tough, but it’s even tougher when you oversee 30+ brands across 7+ categories, not to mention the learning curve, comms plans, SSO enablement, trainings, etc. There are so many moving parts to a deployment like this, but with years of expertise under our belts we executed it flawlessly. There’s more detail that went into this than anyone realizes, but it’s the results that really count.
We now have ~250 cross-functional partners on the platform with access to the same data and analytics that I do (with special user permissions so they can’t break anything 😊)! This is data democratization at its finest, with my colleagues able to self-service basic questions and call-out trends from their side of the business. And they don’t have to know what Boolean queries are to do it.
This tool is a powerful addition to our insights & analytics arsenal, while at the same time creating the bridge for my colleagues to meet our consumers on the digital front lines, and in real-time!
We’re faster and more informed than we’ve ever been, I look forward to doing a masterclass on this one day.
What do you think makes you successful in your work?
Practice, I get a lot of practice lol. Sounds pretty obvious but that’s the nature of social listening, it’s very iterative. The way I structure our analyses for Advil are the same for ChapStick, Flonase, and Theraflu; obviously different categories and scope, but the data mining, analytics, and storytelling principles are all the same.
I get exposure to so many different use cases and scenarios, many of which happen naturally as a big company. Again, our innovations and marketing look different from brand to brand, so over time that’s what I do, I go brand to brand. That’s the natural flow of our ad-hoc requests and it keeps my mind fresh; allergy one day, toothpaste the next, vitamins next week, etc. It really challenges your skills, and over time that builds some serious muscle.
There are other big companies who, like us, deal with the challenge of having huge portfolios. Think Keurig Dr. Pepper, L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, Mondelēz, Kraft Heinz, P&G, Pernod Ricard, Diageo, Shiseido, Amazon, and Conagra Brands, social intelligence goes 3x as far for these companies when utilized efficiently. What works fundamentally for one brand will work for the 20-40 others, that’s become clear to me throughout my tenure here.
I’m also a good storyteller, my colleagues don’t even see 80% of the work and wrangling I do behind the scenes of a beautifully presented report. Half the battle in data storytelling is knowing what data is worth presenting, especially in social, there’s a lot of noise. Social intelligence and our business are both complex, so being able to communicate all our insights in a way that everyone can understand is critical.
What are the key skills that have contributed to your success?
I’m definitely a quantitative, my mind is wired for analytics and critical thinking. Creativity is something I have to work at, that doesn’t come as natural to me. Same with qualitative research, I really had to train myself to get better at it. I think my biggest skill is self-awareness, I know what I’m really good at and what I’m really bad at.
Sure, I’m a power-user with social listening tools but what really set me apart early on were my skills in Excel, VBA, and Python. Especially Excel. It was less about knowing how to use the software and more about the techniques I was learning. In my first 2 years in industry there wasn’t a single problem I couldn’t solve with Excel, it almost felt too easy.
My work at Pfizer, GSK, and now Haleon has been anything but easy so having these skills gives me a huge leg up, especially with social media data. Between the unstructured text, post context, slang, acronyms, and sheer volume of data, having analytics chops goes a long way.
I have a BA in economics and an MBA in business analytics & marketing, so I’ve always been practicing math and data analysis in some way, shape, or form, that really helped me when I was first starting out in social intelligence. What they don’t teach you is that soft skills are just as important: teamwork, communications, presenting to people, compassion, etc. The more senior I become the more I appreciate how important this is, in business and at home.
What makes social data special compared to other data sources?
The first thing that came to my mind was unsolicited, it’s data that’s just there, we have very little control over what’s generated online. It’s a double-edged sword, which is why it’s so important for companies to have social listening, there’s hidden opportunities and looming threats around every corner.
Social data is extremely valuable when you look at it through a research lens, it complements traditional research like surveys and interviews which are structured, solicited, and more time-consuming (and typically more expensive). They’re extremely complementary and I don’t think either one can replace the other.
Social media is raw, people aren’t afraid to show their true colors and emotions on it, and it’s real-time. If you read any stats about social media, you’ll see that usage continues to trend upward, and it shows no signs of slowing down. It’s embedded in our society and moves faster than any other media format, no one can deny its importance.
What motivates you in your work? What makes you want to keep working in social intelligence?
It’s such a fascinating field, it’s the intersection of 3 very established disciplines: big data & analytics, market research, and social media. I’ve had the pleasure of presenting at conferences that cater to each of these and it excites every single one of them.
I personally enjoy peoples’ reactions when I tell them I analyze social media for a living. Most say “oh wow that’s cool” but I bet there are a handful of folks who can’t believe that I “actually make money doing this” or “how hard could that be”. I can’t believe it either sometimes (*hits send on a company-wide email that’s all memes*).
The definition of social media and what constitutes social media constantly evolves, so there’s always going to be a trail to blaze. Short-form video on TikTok, voice chat via Clubhouse, P2P interactions on metaverse platforms like Decentraland and Roblox, these are all forms of social media that we have little access to and knowledge of in social intelligence.
Our industry’s brightest days are ahead of us.
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