What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
I’m the global insights head of Sanofi Consumer Healthcare, my role is to lead consumer centricity and ensure we use consumer insights in most of our major decisions and core processes. Social Listening is instrumental to lead this transformation, because it’s versatile, unsolicited, and fresh.
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
The question should be, how did I get out of social listening, I’m an engineer, and I was doing my Ph.D. in information sciences when I founded with three friends of mine Linkfluence, a global leader in social intelligence that was acquired in 2020 by Meltwater for 50 million euros. The question of my next move was not easy; the Sanofi opportunity has been like a gift, leveraging social listening with the broadest, richest topic of conversation online: well-being. 8 months after I joined, I’ve been asked to take the lead for all consumer insights, social listening is part of the scope, but for the first time in my career, I’m not entirely into social listening.
What has been your biggest achievement?
Build a 250-person social listening global player, sell it, and realize 3 years later, no one left (employees and clients), and that growth has continued.
What’s the boldest mistake you’ve made? What did you learn from it?
Raise money when money is missing.
The only moments you should consider raising money for your startup is when you don’t need it.
What would be your dream project to work on?
It’s not about the project, it’s about the people.
Do you think there’s a right way and a wrong way to use social data?
Social data is a new way to get answers, and as you know, there are no bad answers, just bad questions.
Are there areas where you think you should be using social data for but aren’t currently?
Tons - and that's what's made this project so exciting over the years - we keep adding new areas of use.
What’s your favourite data source to use and why?
The one no one was expecting, social listening is about expecting the unexpected.
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