How did you get into social intelligence? What was your career path to your current position?
Many of us stumble into Social Intelligence, but not so for me. I started my career in EY’s advisory practice as a consultant in risk & reputation management. I specialized in data & analytics building predictive models for clients to better spot and anticipate risks to their operations and reputations. It was from this data science background I turned my focus squarely on building and protecting online reputation. There is no greater asset to a company’s reputation than a robust social intelligence outfit.
What do you think makes you successful in your work?
Focus & friends. HEINEKEN is a house of 350+ brands, decentralized across 80+ operating companies selling beverages in 190+ countries. To make an impact at all with our global social intelligence capabilities requires us to focus on our top brands, top markets, and to allocate our time and resources to those use-cases and those opportunities that will provide the most actionable insights for our internal stakeholders. It also requires making friends, the success of the program hinges on our internal network of social intelligence super users and advocates and on our external team of social intelligence experts at Edelman DxI.
What are the key skills that have contributed to your success?
Having a background in data science helps, but a finger on the pulse of pop-culture helps more. Know your meme’s, know your influencers, and know your sources.
A good grasp of data science helps navigate the currents of big algorithmically driven data flows. Knowing your visualizations will help in data story telling too, for any given story there is a single best visualization out there, its up to us to find it.
All the data science in the world however won’t help if you’re meme game is lacking, we all need to be on top of our pop references, breaking news and influencers. Without this it’s hard to convey context, relevance, and interpret shifts and spikes in public discourse.
What motivates you in your work? What makes you want to keep working in social intelligence?
Social Intelligence is a dream field. Petabytes of real-time data, powerful visualization tools, fascinating insights, proximity to executive decision making, a high adrenaline field of expertise. What is not to love? Anyone would be lucky to find themselves in this industry.
What makes social data special compared to other data sources?
Social data is special because it’s big, it’s fast, it’s messy. It’s the intersection of chaos, joy, and discovery. It will turn your hair grey. It’s one of the richest and most dynamic sources of data available to any data scientist. It’s the only sources of data that gives it’s wrangler a glimpse of cultural expression in real time.
What does being a social intelligence evangelist mean in the context of your work?
Social intelligence is incredibly important for a company to be a responsive and thoughtful member of the society it serves. As our lives, and our social lives, move increasingly online and into the metaverse, the value of social data stacks & stacks like gold at the heart of a mountain. Being a social intelligence evangelist means opening that mountain up, advertising it’s riches, and not sitting on the gold like a dragon.
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