Bold Brands

Jamie Lerch-Ebner

Senior Vice President, Digital & Social Media Analytics

Paramount Global

Winner 2025

Jamie Lerch-Ebner

What does social intelligence mean to you? 

Social intelligence allows us to hear directly from superfans and find new audiences for our business. It's a way for us to speak directly to people in a highly engaged way that does not exist in other media.

What skills do social listeners need to succeed? 

Curiosity and patience. Social listening requires testing and learning in order to perfect listening queries and interpret the results accurately.

Biggest challenge to social intelligence adoption in brands? 

The biggest challenge for brands is breaking through and deciphering the noise on social media. It's difficult to hone in on the conversations that matter.

Favourite use case for social intelligence and what decisions can the insight help support? 

The most fun use case for social intelligence in television is pivoting the social strategy mid-season on a show to capitalize on conversations happening among fan groups. We often find trends created around parts of the show we would not have anticipated, so it's fun to ride the trends our audience creates.

What piece of advice would you give to those looking to do more with social data than just brand tracking or campaign monitoring? 

Don't just focus on the negative feedback; find the fun in the data. You are hearing directly from your audience. Build a system to respond quickly, not only in how you communicate but also in how you deliver your product. Fans are telling you what they want, so listen. 

Gen AI in social listening: hype or helpful? 

A little bit of both.  AI has been great for general summarization but is still not as effective in building out queries or delving deeper into insights. It has created efficiencies for topline insights and is a great learning tool for junior analysts.

If we could grant you one wish to help your social intelligence practice succeed, what would you ask for? 

My wish is to create more accurate social listening queries more quickly. It takes time to hone the queries, and we always run the risk of being too narrow in scope. I would love to always hit that sweet spot quickly.

If you were to start your social intelligence team from scratch what three things would you do first? 

First, I would clearly define the purpose of the team and outline goals for the first year of the team, and what the future roadmap would entail.  

Second, I would hire a group of fun and curious people who love social media and television. 

Third, I would build out my tool set and data infrastructure in a nimble and efficient way so my team can focus more on curating insights and less on dealing with clunky data systems.

What are you looking forward to in social listening for 2025? 

Social listening is a space AI can have a major impact, so I am excited to see how the landscape leverages AI more and more this coming year.

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