Justin Gagnon

How did you get into social intelligence? What was your career path to your current position?

I’ve always loved writing, storytelling, and baseball, especially growing up, so my family wasn’t surprised when I graduated from UMass with a Journalism degree and a job researching baseball statistics at MLB Network.

In the fast pace of a nearly always-live TV network, I learned quickly how truly difficult it is to take a mountain of data and not only find some meaningful or interesting insights in it, but also weave them into a narrative and then articulate that story clearly and passionately.

When I transitioned to a content marketing agency though, these was much more at stake than losing viewers because of a boring 30-second segment on curveball rotation. If I didn’t use the right data or share impactful insights for the small businesses in my portfolio, there could be a direct financial impact on them.

I focused on Google Analytics proficiency at the agency, and through that, learned that I had a knack for using intelligence to inform successful marketing strategies.

That led to my role at Crimson Hexagon, where I was fortunate enough to work closely with a large, diverse portfolio of some of the most well-known brands and ad agencies in the world. After mastering the software and making millions of dollars for Crimson through boots-on-the-ground strategy work with clients, I became a go-to resource for listening best practices, tackling complicated and unique use cases, and industry knowledge.

After four years with Crimson Hexagon and an acquisition, I moved on into databases and search, earning an AWS Cloud Practitioner certification along the way, and eventually found my way back in social listening at Talkwalker.

Behind the scenes at both Crimson Hexagon and Talkwalker, I led efforts to open both tools to diverse data sources outside of the easily accessible Twitter, Meta, and Reddit APIs. At Talkwalker, I was the Sr. Product Manager responsible for data integration capabilities and was a member of the strategy team advising leadership about the direction of the industry and the market for listening solutions.

I’m so grateful that my path ultimately led to the opportunity to reinvent social listening and intelligence at Taco Bell. With a team of brilliant, kind, and creative colleagues, a suite of powerful research tools, and the support of leadership to embrace change and take risks – Taco Bell is the perfect environment for a model social listening program to thrive.

What do you think makes you successful in your work?

I’ve been fortunate to have dipped my toes in so many different roles in the world of marketing – content creation, strategy, sales, product. With that experience, I’ve had the luxury of understanding the interconnectivity of each of those functions firsthand and as a result, have a unique perspective about the social media and social intelligence industries and what the future looks like for each.

I’ve also had incredible support from great mentors, leaders, and teammates. So many people have believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself and I’m forever indebted to everyone who has stuck up for me along the way.

What are the key skills that have contributed to your success?

My insatiable curiosity is undoubtedly the biggest contributor to my success. With it, I learned the most I could about every job I’ve had and ended up better for it in each subsequent role.

Enthusiasm is so critical, yet so often forced, that it’s an undervalued skill, but I wouldn’t have so much to be proud without it. Bringing positive energy and being solutions-minded attracts more of the same, and it was in those circles of driven, optimistic individuals that I grew the most, and vice versa.

More so regarding enthusiasm, particularly in listening, being able to articulate the impact of an interesting insight can be half the battle. If you find an amazing insight and no one listens to it, did it really make a sound?

What motivates you in your work? What makes you want to keep working in social intelligence?

In each unique role I’ve had, my favorite function was understanding consumers or helping someone else understand theirs. I find it so fascinating that pop culture and media trends directly affect consumer behaviors, and the best brands do it immersively.

Looking back nostalgically at childhood, I remember so many brands like Taco Bell and LEGO that I had a genuine emotional connection with, and consequently always will. Those brands affect pop culture and pop culture affects those brands. It’s surreal to be right in the middle of that synergy and it’s so gratifying to know that I’m directly helping the next generation of consumers build their own connections to pop culture.

What makes social data special compared to other data sources?

Over the last 10 years in social listening, I’d like to think I’ve seen everything, but with all that time writing Boolean queries, mapping APIs, and living in spreadsheets, I’m abundantly aware that uses for social intelligence are evolving faster than the trends that the science itself is used to understand.

That malleability, or volatility depending how you look at it, is what makes social data such a unique and powerful beast. While traditional business intelligence has rules, structure, industry best practices, etc., social intelligence is still just as much art as it is science.

Each individual social listener has their own subjective approach to gathering, crunching, and reporting. Much of that is thanks to the parity not only between social networks and their data, but also (perhaps especially) because every listening tool works a little differently.

While to some, that sounds like chaos. To me, that’s a dream. The social (media) listening industry has been around for ~15 years and yet, it’s still very much in its infancy with a long future ahead. As long as there is public, digital amplification of unsolicited opinion, there will be social listening.

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