What is your job title? How do you use social listening in your work?
As the EMEA Senior Digital Analytics Manager at McCormick and Company, I oversee social media analytics and insights. Social listening plays a key role in this enabling McCormick to gain insights into our consumers, how they feel about our products, how they use our products and uncovering Food and beverage trends that drive innovation throughout our brand portfolio. This insight then fuels our content production in driving highly engaging assets that our consumers will resonate with.
What’s your background? How did you get into social listening?
I have spent the past 15 years working at the intersection between Digital Marketing and Analytics working on both agency and client side Throughout this journey, I've witnessed the evolution of social media from a novelty to a pivotal driver of marketing performance. Although my direct involvement in social listening began in my current role since 2021, I've collaborated with social intelligence professionals for an extended period and through leveraging the insights they unearth, I've gained a deeper understanding of business performance and its impact on our goals and objectives.
What has been your biggest achievement?
Last year, our Schwartz brand embarked on a ground-breaking partnership with celebrity chef Nadiya Hussein, marking our most significant launch in years. Due to the significance of the launch consumer insights were paramount throughout the entire campaign. Prior to its launch, our social tools pinpointed Nadiya as a highly engaging figure among our audience, whilst also offering a strategic opportunity to connect with her younger fanbase. Through leveraging consumer food trends, we collaborated with Nadiya and our R+D team to co-develop recipes that resonated with our audience. Our social intelligence platform played a pivotal role in tracking pre-launch hype and monitoring consumer sentiment post-launch. This allowed us to proactively engage in conversations surrounding the range, further fostering consumer intimacy.
What’s the boldest mistake you’ve made? What did you learn from it?
Reflecting on my first social listening queries, it's apparent the mistakes I’ve made. In one particular case, in trying to create a query to answer multiple questions about consumers I’ve cast the net too wide and left myself with so much noise it became very difficult to answer any questions with clear insights. My biggest lesson from this was to be specific, start with a clear plan and evolve and iterate from there.
What would be your dream project to work on?
McCormick’s HQ is in Baltimore and as a fan of the Baltimore Ravens NFL team I’d love to work on a collaborative project between the two. I believe our Frank's RedHot sauce would be the perfect brand to spearhead this activation and I'd be eager to explore how combining the two entities could significantly impact consumption, influence consumer behavior, drive brand engagement and sales among sports fans, a key audience for the brand.
Do you think there’s a right way and a wrong way to use social data?
Like any dataset social data has the ability to be misinterpreted, manipulated and cherry picked to suit an agenda or support a pre-existing hypothesis, therefore it is vital as social intelligence professionals that we ensure data integrity is maintained and data is represented accurately. We achieve this by maintaining collection standards, quality control and iterative improvements to queries to maintain consistency, quality and integrity of the data which then needs to be presented to stakeholders with clarity and direction.
What’s your favourite data source to use and why?
Currently, TikTok stands out as my favourite data source. Its growth over the past 5 years has transformed it into an invaluable platform for authentic user-generated content, offering profound insights into consumer sentiments towards our brands and products. The platform's dynamic nature, and swiftly emerging and fading trends, presents a treasure trove of data waiting to be explored.
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