How did you get into social intelligence? What was your career path to your current position?
It was not planned, that's for sure. I graduated in Economics and started my career as an auditor at E&Y. I eventually migrated to the Tech industry, working a few years at IBM, HP and finally landing a job at Google where I remained for 12 years. By the time I left, I knew my career would always be tied to digital from then on. I arrived at PVH Europe responsible for all digital insights for their major brands (Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein) and obviously social media is a major source of insights for fashion and lifestyle brands.
What's your proudest achievement of your career to date?
A recent achievement I am really proud of is having built a small but strong and well respected Digital Insights team, which is helping shape the overall strategy of the company's main brands
How is your organisation using social data to support business decision-making?
Social data provides us with a better understanding of our audience segments; it gives us real time insights on our share of social wardrobe and brand desirability; it allows us to track campaign impact as they go live and how effective they are in shaping brand imagery and attribute association with consumers; it complements our understanding of the competitive landscape; and much much more.
Looking into 2022, what are your expectations for how social intelligence is going to support your organisation?
Social Intelligence is a big piece of the consumer puzzle on two fronts. First, brand KPIs: Social Intelligence allows us to see the real time evolution of brand sentiment, perception and imagery/attribute associations. Second, trendspotting (in Fashion or elsewhere). Identifying new trends that can impact our business or facilitate high quality engagement with our consumers wherever they are is core to the Digital Insights team.
What's your view on how to develop social intelligence and get organisational buy-in?
Investing in a strong, smart team with the right skills is essential. Social intelligence requires a very specific set of skills so finding the right group of people may take some time. Investing in a suite of tools that complement each other and provide a comprehensive view of the available data is another step towards success. Finally, a dynamic and clear strategy must be in place: what are we trying to achieve? What metrics should we look at? What does success look like?
What piece of advice would you give to others working within organisations doing social intelligence?
Experimentation and inspiration. I like to think of my job as 45% creative thinking, 45% detective work and 10% textbook. Be creative: experiment with different ideas, different tools and approaches. Be inspired: network and be tuned to what's going on in your industry and with your consumers so you are able to connect the dots more easily. Finally, 'show don‚'t tell' when trying to get stakeholders buy-in is always a good approach, at least in my experience so far.
Where would you like to see the discipline of social intelligence going in the future?
As should be the case with any consumer insights, I would like to see Social Intelligence have a seat at every initial briefing discussion for a new product, service or content, instead of being an afterthought in many instances. It can provide valuable insights on the consumers the brand is trying to reach, whether there is demand for the product or service and the right channels and formats for engagement. It can give us a clear view of pitfalls and red flags to avoid. All this within a much faster turnaround than other more traditional data sources (and in some cases at a fraction of the cost).
What would you say to business leaders about why they should be incorporating social intelligence into their growth strategies?
Younger consumers are heavily present on social platforms. They barely use email anymore. They turn to influencers or online group of friends to discover new brands and products. They are not moved by traditional advertising but rather 'adtertainment'. They hang out with friends on Fortnite (which has long evolved from a mere game to a social, entertainment platform), Minecraft and the likes. They are vocal about their principles and are active community supporters and expect the brands they love to become allies in their journey to a better self and a better world. The best way for brands to become those allies is to understand the needs and desires of consumers whose values align with their own. The shortest way to these insights is via Social Intelligence.
Get Social with SILab
