What Is Social Intelligence and Why Is It Important?

Sam Coates, head of social intelligence, data and analytics at Ogilvy has been a data-savvy digital marketing and insights specialist for over 15 years, jumping between consultancies and agencies. Starting in the sales side of the industry, Sam initially worked in TV sales and sponsorship, before moving to consulting. “With the advent of programmatic and the inexorable rise of the algorithm, I decided to branch out and develop my capabilities, moving across to a boutique consultancy to shift my focus towards strategy and research,” he explains. So, when the role at Ogilvy for head of social intelligence came up, it was a no-brainer.

But what is social intelligence and why is it so important? 

“At its heart, social intelligence is the way in which we tap into popular culture and consumer conversation,” Sam says. The insights harnessed through social intelligence are those that help brands understand social priorities, debates and perceptions. “In an increasingly cluttered digital landscape, driving consumer relevance is very important, and social intelligence helps us to do just that,” he explains. 

According to Sam, social intelligence is not a specific technique or tool, but is rather a combination of methods, processes, tools and techniques that allow the industry to capture and analyse digital data that is gathered from the internet. And although commonly known as ‘social’ intelligence, the research spans web analytics, performance reporting, consumer panels, surveys, and beyond. The results are simple but effective - “It allows us to predict trends, identify risks and opportunities, track issues and manage crises, audit competitor activity, inform creative output, understand audiences, test creative, measure performance and shape brand strategy.” For Sam, social intelligence is a paramount element of any agency or brand’s strategy, as its insights are incorporated and actioned and are not “just sat in a PowerPoint deck on a hard drive somewhere.” 

Not only this, but for Sam, social intelligence (SI) is an inextricable part of an agency’s world if it wants to ‘do better work’, and is what allows them to go beyond their own frames of reference and cultural experiences. “SI gives us the window into communities that can differ wildly from our own. Compared to other forms of research, it can be quicker, more cost effective, more in depth and less biased.” And although shying away from sounding cliché, Sam is categorical: “The internet is the largest unprompted focus group. And SI is the way in which we can tap into that.” 

Of course, social intelligence specialists can vary in their dedication to a niche group, with these focuses also varying greatly in their implementation. This is why social intelligence data is also collected in a plethora of ways. “I don’t see it as a finite list of data sources, and it is an ever-evolving market. Social media platforms are common sources, however capabilities vary considerably by platform,” says Sam. What you can learn from TikTok can be miles away from what one learns from Facebook. On the other hand, blogs and forums like Reddit provide logical extensions to social, while web and online press bring in the bigger picture on a certain topic.

 

“Beyond consumer conversation, we often layer in search data to understand intent, and/or panel data to help construct personas and understand behaviours outside of digital environments,” Sam says. A lot of this data is available through already existing industry infrastructures, however in the right circumstances, he explains, there is a role for more bespoke approaches and custom data scraping.

However, as good as SI is, there are some circumstances where answers to certain questions might not be so readily available. “For example, if a niche audience is required, or if a topic is private in nature, we need to consider other alternatives,” shares Sam. He was once asked to analyse the social conversation around athlete’s foot. “Perhaps unsurprisingly, people don’t tend to broadcast their fungal infections to the world.” So, in those instances, SI researchers will often look to incorporate surveys, focus groups, ethnography or semiotics - more primary research. Owned data is another dimension that can be tapped - this is any sales data or web analytics that give a view on which consumers interact with a brand or topic. “Ultimately, there are no hard and fast rules or limits that we can incorporate, and we’re constantly striving to expand the sources from which we can gain insight.”

While SI has existed for years, recent changes have been driven from two angles - the development of new technology, and the proliferation of data sources. “The social landscape is a fickle one - over the last five years we saw dramatic changes in data accessibility for major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. As Elon Musk’s recent takeover of Twitter has shown, nothing is set in stone,” Sam explains. “As a result, there is a concentrated push across the industry to avoid having all your eggs in one basket. When some data sources become limited, others appear to fill the gap and provide new opportunities.” For example, Reddit subcommunities can be one of the ‘most fertile grounds’ to understand consumers and community - particularly when it comes to localised spaces.

“With the advent of tools like DALL-E and ChatGPT, technology is also having a seismic impact,” he continues. “AI is allowing us to do more, do it better and do it quicker. For example, the application of graph network analysis, which is commonly used in places such as financial fraud detection, allows us to take a far more exploratory approach. While at the same time driving more intuitive insights than ever before. The days of ‘wordcloud on a slide’ are long gone.”

In line with that, Sam expects two things in the near future - more data and more tech. With things moving at an incredible pace, the winners, to him, will be the ones that are able to keep up and employ the tech in a meaningful way. “In the longer term I think we will also see better integration. The technological arms race is already leading to a number of industry partnerships and acquisitions (Audiense into Pulsar, the purchase of Brandwatch by Cision, integration of Quid into Netbase). A natural extension of that is the merging of siloed processes and approaches.”

While we all agree tech is racing ahead, one question to ask is, does legislation get left behind? When asked when SI intersects with ethics, Sam is explicit: “all the time.” While the content dealt with in SI is primarily voluntarily posted into the public realm, it is still consumer data. There are already some considerable regulations in the space - GDPR being the obvious one in the EU - however, to Sam, the real risk is that the action on the ground outpaces the ability to suitably regulate against it. “This is a similar problem facing governments and tech firms across the board.”

The onus according to Sam falls on multiple shoulders here. There is an argument that regulation should ultimately be top down; unless there is a clear legal standpoint, then companies will continue to push the available levers to maximise business success. “The flipside of this is that, just because we can do something, doesn’t mean that we should.” A clear example of this is the consumer data harvesting employed by Cambridge Analytica a few years ago - “It’s a hard one to defend,” he says.

It seems that the grey areas are not lacking. Even when looking at GDPR, ‘legitimate interest’ provides a broad remit for its justification, and the automation of web data scraping “has been a particularly litigious area”, as platforms like LinkedIn are after defending their data. Sam believes that what we are witnessing is an element of self-preservation in the industry. “The demise of cookies, the shift to reliance on algorithms over individual targeting, are all serving to help create a layer of anonymity for the consumer, though the question remains around how far this should go. Ultimately our business values should allow us to define our own moral position - and also to align with the values of our clients.”

Some big, unanswered questions hang above the industry in the case of SI and the technology is splintering and proliferating constantly, stirring conversation. “It will soon be possible for individuals to run fully capable large language models from their bedrooms - how can you regulate against that? In the absence of a clear legal framework our interpretation of what is right - both legally and morally - takes on ever greater importance.”

With the challenges always come opportunities, however. While for a long time the concept of SI was inextricably linked to social listening on Twitter (a limited dataset, controlled by a limited number of suppliers with a cost barrier to entry), today, the proliferation of social platforms has changed the landscape and has democratised data to an extent. “There are more suppliers providing new and innovative ways to access and analyse consumer data, with many at a comparatively cost-effective price point. You don’t need a team of data scientists to build a categorisation model anymore - those capabilities are built into many of the tools on the market.” If we look even further, with the development of AI, Sam thinks that many blockers will start to fall - the skill to write API code or to build an app to analyse data can soon be done by AI.

And really, however scary that might sound, it does truly help brands and agencies to better understand communities and diverse cultures. Sam explains that at Ogilvy he not only works with great consumer brands that ask diverse and interesting questions about the communities they sell to. In the space there are also progressive organisations, NGOs and societally-conscious companies “who take our learning and apply it in a way that can benefit more than just the bottom line.” 

He continues, “To find conversations where they are naturally happening,” says Sam. This isn’t a new approach - it’s a fundamental part of ethnography. It seems that the technology has jumped ahead a bit, so now people are able to do it remotely and at pace. “The blockers to doing so may be starting to come down, but the need for creative and strategic thinkers to analyse and interpret that data will not go away anytime soon.”