Katy Tenerovich is Director of Brand Strategy at Fitzco where she’s able to direct her innate curiosity about the world toward client projects. It’s a curiosity that has led her to many different opportunities, including dancing in the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics – and many client opportunities as well, of course. And we talked about those during our recent interview . . .
Who is the audience for your analysis and what seems to resonate the most with them?
It’s twofold. We have clients spanning healthcare, QSR, CPG, travel – and the list goes on. And for them, the consumer journey is an eye opener, as we do a lot of audience analysis. They find it useful to get a deeper understanding of not just who buys their product, but who is engaging and communicating about them online.
Clients are often unaware that there’s conversation taking place about them and they’re not part of it. And it’s so important to control the narrative about your brand. NetBase allows us help our clients be active participants in that.
And then internally, we use social media analytics to research for new business pitches. And the consumer journey is pivotal here as well. For example, identifying consumer trends that support a hypothesis that we could not have found via normal desk research – one that really resonates internally.
That brings us to the next question: Tell us about what you or your team’s process looked like prior to using NetBase Quid.
Our process before took a little longer; it was clunkier. Sometimes, we were literally typing keywords into a Twitter and an Instagram search to see what would pop up. I’ve used several social listening tools that weren’t user friendly. Our last one, we used customer service a lot for help and we weren’t clear on what the tool was capable of. One of the benefits of NetBase is it’s user-friendly. We have many more platforms to choose from on NetBase than we’ve had in the past. It’s a wonderful one-stop-shop. And we can turn around a report in 48 hours when that wasn’t possible before.
Which business critical purposes do you use NetBase Quid for, and how frequently do you use it for this purpose?
For new business pitches, we use it to look for interesting insights that we can use to then write a strategy that lands that big creative idea. We also use it for crisis prevention.
For example, we have a client in the energy sector that could have been really impacted by the election. We set up a proactive war room with the help of Zach from the NetBase team. They set up monitors for us, real-time dashboards that we were able to give our clients access to while we monitored them. We had a checklist and we listened for anything related to the election that also mentioned our brands. And we used that information to inform them.
And we did have one instance where there seemed to be a little bit of trouble stirring, and we called our clients so they could be proactive. The ability to be able to do this was business critical and it was crucial for our clients. And there was no way we would have been able to do that without NetBase.
Consumer posts about the same brand with negative and positive sentiment, aggregated from across the social web.
You brought up tracking a consumer conversation, what other key performance indicators are you tracking/complementing with NetBase Quid data?
We’re always going to track conversation volume and net sentiment over time, as well as who the audience is, where they are, what they’re talking about. And sentiment is always going be important. And that’s another benefit that NetBase has – I have found that their sentiment is much more accurate than a lot of their competitors.
We also track consumer journey numbers to see if they’re shifting, and what that means for the brand. If we have a campaign that’s going to run for a specified amount of time, then we’ll be tracking mentions and posts looking for PR hits or how many people used a given hashtag, as an example.
Word clouds showing keywords signaling purchase intent, competing brand intel, and triggers and barrier for purchases.
Tell us about an insight that gave you an “Ah-ha!” moment about a topic you were using NetBase Quid to research.
We find that our clients have a good demographic understanding of their audience, but they don’t always understand what other outside interests their consumers have. Or how are they use the brand in a way that’s unknown to the company. One great example of that is French’s Mustard. They came to us wanting to create something outside of the box. It was a very broad brief, and we began looking for anything that people were talking about around mustard that might be interesting.
And through social listening, we identified that people really love weird food combinations. And from that, French’s mustard ice cream was born. And the next year we followed up with French’s mustard beer. It led to numerous awards for the agency, and increased sales for our client, which is ultimately our goal.
That was an aha moment both for the brand, and the creative team. But also, for us as users realizing how much NetBase can help us even when we have a difficult challenge.
Continuing with our almond butter example, we can see how consumers are using it post-purchase, as one of many ways to source new ideas.
Obviously identifying trends has been beneficial. How important has it been to accurately identify trends or shifts with your market and/or target audience with data growing at an exponential rate?
We’re currently using NetBase to uncover ways to deepen our relationship with some of our customers beyond the ‘like’ button on Facebook. For example, we’re working with a client where we’ve uncovered these trending subcultures around them. And now we’re trying to put together a plan to activate them for the brand. Emerging trends and subculture type of activity that’s happening on social is essential knowledge for a company, and there’s no way to uncover those things without social media analytics.
What are some of your favorite features and capabilities of NetBase Quid?
Everything. I love the historical data that we have access to, I think that’s key for us again, in proving out things. We want to show our clients that this trend isn’t just a blip on the radar, and that it started 27 months ago.
I also like the sentiment tool, because I think it’s far more accurate, and gives us a good pulse to share the true perception of a brand online, as well as their brand sentiment. Even if they have a social team in-house, most are just looking at the comments and things that come through; they’re not digging or seeing the key drivers for these comments.
Loyalty conversation metrics.
What is one word you would use to describe your experience with using NetBase Quid’s products?
Fantastic seems like too simple a word for it, but it fits. In the past with other social listening tools, we were just thrown to the wolves – or we got good training and someone who could help us build things, but we received unreliable data. With NetBase, it is a holistic and well-rounded tool with strong capabilities that have helped us win awards and work. And it’s helped our clients sell more products and avoid crises. We have a wonderful account person who is there any time we need her. I can’t complain about any piece of it. We couldn’t do our jobs without it. The strategy team would not be as successful without NetBase.
And what gets you excited about your job, besides NetBase? Your favorite thing(s) or experiences that stand out for you.
I am a very curious person. And I want to understand why people do, say, and think the things that they do. And the wonderful thing about that is, it’s never the same answer. You’re always going to get a different “why.” That keeps me getting up in the morning and doing this over and over and over again. It’s never boring, because I never stop learning about new things, about people, about humanity, and about myself. So, that’s what I love about my job. And NetBase just makes that learning easier. We don’t have to say, “Trust me, I think this thing is real.” When we have NetBase, we can say, “This is what’s happening, and here’s the proof.”
It’s easy to see that Katy’s team is up for any challenge. And you can connect with her to help sort out your brand’s “why” by emailing her at katy.tenerovich@fitzco.com.
And if your brand is ready to see a demo of consumer and marketing analytics in action – and tailored to your specific needs, be sure to reach out for a demo – and never miss a consumer conversation about your company again.
