Values Insights from Social Listening
Something popped into my noggin the other day when I was working on a client project for a rather large CPG brand. "Culture isn't what people say they believe. It's what they'll defend in a comment section at 2am."
Sometimes we’re measuring the wrong thing with the wrong tools. There’s a problem with surveys and focus groups. Marketers often want to wring consumer values and beliefs out of these tools. They’re not the right ool for that.
Customers lie. Always. Not intentionally. Social desirabiloty can play a role, especially in focus groups. Different cultures answer surveys in different ways. In Asian and African cultures (who are collective by nature), will often answer what they “think” the surveyor wants to here. Individualist cultures, like America and a bit in Canada, are happier to tell you their mind, but still lie.
They’ll tell you they’ll pay a higher price for a product, but then look for the cheapest option on Amazon or elsewhere. This is the map-territory problem playing out in real time. The map (stated preferences) doesn't match the territory (actual behavior and deeply held beliefs).
But when we do cultural intelligence research, a big part of that is social listening, or netnography. It’s where you deep dive into subreddits that go off the rails, the Twitter (X) debates that rage for days. This isn’t just social drama, this rough diamonds in the digital mines.
Traditional research (especially surveys) asks: "What do you think about X?" Social listening observes: "What are people defending, unprompted, in their own language?" This is the brilliance of cultiural intelligence. Actionable insights.
Focus groups give you performed identity; who people think they should be. Social listening gives you revealed identity; who people actually are when they're unguarded.
Surveys capture conscious, rational preferences. Social listening captures emotional triggers, tribal boundaries, and identity markers.
Quantitative research tells you what's changing. Social listening tells you why it's changing, and what people will resist changing.
You can find patterns, cultural fault lines, whispers in their voices, raw and often very unfiltered. That’s the juciy stuff. Understanding what people and groups will protect reveals values, helps you understand that tribe, that audience.
The key is to be able to interpret the signals and pull out the values, to look at the groups at a higher level. Pull things out. And don’t forget to do that damn hard thing; check your biases!
