[Podcast] Building Business Impact: Paige Walker on How Social Listening is Transforming Brand Strategies at The Hershey Company

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Podcast Transcript

Jackie Cuyvers:
Welcome to the Women in Social Listening and Insights podcast where we showcase the incredible work of women working in the field of social intelligence. My name is Jackie Cuyvers and I’ll be your host for this journey. In this podcast, we’ll be speaking with women from enterprise, agencies and academia who are leading the charge in the world of social listening and insights. Together, we’ll be exploring their careers, the challenges they’ve faced and overcome, and the innovative solutions they’ve developed. Our goal is to provide valuable insights and advice to our listeners who are passionate about this field and committed to advancing their careers. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting out, you’ll find inspiration and guidance in these conversations. So sit back, relax and get ready to learn from the women who are shaping the future of social intelligence. Let’s get started.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Today, I’m joined by Paige Walker. Paige, welcome to the show.

Paige Walker:
Hi, Jackie. Thanks so much for having me.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Would you mind introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about your role and what you’re working on?

Paige Walker:
Of course. My name is Paige Walker. I work with the Hershey Company, and I’m the supervisor of social media intelligence. And simply that just means I lead social listening slash social intelligence for our US brands. That’s some of your big favorites like Reese’s, Kit Kat, Hershey’s, Skinny Pop popcorn, Dot’s pretzels. We have a lot of different brands and a lot of different categories, so I lead all of the listening for those US brands.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Sounds delicious. Can you tell a little bit about your background and how you first got into the field of social intelligence and maybe a little bit about what your path looked like?

Paige Walker:
Yeah. Of course. I feel like my path is a little bit different than those that I’ve talked to in the industry. I actually have a background as a journalist and a television news producer. I have a degree in broadcast journalism, and I, you know, did a bunch of internships in that field. And I went on to be a a live television news producer for a couple years after college. And I just found that career was not for me, so I was looking for roles outside of that industry. And I did have social media experience because, as we know, a lot of people now consume their news on social media.

So at the station I was working at, I was one of the people who would convert the broadcast stories for web and for social. So I had that experience doing that. And so I was interviewing just for social media roles. I ended up finding an entry level social media engagement specialist role with The Hershey Company. That’s just a fancy way to say social care. So I got in doing that in March of 2020. So literally the week the pandemic hit and the country shut down, that was my first day at Hershey. So I went to the office, I got a laptop, and they said bye.

Paige Walker:
And I went home, and I learned an entirely new industry from my tiny apartment on my laptop. So it was definitely an interesting experience that helped me grow a lot for sure. So I was just doing typical social care in the beginning, responding to consumers on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram who directly contacted our brands whenever they had an issue with the product. Like if your Reese’s Cup didn’t have peanut butter in it or your Kit Kat was melted or didn’t have a wafer or you had an allergen question with one of our products or an availability question with one of our products. We have a small team at Hershey’s that sits under our consumer relations department that answers all of these consumers and documents all of the quality issues that are coming in because we also get contacts from our call center, so emails and texts and web chat. We even get letters still, if you can believe that. So all of that data is documented and put into a CRM, which, you know, gets shared with our plants and, you know, our leadership if necessary. I was doing that for a while, but then that kind of developed into social listening.

I wanna say kinda like 2022 was where I was doing social listening more full time, but we were seeing so many great insights from just people that were contacting us on our organic social pages. We we all know that people really sometimes pour their hearts out on social media. They will share everything and anything. So people had a lot to say to us just directly on our Facebook page or on our Instagram page. So my manager at the time was like, well, we’re getting all these great insights from organic social, and we’re we we are missing everything that’s being said on the broader Internet and what consumers are saying when they don’t tag us. Because imagine what they’re they say all these crazy things when they do tag us and they do send us messages. Imagine how they’re speaking when they don’t even directly tag us. So we started social listening training in late 2020.

And then from there, it’s just kinda taken off, and now it’s mostly my full time role. I do also manage our social care team now, but social listening, social intelligence is probably like 80% of my role and the other 20% is social care management.

Jackie Cuyvers:
That’s really fascinating how you’ve you’ve grown from listening kind of 1 on 1 within an organization to, you know, listening to to the money all within the same, not just industry, but the same company. That’s, you know, quite a journey you’ve had within that company. That’s, you know, quite a journey you’ve had within that organization. So now that you’re spending about 80% of your time on social intelligence, what do you think sets social intelligence apart from other areas of marketing or data analysis?

Paige Walker:
Yeah. So I think that people are just brutally honest on social media, and people are gonna speak to each other differently than they’re gonna speak to a traditional researcher or in a survey. And that data is absolutely valuable and very helpful for organizations, but I just feel that social media data really gives us that true view of how the consumer is feeling. They’re not filtered in any way. They’re not worried about impressing us with their answers. They are sharing their true unfiltered feelings and just giving us a glimpse into their daily lives and how they use the products in a very truthful way. So it’s just a little more holistic than maybe traditional market data would be.

Jackie Cuyvers:
That’s fair. Can you tell us I mean, you’ve you’ve told us about what your role looks like overall, but can you tell us about a day in the life of your job? How are you using social intelligence on, like, a daily basis?

Paige Walker:
Yeah. Of course. So I use it in several different ways. We now offer brand you know, your typical brand health reports, your product feedback, your campaign feedback, crisis monitoring. But in recent years, we’ve done a lot more competitive intelligence and trend analysis and opportunity. So I guess a typical day, I do have a lot of reports I do monthly. So like for Reese’s, our new Shackalicious gummies brand, our Dots Pretzels brand, our Skinnypot brand, brands that are, you know, active in putting out new products and new campaigns, keeping a very close eye on what consumers are saying about the brands online, what the feedback to the new products are, and just, you know, how our consumers feel about the brands overall and what we could do better. So some reports do monthly, some I do weekly.

Paige Walker:
But on the larger scale, I will have reports where I look into, you know, what are the trends on TikTok right now in food and beverage? You know, what what are popular recipes, flavors, product? What what weird things are people doing on TikTok that relate to our categories or categories that impact ours? And, you know, how can we maybe take action in the future on these trends? Then then just also looking into potential product innovation and new future flavors, you know, how do consumers feel and speak about a certain flavor that we might be considering for a new Reese’s Cup. Our consumers might think of, you know, new flavors or new partnerships that we never thought of ourselves. So I’m always trying to keep a close eye on what people are doing online.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Sounds like we need to start, trying out some of these trends.

Paige Walker:
I think so. Definitely.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Can you discuss a particularly memorable moment from your career in social intelligence?

Paige Walker:
Yes. So I always like to say that I saved the Hershey Kisses Christmas bells commercial. So back when we were starting our social listening journey in winter of 2020, the Hershey’s team decided they wanted to change their iconic Kisses Bells ad, which if you’re in the United States, you have likely seen this ad before. It has run on television since 1989 and has been mostly unchanged. And in 2020, the brand decided they wanted to alter it slightly to just promote holiday traditions, togetherness with your family in a year where we obviously could not be together and we couldn’t do our normal activities. So the Kisses Bells commercial started out the same way, but then a little girl reaches in in the middle of the commercial and she grabs one of the kisses, and then she ends up using the kiss to make kisses blossom cookies with her dad. And, you know, kisses blossom cookies are a holiday trend that everybody loves, so the brand thought they would showcase that. However, our consumers did not think it was a cute holiday ad.

They were really angry and just upset that the brand decided to change this iconic commercial. They said it ruined their childhood. It had ruined their Christmas. They they said this ad was the start of the Christmas season for them. And by changing it, we ruined their holiday season. So this went absolutely viral. It got national news coverage, so the social mentions every day were in the 1,000. So we this census was the first time we were using social listening software.

We started sharing the, you know, the mention volume every day, the sentiment impact, the popular posts, the popular authors, you know, what people were saying about this commercial, you know, how they really valued the nostalgia, how much passion they had towards our brand and towards this commercial and how changing it made them feel. So every single day for a little over a week, we were sending this data to our Corp Com team, our brand team, our executive committee team. And at the beginning of December, I think it was December 1st, they decided they were gonna air both ads side by side. So the original ad and then the new ad with the girl and her father. And this was thankfully an instant success. People were so happy that we listened to them and they, you know, they went on social media and they thanked us. They’re like, thank goodness you brought this back. I’m so happy to see it.

Paige Walker:
My Christmas is saved. So this was just a prime example that when we do listen to our consumers and actually implement what they want, they’re gonna be happy. I like to call this our catalyst because this is the first time we really saw, like, wow. We can influence major business decisions with social media data.

Jackie Cuyvers:
I think that’s a great example of how your work can have impact across the organization. How do you approach that collaboration and teamwork and social intelligence projects? And are there any skills that you think are essential for this?

Paige Walker:
Yeah. As for approaching collaboration, I definitely just try to keep good communication with all of the different teams I work with. I try to attend their weekly meetings if I can. I try to if they have a new product or a new campaign coming out, I will often reach out to them or they’ll reach out to me, and we’ll discuss, you know, how social listening might be able to help with whatever questions they have or if they’re concerned about something. It’s really just about keeping an open line of communication with all of your different stakeholders because sometimes they you know, obviously, they have a lot going on in their world and social media might not be top of mind for them, but I think it is a really crucial data source. So sometimes it’s just about poking your head in there and raising your hand and being like, hey, don’t forget about me. Don’t forget about social data. Like, you’re definitely gonna want to see the feedback that our consumers are sharing with us.

So open line of communication for sure. So that I would say is an essential skill for this field. You definitely have to have that curiosity and the willingness to investigate large datasets because, you know, as you know, there could be 100 and thousands of comments on something and ongoing Reddit threads and just a bunch of tweets you have to go through. And you just have to have that innate curiosity to say, okay. There’s all this data here. What can I find that actually matters to my stakeholders and what could make a difference in our business strategy? So that, you know, brings it back to the investigative piece too. You just have to be willing to sit down and find find the story and what is gonna matter to your stakeholders.

Jackie Cuyvers:
So you’ve mentioned how much your role has changed over the last 4 years. How do you see the role continuing to evolve and, you know, what what is the role of or the future of social intelligence within your organization?

Paige Walker:
My goal for my role right now, I I currently sit under our consumer relations team, which which is our customer service team, and that’s how my role, you know, was born and evolved. However, I feel like it has evolved to the point where I need to be a part of our consumer insights team because that’s now the bulk of the work that I’m doing is true insights research. So my goal right now is to move over to that team. Once I am able to make that move, I would like for social intelligence to be more of a critical step in the research process. You know, you go and you do your traditional CI research, but I would like for social intelligence to be a step in the process as we research for new flavors and, you know, new brands we might wanna acquire and just, you know, new groups we wanna advertise to. And and sometimes I am. Sometimes I am a step in the process, and sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I feel like I am on the outside looking in.

And I think moving over to the consumer insights team can help me have a better relationship, one with those consumer insights researchers and then with our innovation r and d team, the people who are actually developing new products and new flavors.

Jackie Cuyvers:
I definitely see how that integration could be beneficial. How do you measure the success of a social intelligence project, and what metrics are you using for these different types of projects?

Paige Walker:
Yeah. I guess I don’t have a specific metric to measure success, but for me, social listening project is successful if it drives business change or it drives business impact or impacts a future product. So an example of this, we actually have our new product called Jolly Rancher freeze dried coming out in 2025, and this was something that I helped with research for back in 2023. The the brand came to me and they said, Paige, you know, we’ve been seeing all this freeze dried stuff on social media. Like, can you look into how big this trend actually is? What is the sentiment behind it? What products are people associating with it? Like, is this actually as big of a trend as we think it’s gonna be? And then so I, you know, was able to do a research project on that and help them kind of verify that, yes, this is a big trend. People do really love these products. And then, you know, so fast forward a a year and a half, and there’s a new product coming out. So that’s a camp that’s a project I would consider very successful because I was able to directly impact our business strategy.

Another example is our recent Angel Reese and Reese’s partnership. Angel Reese is a popular WNBA basketball player here in the US, and her fans were repeatedly asking the brand to partner with her, you know, because her last name is Reese and, you know, of course, Reese is the brand. And she affectionately named her fan base the Reese’s Pieces. So there was just a, of course, a very easy brand connection there. And for a long time, we were getting a lot of messages and comments and tweets asking Reese’s to sponsor her or partner with her. Of course, the brand started to take notice of her success and they were considering a partnership, and they came to me and said, Paige, you know, how are consumers speaking about Angel? Do they do they want this partnership? Is it something that you think would be successful? Like, what’s the sentiment around this? So I did a research project on that, and that was a very quick turnaround. It was, like, a little over a month. They used the social data to confirm that it would be a successful partnership.

People were asking for this. They did want this. And then here we go. Our our partnership was out. They ended up releasing a exclusive clothing line with Angel that included shirts, jerseys, and hats, and the response was amazing. People were so happy for Angel, just so excited to purchase the clothing. And it was great to see all this positive feedback because once again, we listen to our consumers. We took what they wanted into consideration, and now it’s a reality.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Wow. You’ve really shared some great case studies on how strategic and impactful social listening and and these insights can be. How do you balance the need for real time insights with the need for in-depth analysis and, you know, maybe a deeper interpretation of the data?

Paige Walker:
Yeah. It it’s it’s hard sometimes. You know? And and it definitely depends on the brand or the team and and what questions they wanna answer. So if it’s a brand that has a new product that just came out or a recent campaign they just launched or if there’s, you know, some kind of crisis happening online, that is a time or those are examples we will definitely use real time insights to get them quick answers immediately about the conversations happening online. However, I’ll do more in-depth analyses for for, you know, brands who are looking to launch a new flavor or they’re looking to understand how consumers feel about a certain ingredient or a certain competitor brand. It it definitely depends on the urgency of the questions the team is trying to answer.

Jackie Cuyvers:
A lot of your examples that you’ve just shared, you know, talk about your work and collaboration with other teams and departments and disciplines, you know, within your organization. How did you get involved with them? Was it kind of an outreach on your side, or how do you integrate with the the broader business teams?

Paige Walker:
Yeah. So it took several years of a lot of work, but I I can now say I’ve kind of built up this reputation of the social media expert at the company. And everybody knows that when there’s a question about social media or something going on on social media, they’re like, email page. She’ll help you. Email page. And that’s great. But it it well, it wasn’t always that way. So in the beginning, we did just a lot of outreach.

Paige Walker:
Like you said, we went to brands and we offered our report without them asking. We explained what social listening was, what we could do for them. I think one of the first brands I offered a report for was Twizzlers. And we, you know, we held these meetings. We showed them you know, it it was a brand health report and, you know, an opportunity report. Like, here’s things people are asking for. Here’s things you’re doing well. Here’s things they’re not so happy with.

And those reports were really well received, and they just ended up saying, hey. Could you do this monthly or quarterly? And that’s how that started with the brands. And then we also just went out and presented our work. I like to say we took our work on a roadshow, and we presented social listening to a bunch of different departments like quality assurance, supply chain, marketing, creatives, media, and more. And we just showed them here all the insights we can gather via social media. Here are the questions we can answer. Here are the potential ways that we can help you and your brand answer questions about the work you’re doing. So, thankfully, from there, all those presentations, we ended up getting a lot of different requests from a lot of different teams, and it just kinda spread.

The the word-of-mouth was really great. I got a lot of emails just saying, hey. I I heard you did this work for so and so. Can you do a report for me on this? And and it and it’s always nice to hear that someone spoke positively about your work and then recommended you to somebody else. So the the word-of-mouth has been great. And now just because I am more well known in the company, my work is more commonly used. Brands have been really embracing social listening. So for our new Shackalicious gummies brand with Shaquille O’Neal, that brand was a brand that we launched from 0 to 100.

You know? With with a lot of our other brands, they’ve been around for decades. They have, you know, recognizable household names. Shackalicious does not have that. So we’re building up a brand from the start, and the brand contacted me, you know, months before launch. And they said, hey. We wanna know what’s going on in the gummy category. We wanna know what people are saying about all these other competitor companies and what’s what’s working on social media for these other companies. And so I did a lot of research for them before the products even launched just to help inform them, I guess, the state of the gummy category on social media.

And then now, I still do that. But since the brand is launched, we are also looking at, okay, how are people reacting to the products? What is the taste sentiment and the taste feedback? And what are they asking for in the future? So I’m involved in their weekly meetings just with the brand, with the creatives, with the media, and I’ll give them kind of a weekly update, the social media status for the brand. So it’s been great to be more involved in the process.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Do you find that as your organization, these different teams become more experienced with what social listening and social intelligence can deliver, that they are growing in their own maturity of going from maybe asking high level questions to more strategic questions now that they understand what it can do?

Paige Walker:
Definitely. Yeah. I I think showing them the basics really showed them that, you know, social media is not just a place where people complain or where people are angry and they rant about stuff. You know, we also have a glimpse into their daily lives, you know, what they’re sharing on TikTok, what they’re sharing on Instagram, the ways that they use our products that we wouldn’t even think of. So now that they they have seen the basics, a lot of people will come to me and say, can we find anything on social media about people using our products for x, y, and z? You know, they it has sparked further questions for sure.

Jackie Cuyvers:
How do you stay current with the latest developments in social intelligence, and what resources do you rely on?

Paige Walker:
I am a big LinkedIn fan now. And I I wasn’t last year, but but this year, I got more involved. I followed a bunch of social media professionals on LinkedIn, and it has just been great because I feel like it’s my own little news source for what’s going on in the social media marketing world. Specifically, I follow the Social Intelligence Lab, and I’ve been really grateful to have gotten involved with that organization more this year. I’ve attended a lot of their webinars. I just spoke at the Observe Summit in Chicago and learned from a bunch of other industry professionals about the ways they are using social data in their organization. So follow the Social Intelligence Lab if you are not already doctor Jillian Nye. She posts a lot of great resources that just kinda helped me overcome my imposter syndrome.

Like, oh, other people are doing the same thing as me? Like, they’re having the same struggles and complaints as me? Like, that’s crazy. So it’s been great to follow her work, the Social Intelligence Labs’ work, learn more from other industry professionals. And through the Social Intelligence Lab, I connected with just a bunch of different social intelligence professionals in different fields, people who post on LinkedIn about their social listening wins and everything they’re working on. So all of this to say, LinkedIn is great. Go go follow people on LinkedIn.

Jackie Cuyvers:
It’s great that you found your tribe. Can you discuss the role of AI and machine learning in social intelligence? And, I mean, gosh, I don’t think you could probably go a day on LinkedIn without hearing and you know, something about AI at this point. How do you think technologies like these are changing the industry?

Paige Walker:
Yeah. So we have started using AI summaries in our social listening platform. We use Quid. And I think especially for social listening, AI summaries are super helpful, especially when you have large datasets that you don’t necessarily have the time to go through thousands of mentions and click on every single thing in a word cloud and dive into it. Because sometimes your stakeholders need answers really quickly about a large topic that you’re not familiar with. So I think AI can just help make things go quicker, help you understand a large dataset that you don’t have the time to dig into. So I’m really excited to see where it goes in the future. Because I’m a right now, I’m technically a one person team, and so there’s a lot that I just don’t have time to look into. So AI hopefully will start to make my job a little easier.

Jackie Cuyvers:
How do you see the field of social intelligence evolving in the next 5 to 10 years?

Paige Walker:
I think that most research teams will have a dedicated social intelligence specialist on their team to look into the conversations happening online because it only continues to get bigger and bigger.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Can you share some advice for individuals who might be interested in pursuing a career in social intelligence?

Paige Walker:
Of course. I think there’s a lot of different ways that someone could get involved with social intelligence. I mean, I started in journalism, and then I went into a social care role. So I don’t really think there’s one singular correct path. I would say, you know, definitely, if you’re if you’re in school and you’re looking to, you know, major in something, you know, marketing is always a good idea. You know, communications or PR is always a good idea. But then again, I was a journalism major. So kinda just depends on what your interest is and how you wanna start getting involved.

And I would say, look for companies that have open social media roles. And, you know, it might not be social intelligence right off the bat. You might start out as a community manager or just a social media specialist or someone helping with a social media account. But once you get your foot in the door, you can then start to evolve your role from there and, you know, see if the company you’re working with has a need for social intelligence or if there’s teams that you could eventually grow into. And as for necessary skills, I would say, you know, just that curiosity to dig deeper and, you know, being willing to investigate and find the story of a brand. Communication, of course, is a very essential skill. You have to be able to communicate with a lot of different stakeholders from a lot of different departments. You have to make your data easily accessible and understandable for all these different audiences.

You know, when you have different acronyms or different definitions for things or different metrics that, you know, somebody across all different teams might not understand. You have to be able to write and communicate in a way that’s easily understandable for everybody and to be willing to define things that somebody who’s not on social media 247 might not understand. So a good communicator and definitely, you know, great time management skills and organization skills. Because a lot of times, you’re working on a lot of projects at once. Sometimes you’re under tight deadlines. So just being able to manage your projects effectively.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Knowing what you do now, how would you advise future women in insights in pursuing kind of the path to social intelligence?

Paige Walker:
I would advise them to definitely reach out to this community and connect with people and start conversations. It can be scary at first, and you, you know, you might feel awkward. And I don’t know if I should message this person or whatever, but I would encourage you to do it because if I never messaged anybody and I never connected with anyone, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. I’ve learned so much from people outside of my organization and then also inside of my organization as well, just connecting with people and saying, you know, how can social data benefit you? What can I do better? How can I get involved with the process? So definitely just reaching out to people in your organization and outside of your organization to get advice. Because like we discussed, you know, there’s no set path. There’s no right answer to how to do this right now. And so I think just relying on people who have been through the process or just people who in your organization who are involved in traditional insights and marketing can definitely be helpful when you are navigating your path.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Thanks so much, Paige, for sharing your experience and your journey. I think, a lot of people are are really going to enjoy sharing your your journey to social intelligence.

Paige Walker:
Thank you so much for having me.

Jackie Cuyvers:
And that’s a wrap for this episode of the Women in Social Listening and Insights podcast. I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation and gained some valuable insights. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Spotify so you never miss an episode. Thanks again to our guest for sharing her expertise, and until next time, I’m Jackie Cuyvers – thanks for listening!