[Podcast] Unveiling Social Intelligence: Natália Leão’s Journey in Digital Insights

Introducing our new podcast series “Women in Social Listening & Insights”

We’re thrilled to introduce our new podcast series, “Women in Social Listening & Insights”, in which our CEO, Jackie Cuyvers, meets some of the leading women in the industry. Each episode delves into their unique career paths, experiences and perspectives in the ever-evolving world of social listening, market research and digital insights. This series not only highlights the significant contributions of women in the field but also serves as a platform for sharing knowledge, challenges and triumphs.

Jackie Cuyvers meets Natália Leão, Global Social Intelligence Development Lead at Nestlé

In this episode of our new podcast series “Women in Social Listening & Insights”, host Jackie Cuyvers is joined by Natália Leão, Global Social Intelligence Development Lead at Nestlé. Natalia shares her journey from a copywriter in Brazil to her current role, emphasising the importance of curiosity and critical thinking in the field of social intelligence. She discusses the challenges and rewards of working across international markets and the evolution of social listening insights. Additionally, she provides valuable advice for individuals interested in pursuing a career in social intelligence, particularly for future women in the industry. Join us as Natália Leão offers insightful perspectives on the evolving landscape of social intelligence and the important role of women in the field.

Supporting and Expanding Social Intelligence at Nestlé

Natália Leão began her career in communications as a copywriter in advertising agencies before transitioning to planning and digital marketing. Her interest in strategy led her to focus on social intelligence and monitoring, where she developed a passion for research and insights. Her career evolution reflects her dedication to understanding the evolving landscape of social media and its impact on campaign performance.

Time Stamped Overview of the Podcast

04:18 – Education needed on potential of data analytics.

10:11 – Awareness and questions raised about social listening.

11:36 -Seek diverse data sources for new insights.

14:46 – Collaborating with teams to incorporate and share data.

18:42 – Social intelligence is versatile and impactful in marketing.

22:27 – Desire for social intelligence in market research.

24:54 – Explore various reports, webinars, and case studies.

28:08 – Grateful thanks for valuable insights on podcast.

Podcast Transcript

Jackie Cuyvers:
Welcome to the podcast. Today, I’m delighted to have Natália Liao join us. Natália, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Natália Leão:
Hello, everyone. My name is Natália Leão. I’m currently a Social Intelligence Solution Lead at Nestlé. I’ve been working with Social Intelligence for quite some years and, very happy to be here.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Thanks so much for joining us. So Natália, can you tell us a little bit about how you got into the field of social listening insights and social intelligence. What did your path look like?

Natália Leão:
So my background is in communications. I started as a copywriter in advertising agencies, but then I quickly moved it to planning and digital marketing. I want something more with the strategy of things. And then social intelligence, social monitoring, at the time was part of, this whole process. Right? This scope. And at the time it was, way more focused on campaign performance, but, as the practice started to evolve, then I started to fall in love, let’s say for social intelligence and insights area and, this more research type of practice.

Jackie Cuyvers:
And I understand your path has been pretty international. Can you, can you tell us a little bit about where your career has taken you?

Natália Leão:
Yes. So I’m originally from Brazil. I’ve been around. I’ve been in Russia for a while, work in, ecommerce, for babies at the time, with digital marketing. Then I moved to India for a couple of years, then China for a little bit, and then I came back to Brazil, continued to work with agencies. And then I moved to Europe, in Portugal to do my master in technology and innovation entrepreneurship. And then that’s when I did dive, even, more in the area of social intelligence working with Thomas Verve. And that led me to Nestlé.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Thank you so much. So you’re, you’re at Nestlé now, can you tell us a little bit more about your current role, and and how you’re using social listening insights and social intelligence.

Natália Leão:
So my role is focused very much in supporting the evolution and expansion of, social intelligence practice at Nestlé. This involves setting up best practice, implementing help to develop new methodologies, build the team capabilities, but we have different centers across the globe with more than almost 200 analysts working on social listening. So be up to date with the the latest technologies. Right? How do we start to implement this, for more efficiency and benefits in the area. And, of course, part of this is, part of the expansion bit is to raise awareness to what social intelligence can do among internal partners.

Education needed on potential of data analytics

Jackie Cuyvers:
So you, so you shared that you’re, you’re sharing across the organization best practices, and sharing the capabilities of what can be done with social listening and insights. How do, how are you able to help them understand how this is differentiated or in fact supports other areas of marketing or data analysis.

Natália Leão:
I think there is a lot of education to be done on how far it can go, it is still well, surprisingly, right, at this point, a lot of times associated with, brain monitoring and, a lot of quantitative, type of analysis who sits much more close to data analytics and, you see there is still a lot of education to be done of how far it can go for maybe other areas, not only brand health, right, reports, but also for, research and development or for to find new trends or to understand the consumer journey. So this is, the part that we need to raise awareness the most. For me, what sets apart is that it’s a good mix of getting this quantitative data, that it’s already, very often in place, but also to have this on a large scale and also being able to get more granularity and deep dive and these real stories. Right. And on top of that is way more easily easy to scale. Right? And we can navigate through time with historical data so we can go and check what people have perceived about something, a certain topic for COVID and compare it with nowadays. So it has a lot of advantage and that’s what I try to educate. Sometimes the challenge is that there is a lot of, misconceptions, or, because of the barriers of social channels. So, that raised more concerns with the partners as well.

Jackie Cuyvers:
So it sounds like you’re using a real mix of quantitative and qualitative and, and showing different use cases across the organization. So how do you measure success of one of these projects? What what types of metrics would you use?

Natália Leão:
For social intelligence, in my opinion, it’s a bit tricky. We of course have an NPS score for any type of service at Nestlé, But, it will depend a little bit on the use case, I believe. Like, if you’re monitoring crisis, timeliness might be an important success criteria, for example, right? You want the to be able to report very fast, right? The best way to measure success is usually on a case by case, in my opinion. So if those insights help it to develop maybe new contact, content or that content is driving more traffic, for example, or if the outputs of a research help it to develop a new product and so on. So these are very specific by case, but, more efficiently measure the success, right? I find a bit challenging to have, success metrics that work across all social intelligence projects, as there are some times in other types of, key areas.

Collaborating with teams to incorporate and share data

Jackie Cuyvers:
That makes sense. So you work across, it sounds like a wide variety of teams and markets. How do you approach collaboration and teamwork in these Insights projects, and what types of skill sets do you think are essential for success in this area?

Natália Leão:
I will steal your your answer from another podcast that I listening with you, Jackie, but, you said that socialist social intelligence professionals, they needed to have Intellectual curiosity and good emotional intelligence. And for me, that’s the perfect answer because, that’s it. You need to be curious about the human nature, the human behaviour. I think that’s so essential. Otherwise, you’re not going to continue to ask questions to yourself and to the data. And I would also add that you also need to have a good sense of critical thinking, I would say, to help you to view the structures necessary to your analysis and to also quick spot, when the data looks off or when something that you maybe need to dig dive further. So, for me, that’s those are the essential skills. Like, to have intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and, I have, some type of, social intelligence, empathy. So you can continue to dig into the detail. The rest more or less you can, you can learn.

Jackie Cuyvers:
I love how you’re adding number 3. I feel like we need to like publish a list out there or something and have other people add to it.

Natália Leão:
That will be interesting.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Yeah. Okay. You should do it on LinkedIn or something. Can you tell me about a time, when you perhaps had to challenge conventional wisdom in your work and and what you might have learned from that intelligence?

Natália Leão:
Part of my role is, to raise this awareness about Social intentions practice in the organization. And, while I’m doing this, of course, I get challenged. As you can imagine, there are many questions. Like I was saying, in terms of the barriers of some some types of social channels. There are many questions on data coverage given the, API restrictions to some of these channels. So this raise concerns among partners or what business questions social intelligence can or cannot answer like we were discussing. So these are type of questions that come often when we are having meetings with partners. And for me, this is the best moment to understand the fears and concerns of these, my stakeholders. So I can better build, solutions, To fill these gaps or even build better communication materials. To reassure them and show them our solutions with more clarity. So helps me with content, with information so I can better view the material to that education, element that we were talking about and be able to convince them and reassure them, better.

Why better questions will lead to better insights in social intelligence

Jackie Cuyvers:
Do you find that those questions or concerns are changing over time or are you still getting kind of some of the same questions or, or kind of concerns that came up 5 years ago and it’s it’s based on the individual’s maturity or awareness of social listening and insights. Or do you do you find the questions change over time because people are increasingly aware of the potential?

Natália Leão:
I think what people are aware, you find people that ask better questions or have at least, initial awareness that, oh, there is these limitations. Can you explain it a little bit more? So, and but maybe not to the level that we would expect after you’re right. I received the same questions that I received that years ago and which is sometimes a bit tiring but, updated. Of course, because the landscape has updated itself over the past years, but, the concerns are more or less, very similar indeed. So there’s a lot of that we need to raise of, the limitations of, for example, limitations of social listening that it doesn’t cover the whole universe because you have a specific channels that have more access versus others or what other type of people that are online, right, versus the whole universe of the population, the whole population. So we need to, continue to raise that this present working silos and better raise awareness as social intelligence as part of a research journey, right? Not as a silo. Mhmm. Yeah. But, but you’re right. The questions are unfortunately quite similar.

Exploring diverse data sources to find patterns

Jackie Cuyvers:
So you mentioned critical thinking and pattern recognition, you know, being some, some important kind of skillsets or qualities. Have you ever found that you needed to pivot or change direction in a project due to unexpected findings in your data?

Natália Leão:
So I don’t have a specific example for that, but what I like to do and what I suggest the teams to do is to maybe go and try to find solutions in other types of data sources. One that we use a lot, in combination with social data is search data. So maybe if we are not getting a lot of data for the topic we want or maybe we get a lot of data, but, we are not finding the answers that for our business questions. We usually go to search behaviour to try to understand maybe people are not talking about that on social media, but they are searching about it. Or we explore a little bit further TikTok, manually, unfortunately, right, a lot of times to deep dive and see if there anything else that, we might have miss it or do a bit of test research. So my solution is usually to try to get out of the solutions into and export a little bit further as a change to find new patterns potentially.

Jackie Cuyvers:
So when you’re communicating the results to these different groups that, that you’re engaging with across the organization, How do you approach collaboration and communication with these stakeholders and partners? I mean, as you said, different people have different levels of awareness of what’s possible or what, what, what could be delivered. I mean, what, what skillsets or kind of factors do you think are important for that collaboration and communication with these stakeholders?

Natália Leão:
Yeah. I think that’s essential as well because not only the analysis that you do. Right? But how do you convey that? For me, it still requires a lot of empathy, the same for the, doing the project. You also do communicate the project because of the empathy and clarity in your communication. So we are already inside the organisation. I mean, we are do, the team that I work with, they do work for within the organization. So we have knowledge of the overall business, but the brands, the markets, the categories, of course, they are running those specific parts of the business so they do have more in-depth context, right, and knowledge. So if we are doing a project for coffee, for example, you need to be able to understand what is important for the guys owning the coffee business, which might be a bit different from, what other categories and brands are, paying attention to.

Natália Leão:
Right? So, basically, you need to be able to ask the right questions that will help you to do your analysis and to then of course translated the data in a clear way that matter the most, to according to those specific, needs for that partner.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Mhmm. Absolutely. So when you’re, you’re working across the organization and you’re working with these different stakeholders and different teams, can you perhaps speak to the importance of kind of cross functional collaboration in some of these projects? Because you said you need to not only understand it from their business perspective, but sometimes you need to step out of the social listening kind of workflow. So how do you bring in kind of that wider view into your work when working with these different teams, departments, or disciplines?

Natália Leão:
Yeah. Working with, different teams. Well, for me, there are 2 important perspectives here. 1 is the, this collaboration in terms of, knowledge and data. So we collaborate with the different departments to be able to incorporate more different types of data. So for example, incorporate consumer engagement conversation or we can maybe get metrics from website analytics teams to maybe see what recipes are popular on social, versus searches and how this compares to, how this compare to the recipes that we see on on social, right, or in the website, And then draft some conclusions out of that or these dashboards, and that compile different types of data together and then department with the Power BI team. So the possibilities are are endless and that’s exactly the challenge here because, we need to have a process in place so we can identify What type of data we need and, what teams we need to connect with and share that, that we have the right frameworks in place. And then the 2nd point is that how do we collaborate to democratize this data properly. How these, these dashboards, reports, how do we provide to something that we provide to the our the research and development team maybe can also, help or we could build on top of that to help brand teams or the content teams. So that’s also another layer of collaboration more with the finance stakeholders. Because a lot of the data might get lost, let’s say, or might be commissioned twice, thrice, and particularly a difficult task. And when you’re talking at such a big organization like Nestlé, it will be ideal that everyone could get benefit From that analysis being done, if it was better democratized.

Jackie Cuyvers:
That makes sense. So you were speaking about, the way that that data is presented or the insights are presented in dashboards and reports. So I think that brings up an important part of the way that we communicate these findings. So data visualization and presentations are how you share and democratize kind of those, those learnings and insights and recommendations. What is your preference in, and, you know, how do you think it’s best to visualize or share, share kind of the, the data and insights that you’re finding.

Natália Leão:
Well, my dream, in the ideal world, I think it will be a kind of a hybrid model of having our own ongoing dashboard, where people could self serve and navigate a little bit. And then on top of that, we have our team that can help to deep dive in or Built on on top of those, debt structure. That will be the ideal model for democratization. But in terms of visualization, more specifically, I think it’s also, very important skill. Sometimes a biggest problem in social intelligence is that we have a lot of interesting insights buried or kind of hidden, right, within tax heavy slides or lengthy reports. So it’s not just about creating visually appealing graphs and charts, but it’s also, like we were discussing, like the understanding the business deeply social and the objectives deeply so we can highlight and identify the best way to we’ll create the results and, in a more visual manner, right? What do we want to highlight out of these slides? Because that’s the part that matter the most for that partner.

Social intelligence is versatile and impactful in marketing

Jackie Cuyvers:
Yeah. So, so you’re communicating this information, you’re putting yourself in, in their shoes. How important do you see kind of these insights and social intelligence and helping shape business strategy or drive growth? I mean, what, what, what type of impact do you hope your work will have?

Natália Leão:
What I love about social intelligence is that, it’s a incredible versatile practice. I think that’s the word. It does have, different levels of complexity, of course, but it can often be agile and it answers to demands in, so many different areas. So it can impact from the way we communicate with our consumers to new products, about new products. It can also impact how do we have the new products. How we develop, new products or how we optimise our marketing advance. So there is a a lot of different areas that, it can, touch. So given the flexibility and the different the applications that it has for me, it should be kind of a no brainer, a standard practice practice in the field of insights, and that’s what I advocate for. I’m very passionate about, innovation and, partly the work that we do with research development, and I see the impact that it does in different areas at Nestlé. So, I love to advocate of how far can it goes and how it should be a standard practice as part of market research and insights, not only brand management.

Jackie Cuyvers:
You mentioned the global nature of, of the organisation and the role and that you’re working on kind of communicating best practices across the organisation, but not every market or country is the same. How do you ensure that your insights and recommendations and even best practices are relevant and applicable across these different markets or languages.

Natália Leão:
Yes. That’s a good point. We have centres. I think we have, I should know this number by heart, but, I think we have 7 centres or 8. And, we have a team that so we have these teams that call the variety of language. But, what we also need to do is always to collaborate with our internal partners to ensure that the output is bringing value and that we you know, beyond the brief, the teams, set up those touch points or these regular calls So they can discuss the outputs with the markets or, the brands. They show a little bit of the work in progress and make any necessary adjustments to better fit the market needs and the market knowledge because, again, these are social intelligence people.  So we have the language capabilities. They have some sort of culture knowledge, but more than that, they need to have culture knowledge specific into that, business. So that’s why close working very close with the business is important for us.

Jackie Cuyvers:
So for you personally, how do you stay current with the latest developments in social listening and new technologies? What what resources do you rely on?

Natália Leão:
I follow most of I follow a lot of social intelligence vendors, the tech vendors, that helps me to see different, use cases, sorry, different case studies, right, that it’s interesting to benchmark from. I follow a lot of social and such agencies that, like your company as well. So, that gives, again, good inspiration and, of course, The Social Intelligence Lab, by Dr Jillian. And beyond that is more, I’ve been trying to get more connected, with professionals in the area to see what they are up to, Exchange experiences, ideas from time to time. That’s, has been super super helpful in my, not so new role, obviously.

Jackie Cuyvers:
Do you see the field of social listening insights and intelligence evolving over the next 5 to 10 years?

Natália Leão:
Oh, well, it’s a big question. Well, if I if I had to summarize that that’s, what I would like to see is that social intelligence is, we we start to get new questions, let’s say. But also be more widely considered a standard part of my research toolkit, if that makes sense. We’ve gone a long way, of course, but there is still a lot of education, and also adjustments in the industry that we need to continue to do. And, I hope that, by then we have more, seamless use of AI to support, you know, this, a lot of the heavy lifting as well, to ensure data quality and so the professionals spend more spend more time actually understanding and diving to the parts that matter or connecting the dots with the other types of research. This might be a crucial part of what will help us to move forward and, continue to be, be the more robust practice.

The importance of exploring various reports, webinars and case studies

Jackie Cuyvers:
You touched on education a bit and, you know, it’s not like in the past, there’s been a direct career path into this field. People have come from different, backgrounds in market research, digital marketing, psychology, consumer behavior, all kinds of things. So can you share your advice for individuals interested in pursuing a career in social intelligence? Like what, what qualities or skills or, or even now maybe, maybe there are some new programs that that they should be aware of? How would you kind of steer someone thinking about a career in this, to get started or be successful?

Natália Leão:
No. That’s a good question. We have a lot of, young people in the organization, starting to pursue this career of social intelligence. So that’s, very fulfilling to see that, you know, new people are choosing that as a career. In terms of skills is what we discussed it. Like, you have to have curiosity, critical thinking. So try to nurture this, this curiosity, this interesting human nature that will help to have the right skill set as well. The technologies, the methodologies, I think it’s nice to have a good basic, baseline in term in terms of, market research, and the basics of statistic. But it I didn’t have that much right when I started, but I wish I had. And, there are new courses like the The Social Intelligence Lab course that, it has a nice, curriculum that covers, I think, everything that you you should know. So there are things popping up, but, my advice mainly is that continue try to look into different types of reports. Of course, a lot of it it’s you got from experience trying to analyse, but I like to see a lot of different types of web, reports, watching webinars with, case studies it also helps me to think a little bit out of, outside the box and, compare next time that I join project, compare what I’m getting versus, the final product and, you know, the final output and, start to think, how do I get to something very similar from my end as well?

Jackie Cuyvers:
I think those are all really, really good points. And certainly there’s lots of webinars and even content that, that that’s pre-recorded and from past ones that people can access. So there’s certainly a lot of resources out there. So knowing what you knew, you know now, and, and, you know, having your kind of winding career path. How would you advise future women in insights in in kind of pursuing this career.

Natália Leão:
Well, I didn’t have exactly a straightforward, education path directly to for this area. So, but, we talk about courses. Truly, a a good set of skills to start on that. I see, I’m very lucky that I see have worked here and continue to work with, very amazing women in this area. So hopefully, have, continued to dominate the the space. But beyond, that, my advice would be to find these people that inspire you. Right? So watch what they are doing, learn from them. This can be, someone that you listening can be your boss, can be a colleague. Like I said, I was very lucky in my career to be surrounded by very inspiring women that helped me to start seeing, that, the bath in front of me and, what I wanted to start doing and, uncovering my own value in this space as well. So, yeah, find someone that inspire you and, Ask for advice to speak these people or follow what they’re doing and then, see how you can transform yourself.

Jackie Cuyvers:
That’s great advice, Natália. Thank you so much. Well, it’s been a pleasure hearing about, you know, your current role and your path to getting here. I really appreciate you sharing your journey and insights with us. I think you’ve given everybody some great advice of, of kind of skillsets and qualities to nurture, resources to go to and some good advice on, on how to move ahead in this area. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences with us. So thank you so much, Natália.

Natália Leão:
Yeah. Thank you, for having me.

Jackie Cuyvers:
It’s been an absolute pleasure.