Most brands are looking at the wrong data. 

Worse still? You don’t know what to do with it.

This week, Verity sits down with Jazmin Griffith (Social Strategist, Content Creator, and Founder @ Social Listening Studio, queloque?). Jazmin pulls back the curtain on what real listening looks like today – and why it’s about far more than sentiment & mentions.

From decoding niche communities to spotting Reddit-born Super Bowl ideas, Jazmin reveals how brands can shift from ‘monitoring’ to meaningful intelligence. If you’ve ever asked, "what do we actually do with this data?", this chat delivers your answers, fast.

Listen to learn how to:

• Use The 5 Cs to Guide Listening: Jazmin’s framework covers Content, Culture, Community, Creators, and Channels; and shows how to unlock insights across all of them.
  
  
• Get Past Vanity Metrics: Surface-level engagement doesn’t tell the whole story. Hear how to uncover what’s really working.
  
  
• Spot What Creators Aren’t Saying: Jazmin explains how the most valuable signals are often hidden in broadcast channels, DMs, Substacks, and Slack groups.
  
  
• Build Listener-Led Briefs: Why reactive brands are losing, and what it takes to create culturally relevant, high-performing content today.
  
  
• Think Beyond the Grid: Why Threads, Reddit, and even Substack might be the whitespace you’re overlooking – and how to know if it’s time to pivot your channel strategy.

This one’s sharp, strategic, and packed with takeaways.
If you’re in social or strategy, do not skip it.

 

Chapters
00:00 – You Think You're Listening. You're Not.
02:04 – The Reddit Insight That Sparked a Super Bowl Ad
07:46 – Why Most Social Teams Still Get This Wrong
12:35 – The 5 Cs That Should Shape Every Strategy
18:00 – What Creators Know That Brands Miss
22:00 – Listener-Led Briefs > Brand-First Briefs
27:56 – Culture Is Not Your Playground
30:02 – Community Isn’t Comments
36:17 – Where Your Brand Should Actually Show Up
41:00 – 3 Signals Smart Marketers Are Already Tracking

 

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Connect with Jazmin:

On LinkedIn | On Instagram | On TikTok

On queloque?’s Website

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Verity Hurd (04:04.139)
Hi Jasmine, I am thrilled to have you on Building Brand Advocacy. Welcome to the podcast.

Jazmin Griffith (00:09.058)
Thank you for having me. I'm excited. It's been a long time coming.

Verity Hurd (04:12.814)
I know for the audience out there, we have been trying to plan this for a long time. So this is going to be great because I am so excited about what we're going to chat about because I think it's something that is a misunderstood topic and not many people really actually know the nitty gritty of what you do. So before we get into it, do you want to just give us a bit of an intro and just tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?

Jazmin Griffith (00:36.942)
Hello everyone, I am Jasmine Griffith. I consider myself a multi-hyphenate creative. I've worked in social for the 10 past years. I own my own social listening studio, is called Que Loque. We help brands kind of uncover the insights within their data. But I'm also a corporate girly. So currently I'm a social insights manager for an agency called 71 West. We work with hospitality brands to really just kind of understand their luxury portfolio of brands and build out reporting, social listening, influencer up own earned. And I'm also a content creator. So I've been creating content for the last four five years, both on Instagram and TikTok, but been leaning more into like LinkedIn and the B2B space as well. So multi hyphenate is what I like to call myself.

Verity Hurd (05:20.598)
It's a great title, I'm definitely stealing that. You are a busy girl and I'm totally with you on LinkedIn being, think actually a lot of people are moving towards LinkedIn these days. It's, yeah. Yeah. Okay, right. Let's dig in. I mean, like I just said, I don't think social listening is fully understood. So let's just, from your perspective, what does social listening...

Jazmin Griffith (01:51.086)
Thank. It's so interesting because people always ask like, what is social listening? And I hate to be the one that gives the obvious answer, but I'm like, it's exactly what it is. It's it's listening to social, but not just social, it's listening to just the world in general, news, industry, blogs. The interesting thing is a lot of brands now and agencies are kind of clumping social listening with social analytics and social intelligence all in one. The difference is, is social analytics is, it's just data. It's just, I'm looking at the data, I'm looking at owned data, meaning I'm only looking at my data. And social listening is a different piece of that because it's, it's own data, but it's mostly trends online. It's diving deep into the industry. If you are a food and beverage brand, I'm not just listening to what's going on with myself, but I'm looking at what my competitors are doing, what's happening in the TikTok space. I'm reading sub stack channels. I'm being a part of Facebook groups. And then from there, you almost kind of had to put your like strategist hat on because it's like, what does this mean? or what is this so what? The perfect example that I get people all the time is everyone knows the Super Bowl commercial with Sarah V and people are like where did that come from? their analysts spent so much time scraping Reddit and they found this this insight, this nugget where people thought Michael Cera owned Sarah V. It wasn't true but it was something that they were like we can build something off of that. That's exactly what social listening is. There were so many people that thought that Michael Cera actually owned Sarah V that they built a whole Super Bowl campaign behind it and it the number one campaign. So social listening allows you to kind of think about the data in a very, different way and it allows you to use those insights for different things, for campaigns, for new content, for coming out with a new product, influencers and creators that we work with. And so I think that's like one of the biggest misconceptions behind it because people clump it together into a role, but majority of the times it's its own. It really can take a couple of members on the team to really kind of build that out and it's just more than just data.

Verity Hurd (05:44.322)
...data really mean to you and how does it kind of go beyond, how is it different I suppose to social media metrics or monitoring?

Jazmin Griffith (05:59.52)
what behind it. And so I kind of build out those newsrooms for clients as well. So my day to day, it fluctuates because I do work a nine to five. So a lot of the business that I'm doing, it's either like before nine, after five kind of thing. I create content within the day. I do have the opportunity to kind of work remote, but a lot of the time is building content on LinkedIn, but also kind of being that consultant and that thought leader for a lot of people because social listening is so new. And I spoke at a panel a couple of weeks ago, I mean a couple of months ago, and I talked to about social listening and I asked a simple question, like how many people use social listening or what social listening is? And it was 50 people in the room and maybe like six people raised their hand and I was like in shock. It's still very new, it's still very fresh. So I kind of want to be one of those first people to kind of be that consultant in the room for some of these big fortune 500 companies and kind of show them that intelligence and social listening is very different than metrics in monitoring and looking at paid ads. know, they're very different on the side to side. So that's kind of like what my day to day is. Like I said, it's still like an up-and-coming agency. I'm trying to spend a lot of time more so like pitching clients and pitching brands but I really want to be just like a thought leader and show people like there's a lot of opportunity and space and the things that brands want to accomplish. It can happen through just social listening if you kind of take the time to invest into it.

Verity Hurd (07:50.537)
Yeah. No, it was a great answer. I didn't actually know that story about the Sarah V campaign either. That's fascinating. And so that came from Reddit. Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (04:01.23)
It came from Reddit. came from, there's an article I think on Adweek, Age or Adweek about it. yeah, ultimately their analysts kind of like scraped the analysts and they scraped the internet and they spent a lot of time on Reddit. there was this, and the thing about it inside is it doesn't always have to be true. know, what people think it has to be, it doesn't always have to be true. It just has to be like a thought and opinion that something has. And that happened to be a very popular opinion that people were like, wait, Michael Cera owns it. And they got him on board and ended up being this really cool and this really dope campaign. the end he came out was like guys I don't own like Siri so that was like joke it was like you know the human part about it that was like wait you you you got me and they built all these activations around it so yeah.

Verity Hurd (08:17.407)
Okay.

Jazmin Griffith (07:53.592)
Little bit of both. I think people have been doing it. They just don't realize they have been doing it. When you're like, when you're looking at skimming, we'll go through the five C's. But when you're like skimming through comments, and you're looking at what the comments are saying, what people don't realize is it's a part of that is like community management. But a lot of that is truly social listening. It's it's taking those comments and doing something with it. The second piece, I do think it's a resource piece, because I think a resource and education piece because I think a lot of brands and agencies feel like when they have to have an expensive social listening tool in order to be able to accomplish, which in some form or fashion, yes, but what a lot of people don't realize is a lot of these social listening tools don't allow you, you really only scrape the surface. I'm really only looking at like Twitter and X. TikTok has an API, you can't really listen to it. The agency or the tools that do have that API, it's very like a minimal sample. Instagram is very similar. You can't listen to niche spaces like Facebook groups and Slack. And so I think it's an education piece, but I also think it's a resource piece because these tools are very expensive.

Verity Hurd (08:43.979)
Amazing and obviously you've built your agency around this. I'd love to just know a little bit more about the agency and like kind of what does like a typical day in the life of you as the founder getting into the data, what does that look like for you?

Jazmin Griffith (08:55.216)
And to have to hire someone that, you know, that understands how to leverage this tool that can go in and kind of tweak a query that can go in and, you know, look at all these negative mentions and be able to pull insights from that. That's a skill that a lot of people just don't have at the moment. And I think, like, that's the story. It's that education piece. Think Jack Appleby, hopefully I'm saying his name if I'm not. I'm so sorry. He made a post. He was like... What are we doing with social listening data? How are we actually using it? So the fact that that's a question, it's because it's still an education piece. People don't know what to do with that data. Great, sentiment was negative. So what? So I think it's a combination of those three.

Jazmin Griffith (09:58.168)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (10:09.741)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (10:14.402)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (10:20.864)
Yeah, yeah. But the thing is like social listening, always joke around this. It's social listening. You have people that are like more techie in the data and the, you know, on the day to day, but then there's also a piece of social listening where you have to have that strategist hat on. Like you have to be able to look through your, your, your feed that you're scrolling on TikTok and be able to know like, okay, there's a trend with male, male wellness at the moment. Like they're getting their nails done. They're going to self care. Okay. What does that mean? Like it's like a third part of your brain that you have to be able to kind of clump a lot of these trends together.

Verity Hurd (10:47.294)
Mm-mm.

Jazmin Griffith (10:52.604)
That data and those are things that the social listening tools provide for you but not in the extent of being able to clump it all together so yeah it's an interesting thing for sure.

Jazmin Griffith (11:07.082)
Yeah, that's a good one. I like it. Yes.

Jazmin Griffith (11:16.27)
Hmm.

Verity Hurd (11:16.329)
Yeah, it's so interesting because like, I mean, you saying it being a new thing and only like a small handful of people like putting their hands up to say they're doing it like for me, like, I mean, previous to doing this, I had my own agency social media. I, and again, like I knew it was a thing, but we weren't doing it. And it was, and do you think it's because it's a resource thing and a time thing and do you think that's why people aren't doing it or is it just a lack of education of how powerful it is?

Jazmin Griffith (11:26.346)
Yeah, I always mess up the five C's, so give me a second, y'all. The five C's model, I call this like the five C's of marketing. I swear I'm going to come up with a cool name, but for right now we're going to call it the five C's of marketing. It's content, it's culture, it's community, creator and channel. Okay, great. So ultimately I was thinking about this one day because I was like, okay, people are thinking about social listening very surface level. And right now there's a rise in so many things. Creators, there's a rise, I commerce too, but sometimes I leverage it and sometimes I don't. So sometimes it's a five, sometimes it's a six. But I was like, there's a rise in so many of these different areas and people are really struggling how to leverage social listening for these five C's. So I developed this kind of framework to be able to break it down to people to understand easily and to make it more digestible and I found that people kind of digest the information around how they can leverage social listening using those five C's. So that's kind of where like it came from.

Jazmin Griffith (12:25.74)
Yeah, so this is how look at content. look at content two ways when it comes to like social listening is one it's evaluating and understanding the content that we have carousels paid ads stories Static reels like what in this realm of content? is it performing? And it's a lot of the time is looking at is it shareable? Are people saving it the comment section give you a lot of good good stuff But then also it's a second piece of looking at your competitors, you know of what they're kind of doing like for example, I always go when I was working at PepsiCo and I was working on Mountain Dew, one of the competitors we would really look at like nut of butter.

Verity Hurd (13:10.121)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (13:11.542)
Dr. Pepper and I'm like if you would look at the kind of content that they create it was like so like I don't want to say low budget but it was so like lo-fi content that you're like who like who created this like from word out art from 1995 like wow this is but it was performing so well why because it was content that you just you just didn't take seriously and if you look through the comments exactly was I was so many brands just commenting like Dr. Pepper what are you doing are you okay not a butter like why are you posting this and it kind of goes to show like okay this content is performing and this is what people want and so I leverage social listening and and those kind of ways to know like okay this is the content that's performing well but this is also the content that's you know, really not performing well. We came out with a new product, people not really loving like, you know, the promotion that we did behind it. It might be a little bit too hazy, but I'm also noticing that my competitors just came out with a new product or we have to kind of promote some type of retail program. I love how Taco Bell might be doing their content, but not really loving how I'm doing it. So it's looking at content from owned, but also from like a competitor's perspective as well. So that's how I look at social listening from that perspective.

Verity Hurd (13:30.697)
Mmm.

Verity Hurd (13:35.07)
Yeah, I also think it's really what you said about using third party platforms to help brands do it. And I think actually you're right, because it's also the same when it comes to third party tools that just kind of like scrape the data just from like reach impressions, all that kind of stuff from like across the platforms, because actually you get so much more native data from in the platforms themselves, particularly like TikTok and stuff and like the way TikTok works from a search perspective, like if you're using a third...

Jazmin Griffith (13:41.458)
…party platform to get your data for it, you're not going to get the actual things that actually are going to move things, the things that tell you what's really like useful and powerful. interesting what you say, because when I think about social listening, I just think about expensive platforms.

Jazmin Griffith (14:25.281)
Okay.

Jazmin Griffith (14:30.914)
Yeah, I'm for it to drop that because that is like a game, a game changer if it really, you know, comes to fruition.

Jazmin Griffith (14:56.694)
Yeah, I think one of the great examples is, you know, working at PepsiCo, but also a lot of the brands that I work with a lot of the time, and this goes back into the difference of like social listening and social analytics. A lot of the time we look at our own content, we're like, man, the engagement like, you know, month over month did really well. got so many shares. But then if you read the comments, the reason why you got so many engagements, people are not loving this, you know. So a lot of the time it's if we just look at vanity metrics or we look at our own metrics, we would think all of our content performs and we're not going to do it if we don't take the time to kind of see the response rate behind it, instagram dms, how are people resharing it, even the comments, a lot of the time yes you might have 500 comments but like 250 of those are either spam or people are they hate it. They're asking you why are you posting this? Etc, etc. So I give that example a lot because it's happened in almost every single one of my roles. You have to kind of look at everything universally. And also it's educating thought leaders on that because sometimes in the space when you're kind of talking to a lot of C-suite executives, they just want the numbers, but you also have to kind of give them that context of like, yes, this did have 12,000 engagements, but that doesn't necessarily mean it performed well and this is why because in the comment section people felt like why did you use this type of paper or why would you use a plastic bottle you know that we're trying to save the planet this is terrible like If you're not taking the time to actually about did this post actually perform well? No, not really.

Verity Hurd (15:04.115)
Maybe a new role we'll see coming up in the future.

Verity Hurd (15:10.121)
Or just come to you, Jasmine. Okay, you mentioned earlier the five Cs. So I wanna dig into that because you talk about the five Cs a lot and how you kind of like frame this. So this is really interesting. it's, do you wanna just tell us what the five Cs are first?

Jazmin Griffith (15:26.648)
It's the same thing with the example or this is too funny. This is the same example around like, for example, when you know, Taylor Swift, she just recently announced her, not her engagement, but like her album release. And there was that I saw on LinkedIn where it was a grid that showed all the brands that kind of jumped into it. And this young lady said, are we just jumping in to this piece of content because it's Taylor Swift or is there any like meaning or emotion behind it? Does your audience skew to Taylor Swift? Did you actually look at the comments? And I took the time to look through some of the comments section and I was like, yeah, people are not really loving this content. They're like, what does this have to do with your brand? Like, you don't even talk about Taylor Swift. You know that we don't really like Taylor Swift like that. So it's those two examples that I just kind of like to use where you have to look at everything holistically to truly value and to truly understand like the performance and how something works. And that's the difference that I like to use between like social listening and actually like metrics and monitoring.

Verity Hurd (16:19.772)
Yeah, interesting. I love it. I think you're right. So let's go into content. How do you think social listening actually informs what a brand should be creating versus just them kind of like repackaging like trends?

Jazmin Griffith (16:48.73)
Yeah, you have to create. I think the future of social analytics is really much going into the space of like custom metrics, which is something that I've learned over the years and the different rules that I meant. Sometimes I'm like, what is this metric? You know, now it's not about those vanities, you know, impressions and engagements. Those things are cool, but we have to also understand like every platform is changing. The algorithm is changing, you know. what you can measure on TikTok is very different than what you can measure on Instagram. And so if you're going into these spaces of like Instagram or broadcast channels, you kind of need to make your own custom metrics to say like, hey, like this is what success looks like outside of these major platforms. Cause to your point, a lot of people are looking for their tribes, but they're not in these bigger platforms. They're going into these niche spaces to really like talk to the creators that they want to talk to, talk to the brands that they really want to talk to. And they're kind of being very shy with their engagements now.

Verity Hurd (18:18.936)
Yeah, I also just thought you reminded me of a post that you did the other day around when you were talking about some of the metrics and what they mean and you shared about like you now you're now going to be able to see like who screenshotted your content. Well.

Jazmin Griffith (18:37.964)
So they really want to go into these little like tribes and these little hubs where they feel a lot more safer because social is becoming less and less like a safe space for people.

Verity Hurd (18:37.872)
Yeah, yeah, interesting. Okay, cool. Have you got any examples of when maybe like a brand has had to change direction in terms of a campaign or content because of what they have found through insights or their data rather than just like thinking what they know an audience wants?

Jazmin Griffith (18:50.935)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (18:55.096)
I am, I'm gonna have to do that.

Verity Hurd (19:06.597)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (19:08.95)
Yeah, so let's talk about the creator one because this one this piece is the one that I don't think people talk about enough and I truly talk about this from the lens of being a creator because I've been a creator and I've been managed a couple of times and I have fired them all. The reason being is one of the things that when you hire on a talent agency and a talent manager is they do these strategy calls with you and ultimately they do these strategy calls so they can truly just understand like how is your content best performing and the role of a talent agency a lot of the time is exactly that to bring you brand deals. Well, I was thinking about this and I was like one of the things that talent agents and agency should be doing with their creators instead of telling me what my top performing content is because I know what my top performing content is because I'm in it, I create it all the time is ask me about the conversations that my followers are having on my platforms. In my comments, yes, but a lot of these creators have sub stacks. A lot of these creators are Reddit. They're on Pinterest. They have broadcast channels. They're in slacks. They're on Facebook groups. These are spaces that your talent managers have no insight into, only you do. So if your followers are like, girl, like I posted a video about my blow dryer yesterday and like in my DMs, people are like, Are you going to drop the deets of the blow dryer? Does it break your hair off? Does it do this? This is an insight that I can give back to my talent manager. I can screenshot it. I can send it to them and saying, hey, I got 55 out of my 100 comments that I got, 60 % of them were about this blow dryer. Can you go pitch me to T3 now? Because everyone wants to know that this blow dryer just came from them. No talent agency is doing that at the moment at all whatsoever. So I speak from social listening from that perspective. Yes, it's also about aligning voices and doing, you know, research as far as industry.

Verity Hurd (20:08.261)
Mm.

Jazmin Griffith (20:18.158)
Leaders that come in food and beverage or in spirits or in travel and hospitality. But it's also taking the time to look in the unconventional spaces and look in their conversations to say, OK, we might be a food and beverage brand, but there might be an opportunity to tap a wellness creator because I saw that she drinks a lot of kombucha, for example. But she really just takes the time to journal on all of her content. So when I talk about social listening from the creator space, it's mostly from that talent agency perspective. But then there's also that second piece as well.

Verity Hurd (21:20.293)
Yeah, because like you said around, in terms of a lot of stuff that's happening now in terms of showing the success rate is like, it's stuff that we don't actually see. It's the stuff that's in the DMs, it's stuff that people are having in like, Slack channels, WhatsApp groups, things like that. And like, I mean, I always get asked, like, how do you, how do you track that and stuff? I suppose that with what you do, that's how you you you kind of hear those conversations, right? Because you're going into those darker places and listening to it.

Jazmin Griffith (21:27.694)
I'll say this, think creative briefs, I always tell people, creative briefs was something that I struggled with when I started being a strategist back in the day. could not get a good, I just did not understand what an insight was until I understood what an insight was. I think a listening brief is truly that, it's providing examples, like going back to the Sarah V commercial, it's saying, hey, on Reddit, 55 % of this audience in this thread believe that, you know, Sarah, Michael Sarah was the owner of, I think that's a listening brief, I think a brand led brief, a majority of the time. It's just gonna include things that are priorities that we really want to talk about that needs to be first Make sure you include this about the brand, but there's no unique positioning. There's no unique value ad There's probably not gonna even be any opportunity for it's like some creative spirit for you to kind of create anything It's very much so brand first driving conversion We want to sell this needs to be an ad versus being something that taking an actual insight That's true that people are saying to say my god. I relate to that so true. I love doing that. How did they know that where there's more of an emotional tie-in? Yeah.

Verity Hurd (22:46.648)
Yeah. Okay. And on that note, let's talk about the creator side of the five C's of marketing. I actually like that. You should own that five C's of marketing. Yeah, keep it simple. It's cool. So on the creator side, and obviously you live into this as well, like what does social listening kind of reveal about the types of creators or the voices that brands should be aligning?

Jazmin Griffith (23:17.006)
I think there's not enough people in the room that understand social and I'm gonna say that because I've been in a lot of rooms where people have years and years of experience and do not understand us nothing about social and it surprises me to this day. There's a lot of people in the room that don't understand social. Two people are still confusing social with being a conversion driver. Social can be a conversion driver but it's not like a first touch point it's a last touch point and I get it you know that's majority and ask from C-suites and executives is let's get in know creators who we're gonna run a to behind this, we really want to drive sales. The sales come naturally. Like it's the Steve Madden interview. I'm not sure if you saw that. came out like a while ago, a while ago, but he was just talking about his brand so effortlessly and people went out and bought so much Steve Madden. His stock went up just talking about his brand from an emotional, you know, perspective. I think there's just not a lot of people who understand social in the room and there's not a lot. There's a lot of yes, men and women in the room and not enough.

Verity Hurd (23:17.39)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (23:47.012)
No, that's not gonna work. It's just not gonna work. I truly think that's the reason why and it kind of sucks because if it's just a one of you against you know Ten people in the team know this is gonna work it kind of sucks But sometimes it's like you have to see something not work or see someone else do it to say well Why don't we do that? Well, we I tried to tell you that but so I think that's what the biggest issue is I think people are still confused on how to leverage social and I think brands take social entirely way too seriously the people that are playing and having fun like the Nutter butters and the dr. Peppers and the dual angles of people that are just kind of doing social like it's their own and showing up for work like it's another day and don't take it so seriously are the brands that are winning and the brands that are like planning content six months in advance and writing these long-winded creative briefs and these productions are the brands that are like wondering why their content only got a hundred likes after they just spent millions of dollars on a campaign. That's my true opinion behind it.

Verity Hurd (25:17.515)
Yeah and what do you think is the difference between like a listener-led brief versus like a brand-first brief?

Jazmin Griffith (25:19.822)
It really is. I think people don't understand and then two, I don't think brands understand their audience. Think brands have an aspirational audience and then they have their actual audience. Brands, all brands want to talk to Gen Z. But if they look in their data, they might realize that 85 % of their audience are boomers and they have no idea. But brands want to talk to Gen Z because they think they're cool and that's what's happening and they're buying power. There's— my boyfriend said the other day, they were like, there's so many other generations, millennials, Gen Y, Gen X, you know, and boomers that are like driving so much power. You know, Black women are driving so much purchase power, but we don't talk to them because we just think that Gen Z is the end all be all, which no shade to them. They are in some instances, but we are also, I'm a millennial now, there's, you know, we are also driving purchasing power too. We're the ones driving community and all these other things. So I think brands need to like take the time to look in their data and really figure out like how can we just step outside of the box and not take social so seriously.

Jazmin Griffith (26:28.022)
In.

Verity Hurd (26:32.385)
Yeah, yeah. And why are we not doing that more? Because like you said, it's that emotional connection that is, like that is what we need right now, particularly when it comes to content and creators. Like, you know, we're getting so fatigued by ads and like content, like as soon as you kind of feel something, as soon as you feel like it's coming from a place of like meaningful, even though it might be a paid partnership.

Jazmin Griffith (26:37.782)
Yeah, I think it goes back to this newsroom that I talk about. I feel like every brand, every agency, big or small, it doesn't have to be a big old show. But I think you need to have some touch point throughout the beginning of the week of what happened in culture. And I say that weekly because when I started doing my newsletter, I was like... I don't know if I could do this weekly because I don't think there's gonna be enough tea every week. No, there's more than enough tea every week. There's more than enough. There's more than enough pop culture going around every single week. But brands should be doing some type of touch base like that to really like understand what's going on in culture because what my feed and my algorithm looks like is very different from your feed. And we have a lot of conversations where did you see such and such? Like, no, I didn't see that video. I didn't pop up on my feed, you know. So I think brands need to stop trying to like trend jacking and meme jacking and try to jump on.

Verity Hurd (26:59.49)
But as long as they kind of put the effort in and you feel like it's like there's been a two way dialogue between the brand and the creator, like you just feel different. You feel like you connect to it. So I don't understand how, like this is all we're talking about now, the emotional connection. So why brands still not doing this?

Jazmin Griffith (27:25.306)
Because they saw someone else do it and truly understand like.

Verity Hurd (27:26.892)
Interest.

Jazmin Griffith (27:27.95)
Okay, how does this fit what I have going on? Because a lot of crisis comes from how we jump into culture. We saw during 2020, you know, with everything that kind of happened with COVID, I think brands need to understand like every moment isn't for you. Just because it's happening and it's a big moment. If you can't find a way to make it very authentic and true to your brand, then I just say it's better to be silent than not to say anything at all. Because a lot of brands get canceled. And once you're canceled, it's very hard for you to kind of like, come back. We saw Cracker Barrel with their logo, they just kind of changed it back. But it's kind of like already saw the first one, same thing with Jaguar. It's kind of like, I know you want to be cool. But so it's those kinds of things where it's like you have to leverage culture to your advantage. And also like, once again, understand your audience. Yes, you may want to talk to a specific audience, but you have to be really real with yourself. Understand our audience skews more this way. I don't think this is the right moment for us. And you have to look at all scenarios. Like if it goes left, look at the keywords, look at how you're writing the copy. How do you think people are going to perceive it? Is which I'm sure like American Eagle they probably didn't think it was going to skew the way it did they probably thought my god this is gonna be so good like this is i And then it ended up being like a big flop, also American people probably understands their audience isn't that, but they just also have to understand the culture that we're living in, the moment in time that we're living in. So it's a lot of pressure, you know, and it does take time, it does take time, but you can't just hop on a train immediately. You have to make sure like it goes across all the touch points on your different teams, run it by different audiences in your actual organization. How does this make you feel? Would you be offended by this? Like you have to ask those questions before you just publish and post on something. Because once it's out there, it's out there.

Verity Hurd (28:54.946)
Mmm.

Jazmin Griffith (29:05.901)
Once you take it down, someone's already screenshotted it, someone's already kind of commented on it. So yeah.

Verity Hurd (29:12.162)
Yeah, I also think if there's any brands out there that are planning content six months ahead, then what the hell are you doing right now? It's a complete waste of time.

Jazmin Griffith (29:14.51)
You see what I'm saying? I didn't even see that. I didn't even see that. I have to look this up.

Jazmin Griffith (29:22.826)
Yes! see I had to look this up.

Jazmin Griffith (29:28.704)
I'm sorry.

Jazmin Griffith (29:37.102)
Yes.

Jazmin Griffith (29:42.359)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (29:51.406)
Yeah, think community and I always say, I mean, community and channel kind of go hand in hand because a lot of your community truly lives in niche spaces and they truly live like offline. You know, it's hard to really build a community around, you know, Instagram and TikTok. I think some of it starts there, but a lot of it is more so like offline and every brand I think right now that's their big, like you said, buzzword, their big KPI. I want to build a community around X.

Verity Hurd (30:17.503)
Yeah, I love this. Okay, let's talk about culture and I think this is probably where you own it and we're going to talk about your newsletter in a bit because that's obviously really about the whole culture piece but when it comes to culture, how does like listening help brands like really stay relevant rather than just like chasing stupid things?

Jazmin Griffith (30:18.594)
And I think the brands that get it right and do it right really just don't take social seriously. Like Rode, like I've never tried this brand a day in my life, but the community they have built, Glossier I think was one of the OG big community brands, know, but they had the system where they just didn't take social too seriously, but they saw an emotional reasoning behind it. Like I want to make women feel great. I want to make women find their tribe. Majority of the days we're looking for friends, you know? And so we take the social for doing that, which is why there's like a big gaming community because gaming makes people feel like they're having an out of box experience. They're not in their world. They get a chance to be someone that they're not like it's truly aspirational. They have you know, these parasocial relationships. I think community is is a big buzzword and I think social listening allows you to listen to your community to help you build new content, come out with new products, creators that you should be working with, unconventional spaces you should be in, activations and festivals you should be at. Like your community tells you exactly what you need to be putting out there. It's just we just we don't listen to it Especially for like food and beverage brands like working at Pepsi a lot of your community will tell you can you bring back this flavor? When are you gonna do this partnership if we took the time to actually like Write down with every single one of our community members are saying as far as requests you really have content forever You have products that you can come out with forever I just think we just don't listen to them because they're like well They're just people well those are the people that are buying your products those are the people that are going to recommend you to someone else or say actually don't try that because It wasn't good. So I think we just need to kind of listen to our community a little bit more and take it more seriously and don't look at them as just like another comment. No, they're like, they're purchase drivers. These are people who are, you know, are gonna make you or break you.

Jazmin Griffith (32:58.94)
Yeah.

Verity Hurd (33:02.112)
Hmm.

Jazmin Griffith (33:02.574)
But brands in the US, I've noticed... big brands, don't respond back to their comments. When I'm doing audits, I'm like, wait, you haven't responded? And these are big brands. I'm like, engagement is a key piece in social listening. You have to respond. And people are sensitive. Let's be honest, consumers are sensitive. And sometimes when you just respond back to someone, you just don't know how much you maybe made their day. And even me as a creator, I used to be like, I cannot respond back to all these comments. But now I try to take like an hour or two out of my day to respond back.

Verity Hurd (33:11.326)
Yeah, like Britney Spears' video about the bread. I mean...

Verity Hurd (33:18.335)
Someone's got a re- yeah, you just search it and someone's got a recording of it, but anyway.

That was totally off topic, okay. Okay, community, because this is a big word and I still think community is so misunderstood. And obviously, you know, I'm not going to say, well, actually I'm going to say it is a buzzword. So I suppose for you, like how does listening really help a brand understand what a community actually wants instead of them just like assuming it?

Jazmin Griffith (33:35.392)
Because it's just like it's worth it to somebody someone might want to listen to or see or hey I needed to hear that and so if anyone any brand is listening like respond back to your your consumer like respond Listen talk to them. You just you just never know, you know where it could lead and so that's like a whole nother discussion for another day But it's a key piece in social listening because social listening analysts a lot of time work with community managers to say hey What do you what are you seeing? You know in the comment section? What is the trend that you know every time you're responding are they saying that they hate? they love it, do they want more of this, you know. It's also building out like a tone. you like, brands should be a lot more human, you know, online, you know. Wendy's, I always use them as an example and everyone uses them as an example, but they're just so like, they're funny, they're witty, they're cheeky. They're like, did you just, did you say that to me? Like the audacity, but like that's what social is. Like I want to know Wendy's as a friend versus like, you know, just some burger brand. So yeah.

Verity Hurd (34:30.653)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (34:43.502)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (34:52.79)
It's okay, you can start over. I'm thinking about my answer too in my head.

Verity Hurd (34:59.25)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (35:08.428)
Yeah, I think I'll say this. think listening allows you or it tells you where you need to be kind of creating content. I'll say that. think, yes, we're going to be on these Oji channels, which is, you know, Instagram, Twitter, you know, TikTok, et cetera, et cetera. When I'm building out a social media playbook, there's always a section where I have opportunity channels. And this is where other spaces that we can play in that you have a community threads is such a big playground that people just don't. mean, the brand playground on threads is insane. Like brands just have so much fun in that area.

Verity Hurd (35:36.242)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (35:42.496)
And I think a lot of people from X are migrating over to threads. we play on Pinterest? Brands are coming out with sub step channels. Brands are on LinkedIn. Like social listening allows you to kind of pivot your social strategy to these new spaces. Because like I said in the community piece, people are starting to become in these really, really small niche spaces. Are you developing a Facebook group? When I worked at Delta Airlines, Facebook groups was a really big thing. That's where a lot of the conversations are at. Are you doing a Slack channel? WhatsApp groups right now are a really big thing, broadcast channels, even like Reddit threads, which is something that Delta Airlines has as well. These are spaces that social listening allows you to kind of play into, but you don't know that if you're not there kind of listening to what that conversation is. And I think brands a lot of the time it's, it's resource and not creating content. But if you see a platform that's not working, like sunset it and go try something else. Pinterest is also a really dope place for brands to play. So I think brands need to kind of step outside of the box and leverage social listening a little bit more to create for them.

Verity Hurd (36:02.908)
Yeah, no, I agree. actually think as well about what you said about them living offline. it's a bit of like a bugbear for me at the moment in terms of brands like ignoring like their most engaged fans because they're the community piece. you know, they're the ones that they may not be buying every single product. They may not be able to afford to buy it, but they're truly invested in your brand. And they're the ones that, you know, there'll be someone will say in a WhatsApp group, have you tried this? And they're like, yes, love it.

Jazmin Griffith (36:12.43)
Thing, broadcast channels, even like Reddit threads, which is something that Delta Airlines has as well. These are spaces that social listening allows you to kind of play into, but you don't know that if you're not there kind of listening to what that conversation is. And I think brands a lot of the time it's, it's resource and not creating content. But if you see a platform that's not working, like sunset it and go try something else. Pinterest is also a really dope place for brands to play. So I think brands need to kind of step outside of the box and leverage social listening a little bit more to create for them.

Verity Hurd (36:30.846)
They might be at a bar class or something and like again, they're talking about it. And so it's that stuff like they just have to like, yeah, like you said, it's a two way dialogue. They just have to listen more, find out where they're, why they're having these conversations and just give back to them a little bit more. Cause I think, yeah, there seems to be this thing particularly in the UK at the moment where brands are just using the same circle of creators. And like, you can tell that it's just because they've gone, this person worked with this brand. We must now work with them because.

Jazmin Griffith (36:42.32)
Because you might be a brand that you know you're big on storytelling okay then start a substack channel like create a cooking channel like are you a mom brand okay cool skims can kind of create a blog for moms you know on substack so it's ways to play in the unconventional spaces that gets eyes and people say wow like this is interesting but this is good like i'm going to join this because this is different a lot of brands also recycle the same content on every

Verity Hurd (36:59.623)
They're similar to us and it's just so frustrating.

Jazmin Griffith (37:07.566)
So I know that you're going to create this on TikTok, why would I follow you on Instagram? You know, so I think people just need to kind of leverage social listening a little bit more and monitoring to see like, okay, what spaces can I play in that might be most valuable for my brand? If it doesn't work, cool, you just pivot your strategy, but you have to like trial and error a little bit with social.

Verity Hurd (37:13.127)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (37:39.758)
100%.

Jazmin Griffith (37:45.422)
Okay.

Jazmin Griffith (37:58.958)
It's okay. What was the gap in the industry?

Jazmin Griffith (38:12.919)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (38:20.32)
Yeah, I think the gap for me, it goes back as simple as.

What is social listening? You know, and I think that people think social listening is just sentiment and share voice and pulling something from a tool. But I really wanted to kind of leverage as a space like no social listening is also like listening to culture. As far as what I feel like makes it into the newsletter, I do a lot of like doom scrolling, right? And there's a lot of like tea and pop culture news. And I'm like, okay, great. Someone got engaged. That's cool. Why do I care? A lot of the time when I'm putting something in my newsletter, I try to think about it. What does this mean for a brand? How can they leverage this? like, you know, maybe someone else getting engaged isn't a big thing, but we know you know Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift have such a choke hold on the industry We know Love Island conversation Lord have mercy is just everywhere and anywhere every single brand can tap into this in a really unique way So when I'm kind of scrolling that's what I use to kind of put into my newsletters.

Another thing that I like to do is lately I've been reading like a lot of articles and so usually in my corporate job my day-to-day I take an article and I'll use AI to kind of write cliff notes for me and say okay What does this matter? What's on in the luxury space. So that's what I kind of use in the bottom half of my newsletter is articles that I read this week and like, why does it matter? So if it's something around like, you know, Gen Z is investing in more Swiss made watches, which I saw the other day and I'm like, where do they have the money to do this? But they have the money to do this, right? Or, you know, Gen Z is quiet quitting or Gen Z decide is that they don't care for self care anymore and they're looking for more third spaces. Like I kind of take those and say, and try to find an insight that a brand could leverage. And so that's how I kind of built out the Scroll and Tell newsletter. I just want it to be digestible and fun because a lot of time people, doom scrolling is like exhausting, you know? Sometimes I can spend hours and my brain feels like a waffle. It's just like, ugh, I didn't learn anything. Like what's going on? So I wanted to just do it for the people that are like so tired of doom scrolling. And when I say newsroom, something as simple as a newsletter like that, you can put it a quick email format and just send it out to your team. But teams should be doing something like that just to keep themselves, you know, abreast of what's kind of going on. So that when they're talking to C-suite leaders or when they're talking to creative directors or, you know, even their own strategists, the ideas are kind of there to start bubbling what they can kind of put together.

Verity Hurd (38:25.937)
Yeah.

Verity Hurd (38:31.249)
Yeah. And I know you said that channel kind of like goes hand in hand with the community piece, but just from a channel perspective, how does, I suppose, what is the... Start like it.

Verity Hurd (38:46.045)
In terms of a channel, what role does it play in choosing the right? I mean, I'm gonna lose it now, sorry.

Verity Hurd (38:58.939)
Okay, so when it comes to the channel, what role does listening play when it comes to choosing the right platform or even the right kind of format for a message for it to land culturally, do you think?

Jazmin Griffith (39:23.568)
What does this matter?

What's on in the luxury space. So that's what I kind of use in the bottom half of my newsletter is articles that I read this week and like, why does it matter? So if it's something around like, you know, Gen Z is investing in more Swiss made watches, which I saw the other day and I'm like, where do they have the money to do this? But they have the money to do this, right? Or, you know, Gen Z is quiet quitting or Gen Z decide is that they don't care for self care anymore and they're looking for more third spaces. Like I kind of take those and say, and try to find an insight that a brand could leverage.

And so that's how I kind of built out the Scroll and Tell newsletter. I just want it to be digestible and fun because a lot of time people, dude scrolling is like exhausting, you know? Sometimes I can spend hours and my brain feels like a waffle. It's just like, ugh, I didn't learn anything. Like what's going on? So I wanted to just do it for the people that are like so tired of dude scrolling. And when I say newsroom, something as simple as a newsletter like that, you can put it a quick email format and just send it out to your team. But teams should be doing something like that just to keep themselves, you know, abreast of what's kind of going on. So that when they're talking to C-suite leaders or when they're talking to creative directors or, you know, even their own strategists, the ideas are kind of there to start bubbling what they can kind of put together.

Jazmin Griffith (40:57.998)
I think they should be listening to the comments 100%. Not just your own comments, look at industry-wide comments. So look at creators that are in your space, look at brands that are in your space, and also reading articles as well that are in your space as well. Take those and just write interesting facts, write interesting insights that you think you can kind of glean from it. And what an insight is, it's like a whole other conversation for another day.

Two, I think creators is a big space. There's so many creators. But I think it's taking the time to understand what a creator is really saying and what are they not saying. I think that was one of your questions. Like what are you saying in the space and try to find that gap for you to kind of play into it.

And I think the third thing would be— I'll say I think brands should kind of be doing creative sessions. What I mean by that is don't look at social for a second, but just take the time to understand like... what do you want to see on social? What makes you laugh? What makes you want to share something? What makes you want to comment on something? What's something that gives you like an emotional reaction? I think that's a question that I don't hear a lot in a lot of creative brainstorms that I'm in, especially for like social and analytics. I never hear that emotional like piece behind it. What makes you want to share something or screenshot something?

And so having those like creative sessions and bringing examples to the table, like what brands are you really loving right now? Why are you loving them? Why did you just follow them? Why did this content make you giggle or what made you laugh about it or what gave you an ick? So I think those are maybe some of the top three things that brands should be doing right now that could kind of work out in the next six months.

Before I'm gonna say data — look at your data because brands do not look at their data. I'm gonna be very honest with you. It's actually mind-boggling to me brands do not look at their data. They look at impressions and engagements and have a nice day. No, look at your data. Look at your audience data like how it like who's really interacting with your content. Like what are people sharing? What are people DMing you about? What are your customer service requests about? What is negative commentary around? Like really like taking the time to like dive into your data and like write it down. Like literally diagnose it. Like you know write it down. Look at it quarter over quarter. Maybe it's not a monthly thing but at least quarter over quarter and do something with the data. What's the like actually have a takeaway behind it because most brands look at their reports and they're like okay that's great and they go back to business but they never leverage the key takeaways that are right there that could make or break a quarter for you. So yeah.

Verity Hurd (41:06.65)
Yeah.

Verity Hurd (41:25.785)
Yeah, and I think this is what you just said there about the repurposing thing. I think also that comes back to a little bit about what you said before around like people in social don't fully understand it. Because if you are doing that, then you don't understand that like TikTok needs different content to Instagram. yeah. Okay, I want to get into your newsletter for a little bit. Scroll and Tell. And I suppose I just want to kind of know like what in terms of creating this newsletter, what was the gap in the industry that made you obviously want...

Verity Hurd (41:55.749)
Once.

Verity Hurd (42:00.155)
What was the gap in the industry that made you want to create the newsletter? And I suppose the biggest thing for me is like, how do you, you already said that there's like, you were worried there wasn't going to be enough content, but there's more than enough. So how do you decide what makes it into the newsletter? And what do you think that says about where culture is heading?

Jazmin Griffith (42:25.436)
Giggle or what what made you laugh about it or what made you give you an ick or so I think those are maybe some of the top three things that Brands should be doing, you know right now that could kind of work out in the next six months before I'm gonna say data look at your data because brands do not look at their data I'm gonna be very honest with you. It's actually mind-boggling to me brands do not like their data They look at impressions and engagements and have a nice day. No, look at your data Look at your audience data like how it like who's really interacting with your content. Like what are people sharing? What are people DMing you? about? What are your customer service requests about? What is negative commentary around? Like really like taking the time to like dive into your data and like write it down. Like literally diagnose it. Like you know write it down. Look at it quarter over quarter. Maybe it's not a monthly thing but at least quarter over quarter and do something with the data. What's the like actually have a takeaway behind it because most brands look at their reports and they're like okay that's great and they go back to business but they never leverage the key takeaways that are right there that could make or break a quarter for you. So yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (43:41.197)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (43:45.527)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (43:49.016)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Is fun, but when people are starting to realize it, a lot of things are being taken offline and social is kind of becoming a supporting channel. There's a lot of like in real life activations, a lot of more brands are at festivals, they're at concerts, they're loving creators. Like there's so many creators at the US Open right now. Like Grey Goose just did their own Grey Goose Hotel. Like there's a lot of experiences that are happening off social and social is that supporting channel. So you really have to kind of like take the reins off and like step out of social for a second and think about like how does my brand like come to life? Why would people really want to interact with me more than anyone else? And what are some things that we can do unconventionally? And I keep using that word because I'm like if brands touch tapped in and like the more unconventional spaces, like it would just be a whirlwind of things that you could kind of do.

Verity Hurd (44:39.299)
Yeah, I love that. Okay, we'll definitely put the newsletter in the show notes for sure. Jasmine, if you could give marketers any three things that they should be listening for right now that will pay off in like six months time, what do think they would be?

Jazmin Griffith (44:43.086)
Okay.

Jazmin Griffith (44:54.062)
I'm gonna say skip.

Jazmin Griffith (45:03.723)
LinkedIn and Pinterest.

So, please.

Jazmin Griffith (45:13.006)
I liked that this question, I who, I'm not gonna say the whole thing, who TF did I marry by Reese Tisa? 100%.

Jazmin Griffith (45:24.078)
Afrobeats, Afrobeats.

Jazmin Griffith (45:31.8)
Did you feel something? Did you feel something? Did you feel something from this piece of content? If you did it, you got hit publish.

Verity Hurd (45:34.125)
Yeah.

Jazmin Griffith (45:43.446)
Yeah!

Yes, I'm here and I promise it will take this long. I'm like, we'll be here next week.

Jazmin Griffith (45:55.594)
Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. I'm Jasmine Griffith on LinkedIn. My website is skinok, which is Q-U-E-L-O-Q-E dot C-O or my platforms. am the socialista across like Instagram and Tik Tok.

Jazmin Griffith (46:13.592)
Thank you.

Verity Hurd (46:14.937)
Mm-hmm.

Verity Hurd (46:48.995)
Yeah.

Verity Hurd (47:23.434)
Yeah, so true. I love the third one as well because I actually think now it takes a lot for us, I mean, I think about the way I interact with social, it takes a lot for me to double tap something. Like everything goes to like a DM or like a WhatsApp group and stuff, but you're right. Like I think actually sitting back for a minute, just kind of like turn phones away and just think, actually, what was it? Like, what was that connection piece? Or yeah, I think that's, that's a really key thing to take away.

Verity Hurd (48:37.196)
Yeah. Right, Jasmine, I'm gonna quickly kind of like make this a real kind of fast paced, quick fire round. You ready? Okay. Scroll or skip. Brand trend jacking a meme within 24 hours.

Jazmin Griffith (44:54.062)
I'm gonna say skip.

Verity Hurd (48:58.657)
The social platform that's the best cultural crystal ball right now.

Jazmin Griffith (45:03.723)
LinkedIn and Pinterest.

Verity Hurd (49:06.647)
Pop culture moment, you'd secretly build a whole brand strategy around.

Jazmin Griffith (45:13.006)
I liked that this question, I who, I'm not gonna say the whole thing, who TF did I marry by Reese Tisa? 100%.

Verity Hurd (49:20.999)
If your agency was a music genre, what would it be?

Jazmin Griffith (45:24.078)
Afrobeats, Afrobeats.

Verity Hurd (49:38.793)
One whisper you'd give every marketer before they hit publish.

Jazmin Griffith (45:31.8)
Did you feel something? Did you feel something? Did you feel something from this piece of content? If you did it, you got hit publish.

Verity Hurd (49:50.711)
Love it, love it. Jasmine, this has been so good. I feel like I could geek out with you so much longer. So maybe we need a part two. Who knows?

Verity Hurd (50:09.047)
Brilliant, well, we'll make sure to include those in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, this has been great.