Case Study: The Social Studies Group achieves discovery of a new socially active audience with Brandwatch

The Social Studies Group Uses Social Analytics to Understand Social Consumers

The Social Studies Group (SSG), a Washington, DC–based social media research firm, was hired by a global consumer goods brand to quantify its share of social conversations versus six competitors, profile social market segments for pre-packaged ethnic foods, and assess the social positioning of individual products. SSG faced three main challenges: massive volumes of social data, heavy brand-directed noise that had to be excluded to focus on organic consumer discussion, and many conversations that referenced products without explicitly naming them—all within a constrained budget and timeline.

SSG used Brandwatch to apply automated rules that filtered out promotional/brand-directed content, hand-tagged thematic patterns, and took statistically valid random samples to keep the dataset manageable for analysis; results were then micro-segmented by demographics, product, and usage. The study uncovered a new, socially active audience (unmarried people in their twenties), revealed differences between online and offline audiences, and mapped competitive positioning—providing the client with actionable insights to target a newly identified market opportunity.

The Social Studies Group

Wendy Scherer

Managing Partner