Member Spotlight: Stephanie Triau
There isn't one route into social intelligence, or one way to practise it. Member Spotlight introduces the people across the SI Lab community, the work they're doing, and the different perspectives they bring to the profession.
This month, we meet Stephanie Triau, an independent practitioner whose work brings together social listening, cultural analysis, search data and a long-standing interest in visual culture.
Member Spotlight: Stephanie Triau
Independent Consultant, Le Browsing
How did you end up doing this kind of work? (Not your CV — the real story.)
At a point in my life, I decided to leave corporate hours and do my own thing, because I thought it mattered to spend time with my young children (big fan of the formula that says everything is set before you turn 5). So I co-founded two start ups, one in biotech materials (we ended up creating bioplastic toys for 0-3 years old with NO petroleum) and one in affordable arts, I was also teaching part time (marketing, luxury, this kind of things). At a point, I decided to get out of the start ups, sold shares for one company and closed the other one and said to myself: let's go back to corporate life. And then I started to research where I would fit best and feel happy and got really excited about social listening, sort of a good fit with my initial background (media insights and research, marketing, PR). I have had the great luck to be recruited by Linkfluence then. For them, I headed the luxury insights team and delivered so many beautiful pieces of research. Then was headhunted to work for Talkwalker, where I worked on other types of things such as product development/innovation and client management at a bigger scale. Then because I am who I am, I decided to go solo and continue working on social listening based briefs as I just love doing that:)
What's your specific lens or speciality within social intelligence? What do you do that most practitioners don't?
People know me usually about Tribes/social communities analysis and pieces that you can qualify as cultural artefacts, blending social listening with search data analysis. Then it helps me a lot to have worked over 15 years in the luxury business for some of the briefs I get (fashion, beauty, watches, jewelry, wines & spirits categories).
What are you actively working on or trying to figure out in your practice right now — professionally, intellectually, or both?
I am trying to make the best possible use of AI for repetitive tasks and try to use more of my time to question, foresee, anticipate and understand what the data could mean beyond mere quantitative or surface analysis.
If a fellow practitioner was going to reach out to you for a conversation, what would you want them to know about how you think or how you work?
I am pretty open minded but I want to have a good grounding to work from: I love tools, data and I am quite familiar with working with images (I also have an art history background which I find quite handy in those circumstances)
Where would you like us to send non-members to learn more about you
www.lebrowsing.com