Kevin Johnson
President
W2O marketeching
Tapping Deeper into Social Listening
When Kevin Johnson initially founded Marketeching in 2008, it provided clients with a platform to view and analyze engagements in real time within online key communities. But Kevin pivoted the company in 2010 based on client feedback and foreseeing trends that showed social media monitoring platforms becoming commoditized.
He refocused Marketeching to be a social research company—not a platform company. He understood that to deliver strong insights from social research, you need both cutting-edge technology and smart researchers. Today, his research team is comprised of linguists, sociologists, public health experts, and digital strategists to help deliver social analytics insights at a level deeper than traditional social listening.
“Over the past 10 years, many social media research vendors have raced to the bottom—especially in healthcare—providing data dumps of questionable value to marketers,” says Seth Duncan, Chief Analytics Officer, W2O. “Kevin has gone in the opposite direction by applying unique scientific rigor to social listening and truly helping his clients better connect with patients and HCPs.”
Under Kevin’s leadership, Marketeching grew into a 25-person research and analytics firm and was acquired by W2O in November 2016. Kevin remains the President of W2O marketeching, which through the acquisition gained access to more data, a data science team, and like-minded colleagues who are committed to understanding patient, caregiver, and HCPs behaviors on social.
One example of how the company’s insights benefit clients: Kevin and his team developed a program which discovered patients with a particular rare disease were using an app to track symptoms. The app allowed for advertising, which the client used to recruit for clinical trials. Another example: A robust social listening study uncovered all the ways caregivers defined symptoms associated with a disease, creating a new lexicon. These insights were shared with several physician advisory boards to inform and educate physicians about the caregiver perspective.
“Before our paths crossed, I saw social insights and analytics in only one way,” explains Karishma Parikh, Associate Director, Bristol-Myers Squibb. “I knew I had wanted more and we could get so much more from it, but Kevin brought that to light. He truly showcases what an innovator in a new space embodies.”
