Commercial
Consumers, categories, brands, culture, communications and emerging needs.
Social intelligence & consumer research
Before you ask people what they think, listen to what they say when nobody is asking.
People are constantly telling each other what matters to them.
In conversations, arguments, jokes, complaints, recommendations, stories and silences.
This is where Bakamo looks.
We are a social intelligence company. We read natural conversation to uncover the meanings, tensions and assumptions shaping how people see the world — and turn them into insight that helps organisations make better decisions.
We call this Social Truth.
Research has become very good at measuring the wrong things.
We have perfected the questionnaire, the focus group, the tracker, the segment and the dashboard.
But people don't experience their lives in questionnaires, segments or dashboards.
They live in culture. In conversation. In contradiction.
And when you ask people what they think, you inevitably shape what they tell you.
The brief defines the question.
The question defines the instrument.
The instrument defines what can be found.
So we start somewhere else.
We listen to what people say to each other when nobody is asking.
What is social intelligence?
Social intelligence is the study of what people say to each other, unprompted and in public, to understand how they make sense of a category, an issue or a brand. It reads whole conversations rather than counting mentions, and it is used for consumer insights, brand strategy, communications and public-sector research. Bakamo is a social intelligence company.
Most of those conversations never mention a brand. People are talking about rent, their kids, their bodies, what they are tired of and what they are hoping for. That is where the decisions get made, long before anyone sees a survey.
We read that conversation first, and only then decide what is worth asking.
What is Social Truth?
Social Truth is Bakamo's name for the shared meaning, tension or assumption that emerges between people in conversation, usually without anyone stating it outright. It is found by reading unprompted conversation rather than by asking questions. It is the output of social intelligence research.
It is not opinion. Opinion lives inside a person. It is not sentiment. Sentiment is a score applied after the fact.
Social Truth lives between people.
It can be
- The tension nobody put in the discussion guide.
- The assumption everyone in a category has quietly accepted.
- The thing people have stopped arguing about.
- The language consumers use when they don't know they're being researched.
- The reason a perfectly good proposition doesn't travel.
Social Truth is not what people say when you ask them.
It is what their conversations reveal when you listen.
Our method
Reality first. Measurement second.
Most research starts with a question.
We start with reality.
We explore the conversations that already exist, discover what is actually meaningful, and only then decide what is worth measuring.
Listen. Map. Measure.
The conversation moves first.
Research usually arrives later.
How does social intelligence research work?
Social intelligence research starts by reading a large body of natural conversation around a topic, with no brand or keyword as the entry point. The recurring meanings and tensions are then mapped, and the ones that matter are measured with a survey or tracker built from the language people actually used. The order is listen, map, measure. Measurement comes last.
Most research runs this the other way round. It starts with a question, builds an instrument, and finds what the instrument allows. We start with reality, so the question is earned rather than assumed.
We read differently
What is the Reading Machine?
The Reading Machine is Bakamo's system for reading millions of conversations and surfacing the patterns, connections and emerging meanings across them. It does the reading at a scale no human team could manage, and nothing is pre-selected because it looked interesting. Bakamo's analysts then interpret what it surfaces.
Millions of conversations contain an enormous amount of information. But information isn't insight. Finding a pattern is not the same as understanding it.
Technology doesn't tell us what matters. Our analysts do. They bring context, judgement, cultural understanding and curiosity to what the Reading Machine surfaces.
The Reading Machine gives us scale. Humans give it meaning.
Meet The Reading Machine →Social intelligence vs social listening: what is the difference?
Social listening monitors. A tool collects mentions of a brand, product or keyword and reports how many there were, whether they were positive or negative, and how that changed since last week. Social intelligence reads. It studies the whole conversation around a category or issue, most of which never mentions a brand, and explains how people are making sense of it.
Both start from the same raw material. They answer different questions.
Why automated sentiment fails
Sentiment analysis scores a post as positive or negative. It cannot tell a joke from a complaint, or praise from irony, and it has no view on what the post means. A category can be ninety per cent negative and still be the best opportunity you have, because the anger is pointed at an assumption nobody has challenged yet. A score will never show you that. Only reading will.
Why human-led reading at scale succeeds
The Reading Machine reads millions of conversations so that nothing is pre-selected and nothing is missed. Our analysts then interpret what it surfaces, with context, judgement and cultural understanding. The machine finds the pattern. People decide what it means. That combination is how a mention count becomes a Social Truth.
Social listening tells you how much you were talked about.
Social intelligence tells you why, and what to do about it.
Across markets and languages
We go where the conversation is.
Reality doesn't stop at borders.
People talk differently in different places, cultures and languages. But everywhere, they are negotiating identity, belonging, status, security, trust, change and meaning.
We've spent ten years learning how to read those conversations.
45
countries
65
languages
550+
projects
Click a lit point
Our Atlas shows where we've listened — across markets, cultures, categories and some of the most contested issues facing organisations today. Click a dot.
But the point isn't how much data we've collected.
It's how much reality we've learned to recognise.
AdidasNiveaPhilipsUnileverNestléL'OréalTelenorPanasonicReckittDe BeersTabascoTescoLily's KitchenArgos Pet InsuranceTevaMerckBoehringer IngelheimTD BankBudapest BankAllianzProvidentWizz AirNorautoDreher (Asahi)Western UnionTier MobilityBorealisEuropacableEve Online (CCP Games)KingHeartSaatchi & SaatchiGruner + JahrRügenwalder MühleShaw FloorsMacy'sBARE Zero ProofKantar2CVGallup InternationalORB InternationalOpen Society FoundationsFriedrich Ebert StiftungOfcomMcCain Institute / Arizona State UniversityPew Research CenterParliament of VictoriaPolitical CapitalBIRN — Balkan Investigative Reporting NetworkGreenpeaceEnergiaklubre:publicaErste FoundationAdidasNiveaPhilipsUnileverNestléL'OréalTelenorPanasonicReckittDe BeersTabascoTescoLily's KitchenArgos Pet InsuranceTevaMerckBoehringer IngelheimTD BankBudapest BankAllianzProvidentWizz AirNorautoDreher (Asahi)Western UnionTier MobilityBorealisEuropacableEve Online (CCP Games)KingHeartSaatchi & SaatchiGruner + JahrRügenwalder MühleShaw FloorsMacy'sBARE Zero ProofKantar2CVGallup InternationalORB InternationalOpen Society FoundationsFriedrich Ebert StiftungOfcomMcCain Institute / Arizona State UniversityPew Research CenterParliament of VictoriaPolitical CapitalBIRN — Balkan Investigative Reporting NetworkGreenpeaceEnergiaklubre:publicaErste Foundation
Segmentation
We don't believe people fit neatly into boxes.
People are contradictory. Contextual. Social.
They don't live inside the segments, personas and categories researchers build for them. So we start by listening to the world they actually inhabit.
Then we work out what the boxes should have been.
Who we work with
What we uncover changes what happens next.
Who uses social intelligence?
Social intelligence is used by brand, insight and strategy teams in commercial companies, by health and pharma organisations studying patients and professionals, and by governments and not-for-profits working on public opinion and contested issues. Bakamo has run more than 550 projects across 45 countries and 65 languages in these three areas.
Our work has helped organisations understand markets, challenge assumptions, identify emerging needs and make decisions with a clearer view of the people affected by them.
Health & Pharma
Patients, healthcare professionals, health equity, public discourse and the social forces shaping health.
Government & Not-for-Profit
Citizens, public opinion, policy, advocacy, social movements and contested issues.
Different questions. Different audiences.
The same starting point: reality.
Sometimes the most valuable insight is the one you didn't ask for.
A brief is a useful starting point. It isn't necessarily the right question.
We challenge assumptions when the evidence demands it.
We expose tensions that don't fit the hypothesis.
We bring back things that are inconvenient, uncomfortable or simply unexpected.
Because our job isn't to make the research look good.
Our job is to make reality impossible to ignore.
Build on reality.
You don't always need another study.
Sometimes you need to know whether you're asking the right question in the first place.
Bring us the decision you're trying to make.
We'll help you understand what you need to know first.
Questions
Social intelligence, answered plainly.
What is social intelligence?
Social intelligence is research that reads what people say to each other in public, unprompted, to understand how they think about a category, an issue or a brand. It studies whole conversations rather than mentions. Bakamo uses it to find Social Truth: the shared meanings and tensions that shape decisions before anyone is asked a question.
What is the difference between social intelligence and social listening?
Social listening monitors mentions of the terms you give it and reports volume and sentiment. Social intelligence reads the wider conversation, most of which never mentions a brand, and explains how people make sense of the topic. Listening tells you how much you were talked about. Intelligence tells you why, and what to do about it.
What is Social Truth?
Social Truth is Bakamo's term for the shared meaning, tension or assumption that emerges between people in conversation, usually without anyone stating it. It is not opinion, which lives inside a person, and it is not sentiment, which is a score applied afterwards. It is what conversations reveal when you read them properly.
How is social intelligence different from a survey or a focus group?
Surveys and focus groups ask people questions, and the question shapes the answer. Social intelligence reads what people said when nobody was asking. We use it first, to discover what matters, and then design the survey around what we found. Discovery before validation.
Is social intelligence the same as consumer insights?
Social intelligence is a way of producing consumer insights. It is the method; consumer insight is the result. It also produces citizen, patient and public-opinion insight, which is why we work with governments and health organisations as well as brands.
Does Bakamo use AI to analyse conversations?
We use our own Reading Machine to read conversations at a scale no human team could manage, and to surface patterns across them. Our analysts decide what those patterns mean. The Reading Machine gives us scale. Humans give it meaning.
Can social intelligence be measured?
Yes. Once we have mapped the meanings and tensions in a conversation, we build quantitative instruments that measure how much weight each one carries, by demographic and by market. Reality first, measurement second.
How long does a social intelligence project take?
First learnings arrive in one to two weeks depending on the scope. We start with the decision you are trying to make and help you work out what you need to know first. Book a meeting to talk it through.
Which markets and languages does Bakamo cover?
We have worked in 45 countries and 65 languages, across commercial, health and public-sector questions. Reality does not stop at borders, and neither does the conversation.
Glossary
- Social intelligence
- Research that reads unprompted public conversation to understand how people make sense of a category, issue or brand. Produces consumer, citizen and patient insight. Bakamo's discipline.
- Social listening
- Software that monitors mentions of specified brands or keywords and reports volume, reach and sentiment over time. Useful for communications and customer care. Finds only what you already knew to look for.
- Social Truth
- Bakamo's term for the shared meaning, tension or assumption that emerges between people in conversation without anyone stating it. The output of social intelligence research.
- Consumer insights
- Understanding of why people choose, reject, trust or ignore products, brands and categories. Social intelligence produces consumer insights from conversation rather than from questions.
- Unprompted conversation
- What people say to each other when no researcher is asking. The raw material of social intelligence. Contrast with prompted data: surveys, interviews and focus groups.
- Sentiment analysis
- Automated scoring of text as positive, negative or neutral. A feature of social listening tools. It cannot tell irony from praise, or a complaint from a joke, and it says nothing about meaning.
- Netnography
- The academic name for ethnographic research conducted in online communities. Social intelligence is netnography at scale, with the reading done by the Reading Machine and the interpretation done by analysts.
- The Reading Machine
- Bakamo's system for reading millions of conversations and surfacing patterns, connections and emerging meanings across them. It provides scale. Analysts provide meaning.
- Discovery before validation
- Bakamo's working rule. Read the conversation to discover what matters, then build the survey to measure it. Most research does the reverse and validates what it already assumed.