Case Study: Analyzing Customer Sentiment Around a High-Profile Tech Hardware Release

Qualcomm’s strategic shift to social intelligence powered a deeper understanding of the real-world success and limitations of its new wearable technology

The Challenge: Bridging Strategic Data Gaps

Qualcomm’s Communications and Product Marketing teams identified significant data gaps in their existing social listening workflow. Traditional text-based social listening tools captured only a portion of the nuance in modern brand-focused conversations, missing mentions in video and audio-only formats. 

While articles and tweets conveyed some sentiment, the real conversation about hardware and consumer experience often took place in deep-dive video reviews on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

The team recently addressed these data gaps after hearing whispers of discontent about a high-profile wearable hardware release. 

The Strategy: Capturing the Unseen with Pendulum

To address these information gaps, Qualcomm used Pendulum’s AI-powered social intelligence platform to bridge the divide between traditional text-based monitoring and the video-first influencer landscape when analyzing a high-profile hardware release. 

Through Pendulum, Qualcomm identified an additional 1.2K video mentions around this release that they could address and monitor. 

Qualcomm implemented a Crawl, Walk, Run framework to transform their hardware release intelligence capabilities:

1. Phase 1: Holistic Reporting (The Crawl)
   The team closed initial data gaps by subsidizing their coverage recaps with video-specific insights from TikTok and YouTube, moving beyond text-centric reporting.
2. Phase 2: Deep Analysis (The Walk)
   For the hardware release, the Analyst Team conducted a comprehensive analysis of influencer videos. Pendulum’s Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) converted these reviews into searchable text and identified specific friction points that text-based tools missed.
3. Phase 3: Proactive Storytelling (The Run)
   Qualcomm now uses Pendulum to inform its long-term strategy and to gain a 360-degree view of the social conversation landscape, ensuring it is aware of any conversations that could be opportunities or risks to the brand, such as real-time conversations around topics including 6G or political trends.

One of the critical insights from the discovered mentions was that many influencers found the hardware heavy and uncomfortable for daily use.

The Technical Edge: Metrics That Matter

Qualcomm’s success is powered by Pendulum’s advanced technical metrics, which provide clarity in the video-first social landscape where traditional tools can leave data gaps:

• Multimodal Analysis: Pendulum analyzes audio signals (tone and stress) alongside visual cues to provide an accurate reflection of consumer truth. 
• Logo and Visual Detection: The platform identifies brand logos even when the brand is not mentioned in the text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), closing the gap in partnership tracking.
• Impression Multipliers: Qualcomm can now measure the high-impact reach of video, which often receives over 4x the impressions of text-based platforms.

The Result: A Complete Launch Intelligence Report

By synthesizing these video and audio-first insights, Qualcomm eliminated its data gaps, providing a holistic coverage report that informed product strategy and development and ensured the PR team remained insightful and proactive. Download the complete case study here.

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