Paulita David, VP, Head of U.S., Large Customer Sales at Reddit, unpacks how brands are tapping into Reddit’s communities for sharper consumer insights, real-time cultural signals, and a deeper understanding of what drives decision-making online.<br><br>For more on what&#x27;s moving the industry, head to The Current: https://www.thecurrent.com/<br><br>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Reddit's Paulita David on how brands are using the internet’s most valuable focus group

The Big Impression

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** The Big Impression

## Transcript

I'm Damian Fowler and I'm Ilyse Liffreing and welcome to The Big Impression. This week we're diving into one of the internet's most honest places for better or worse. Reddit. We're joined by Paulita David, VP of US large customer sales at Reddit's. Paulita worked on a campaign with Dove that took real user feedback and turned it into a real world campaign.

Which sounds simple but most brands still don't actually do it. So today we're looking at how you go from reading the comments to building the campaign. So we should start simple. What actually sparked this campaign? What was happening on Reddit that made Dove want to lean in? Well, it's a really, I just love this campaign. I love it.

I think it is, it takes all of Dove's magical brand equity of real and authentic and it marries it with Reddit's equity of real and authentic. And so Dove was thinking about what they were going to do to launch this new hair mask. And they went on Reddit because Reddit, at Reddit we have over a thousand subreddits. We call them their communities. We call them their communities.

All about beauty, hair, fashion, skincare, makeup, everything you can imagine. So there are really deep conversations about this. So Dove went on and we unlocked all of these insights for them about not just hair, but how people feel about it, sentiment. And in the process, they're saying, well, you know, you have all of these really rich conversations and people are already talking about these products.

And they're having opinions and thoughts and real life experiences about them. What if we leaned into that? What if we said, okay, people have been using this product and they have thoughts and some people like it, some people don't. Let's just lean into that in a real authentic way.

And so what they did was they took what we call an engagement prompt and they said, hey guys, hey Redditors, we have this new hair mask and we want to hear your thoughts on it. So the first 50 reviews, good or bad, we're going to put in our new campaign. And that's what they did. Wow. That's brave. Indeed, very honest. Yes. Yes, really brave.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm a huge Redditor myself. Oh, I love that. It does feel like a very open and honest place where really, you know, consumers come to air their concerns or thoughts. What made, I guess, this insight so actionable instead of just interesting?

What's really interesting about sort of what Dove did in this moment is that they realized that the most trusted product reviews weren't coming from the brands. What they realized was that the most trusted product reviews were from people who use the product and were talking about it.

And they saw that that already lives on Reddit. And so as a brand, they leaned into that. They said these conversations are already happening. How do we lean into this in a really authentic way? Mm-hmm. And so they really doubled down on that and said, we're going to...

Reddit's Paulita David on how brands are using the internet’s most valuable focus group

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.

Reddit's Paulita David on how brands are using the internet’s most valuable focus group

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.