Ian Ardouin-Fumat is an award-winning data scientist and information designer who conducts top-of-the-line brand marketing research for global brands on X. His expertise has spanned countless industries, from marketing, health, cybersecurity, wildlife conservation, and many others, demonstrating his flexible skills in creatively employing data to generate meaningful insights.

Data Visualization at Twitter/X

With a master's degree in Interaction Design with high honors from France's L'École de Design Nantes Atlantique, Ian has exhibited a unique ability to produce tailored insights for leading international brands that advertise on Twitter/X. His background in creativity and data visualization has led him to explore social media in ways that expand our collective understanding of digital communities.

Ian finds data from unexpected places and sheds light on data-driven stories in unique ways. From his perspective, data science goes beyond mere analysis; it encourages exploration, and can sometimes elicit emotional responses from his audience.

Mapping User Communities

In 2018, Twitter hired Ian to take charge of two critical projects: Twitter Aurora and Twitter Helios. Twitter Aurora had initially been prototyped by the Office for Creative Research, a data visualization studio where Ian had developed his fluency in data visualization techniques. This project explored community landscapes on the Twitter platform, and how users interacted with each other. By combining state-of-the-art algorithms with Twitter's follower data, Ian was able to create the world's first real time map of communities on a global social media platform.

Twitter Helios, an adjacent project to Aurora, was Ian's own data visualization project. Helios was Twitter's first attempt at visualizing how viral messages propagated across the platform. Ian analyzed how tweets could generate thousands of responses, and how different types of content would elicit different responses. Helios depicted conversations as trees where every reply branched out from the initial thread. Ian's project was the first technical implementation that could accurately represent complex viral conversations via data visualization, a feat many social media analysts had long pursued.

Ian's work with Twitter Aurora and Helios ultimately led him to join NEXT, Twitter's brand strategy team. NEXT directly partners with global brands to develop their most ambitious marketing campaigns on Twitter, now renamed X.

As the lead data scientist for NEXT, Ian conducts audience research that informs those creative campaigns. He utilizes his knowledge of X communities to produce data that empowers brands to best serve their audiences. He examines brand conversations on the platform, analyzes what moves people, and uses this knowledge to determine how brands can generate meaningful engagement. Ian has his fingerprints all over creative campaigns on X, as he's worked for many global brands including the NFL, Google, Activision-Blizzard, and Louis Vuitton.

Brand Strategy Research

Ian has spearheaded several research reports, including #CommunitySpread, #RealTalk, and #TailoredTrends.

#CommunitySpread

The #CommunitySpread project focused on identifying consumer brands best equipped to share information about the COVID-19 vaccine in the US. Ian discovered that half of US-based Twitter users had not seen any content about the COVID-19 vaccine at the pandemic's peak. Using this information, he effectively designed a report to target leaders in the entertainment, gaming, and music industries and encourage them to share information about the vaccine.

Ian shared this project at the Brand Safety Summit in London in front of hundreds of international brand C-suite executives. He closely collaborated with policy experts and sales representatives to ensure COVID-19 vaccine information proliferated on the platform and increased awareness.

#RealTalk

Ian produced the #RealTalk report as its lead data scientist. #RealTalk was born out of a shift perceived by online marketers, who felt that brand voices on social media were becoming increasingly uniform and ineffective at engaging audiences. Through user surveys and quantitative analysis, Ian and his research team set out to understand how top brands were perceived by people on Twitter, and how they could connect more meaningfully.

Twitter NEXT presented #RealTalk at the Cannes Lions Festival to Twitter's entire client portfolio. The report laid out best practices for brands to join social media conversations in an authentic way, and in particular during politically-charged events.

#GeniusTrends

#GeniusTrends is a brand marketing feature that Ian developed for X in partnership with Genius Sports. The project uses machine learning algorithms to predict organic spikes in conversations about brand ambassadors. This program has been used extensively during the Olympics in Paris, as it enables brands to activate on X whenever the conversation about a specific team or athlete reaches a certain threshold.

#GeniusTrends generates high engagement rates compared to regular advertising campaigns, as it delivers custom content to fans when they actually welcome it.

Conclusion

Ian Ardouin-Fumat's contribution to brand marketing on X cannot be underestimated. His creative approach to audience research and advertising products is a true shift in paradigm, towards advertising that's more authentic and engaging for social media users.