It’s time to look beyond the conference room. Your next big marketing idea might be hiding beneath a viral video, suggested by a username you’ve never heard of. Comment sections have become the most honest focus group your brand doesn’t have to pay for.
Across social media, reviews, and online communities, consumers constantly share unfiltered opinions, complaints, and ideas, giving brands a close look at how their products are received.
Social listening tracks and analyzes these digital discussions to understand consumer behavior, sentiment, and emerging trends. And it’s becoming a marketing staple. According to Hootsuite, 76% of marketers globally already use it.
With more content being created and conversations happening online than ever before, brands aren’t struggling to find something to listen to. The challenge is knowing what’s worth hearing. Here are three ways brands can cut through the social noise and turn ordinary consumer conversations into meaningful business opportunities:
- Jump In on a Joke
Have you ever seen a rotisserie chicken and thought, “Wow, this would make a great handbag?” No? Well, Walmart hadn’t either until the brand identified 15,000 organic mentions of its rotisserie chicken, including jokes about carrying the packaging as a purse.
On September 1, Walmart released a special-edition rotisserie chicken purse that mimicked its chicken packaging. Priced at $5.97, its initial run of 5,000 purses sold out online within 90 minutes, showing how consumer conversations can translate into real product demand.
Chipotle is another company that benefited from online humor. In 2025, Chipotle announced its first “Tatted Like a Chipotle Bag” BOGO event, building on a viral 2019 meme comparing Adam Levine’s tattoos to Chipotle bag packaging. After years of online jokes, Chipotle embraced the meme. It offered customers with tattoos, whether permanent, temporary, or hand-drawn, a buy-one-get-one-free entrée during a one-hour promotion.
The inaugural promotion drove Chipotle’s highest-ever sales during the 3–4 p.m. nonpeak hour, prompting the brand to bring it back in March 2026. The return proved even more successful, generating the company’s highest single-day sales at the time, about 10% above its previous record. Related social content also generated more than 12 million impressions and 380,000 engagements, according to Chipotle.
Both brands took jokes that could have stayed in the comments and turned them into something consumers could buy or experience. Neither brand had to manufacture the conversation or convince people to care. The interest was already there. For brands, the challenge is recognizing when an online joke has enough momentum to become something bigger and bringing it to life in a way that feels natural to the conversation. - Turn Criticism Into an Advantage
The customer is always right, and in the age of social media, that saying carries even more weight when a single video criticizing your product can attract millions of views and thousands of comments.
When BÉIS launched its Weekender bag in 2018, it quickly became a coveted travel essential. But despite selling more than 2 million units, the bag also attracted its fair share of criticism over the years. Across social media, customers complained about everything from its weight and bulky design to its limited capacity and awkward straps.
In July 2026, rather than ignoring these comments or treating them solely as a brand reputation issue, BÉIS introduced an updated Weekender bag designed around customer feedback.
According to Business Insider, BÉIS’s creative team tracked negative TikTok feedback about the product and used the criticism as a framework for improvement.
TikTok also helped solve another problem when customers began commenting on restaurant owner Candace Nelson‘s videos with critiques of her restaurant chain Pizzana‘s glassware. Nelson and her team took note and subsequently introduced new glassware across its restaurants. In a LinkedIn post, Nelson shared that wine and spritz sales doubled following the change.
The common thread between the two brands isn’t simply that they made changes to their businesses, but how they arrived at those decisions. By paying attention to recurring complaints and acting on customer feedback, both brands turned criticism into opportunities for meaningful improvement. As Nelson wrote, “You shouldn’t change your business because of one opinion. But when hundreds of people are telling you the same thing, it’s worth asking why.” - Let Organic
The internet may be quick to tell brands what they’re doing wrong, but it can also show them what they’re doing right.
From the content consumers share to the creators they engage with, organic conversations can reveal what’s already resonating before brands invest in amplifying it.
Chipotle has made this approach central to its social strategy. Its team meets daily to discuss consumer conversations, user-generated content, and emerging trends, using those insights to inform everything from creative concepts to paid media investments.
As Kirby Ann Connell, Chipotle’s senior director of social and influencer, explained, “We’ll always start with organic and then look at what the top-performing creator or creative is, and then consider fueling it with a paid boost, as well.”
This strategy is apparent in the brand’s partnerships. After Cardi B organically mentioned Chipotle, the company partnered with the rapper to launch its Chili Lime Chips. According to Marketing Brew, the partnership generated more than 215 million engagements across owned and earned social media, while its Instagram Live reveal garnered over 700 million impressions.
Steve Madden also drew inspiration from organic consumer engagement for its 2026 ASK STEVE campaign. Drawing on years of consumer questions and reactions to the founder’s viral social media moments, the brand turned that engagement into an interactive campaign inviting customers to call or text Steve Madden for footwear advice. What began as organic interactions helped shape a broader creative concept that encouraged direct consumer participation.
There’s a larger opportunity here for marketers. According to Hootsuite, 34% of consumers say excessive brand self-promotion is a turnoff, making authentic advocacy particularly valuable. By monitoring organic mentions, UGC, and creator conversations, brands can identify existing advocates, uncover effective messaging, and make more informed investment decisions.
The lesson isn’t to put paid media behind every viral post. Use organic insights as a starting point, identify what genuinely resonates, and strategically amplify the creative, creators, and conversations most likely to deliver meaningful results.
Listening is just the beginning. From sold-out products and viral promotions to better customer experiences and smarter media investments, these brands prove social listening’s value goes far beyond the comment section.
As online conversations multiply and trends move faster, the opportunity isn’t to listen to everything, but to recognize the patterns worth acting on. When those insights reach the right teams, they can lead to meaningful business results.
After all, the best ideas aren’t always born in a brainstorm. Sometimes, they’re already waiting in the comments.
