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They hear your name. We hear the market.

Listening tools start from a keyword you register. Verbatim starts from the category: the comment threads, the Reddit threads and what’s said to camera around your kind of product, whether or not anyone types your name. Here is what happens, in three parts.

1

Gather. Where it listens.

Every week Verbatim goes out to four platforms and comes back with what people said around your category: the videos, the threads underneath them, and what was said out loud.

TikTok
  • Videos found by search, and the comment thread under each
  • The platform’s caption track when there is one, transcribed otherwise
Instagram
  • Reels found by search, and the comments under each
  • The audio transcribed, so a spoken review counts
YouTube
  • Videos found by search, and the comment thread under each
  • The caption track, read alongside the comments
Reddit
  • Posts and comments in the communities where your category is discussed
  • Communities found per category, not hand-picked
The news around itHeadlines about your brand, your competitors and the category, so a spike in the conversation can be read against what caused it.
Your own accountsYour public TikTok, Instagram and YouTube profiles, checked daily: followers, recent posts, and your audience’s replies.

Three lists seed every search.

Your brand, your competitors, and the category. Every video that comes back is sorted by who it’s actually about, and a video that names a lookalike brand is checked before it’s counted as yours.

Competitor and category terms are search terms only. Attribution comes from the names, confirmed one video at a time.

Your brand
NorthlineNorthline Packs
Competitors
RidgewayTrailformCairnline
Category
hiking backpack40L packthru-hike gear
YouVideos about your brand, and your own posts.
Each competitorVideos about them, named and confirmed.
The rest of the categoryEverything else. Usually most of it, and where the market talks without naming anyone.

Finding the communities.

For Reddit, likely communities are proposed, then probed with a sample of real posts. One only goes live if it keeps talking about your category, and it drops out again when it goes quiet.

r/ultralight
12 recent posts probed, 9 about the category.
Active
r/CampingGear
12 recent posts probed, 5 about the category.
Active
r/hiking
12 recent posts probed, 2 about the category.
Not used

Everything goes through the filter.

Before a comment is analysed it passes three checks: is the video about your category, is the brand it names really the one it seems to be, and is the comment a real person actually saying something. Off-topic videos go, lookalike brands go, spam is set aside. Short comments stay. “too small” is an opinion.

Anyone who asks to be removed is taken out within seven days and never gathered again.

“asked three shops and nobody could explain the sizing”
On topic, from a real person, under a category video.
Read
“too small”
Short, but it’s a verdict on fit. Kept.
Read
“🔥🔥🔥”
No words. Flagged, never analysed.
Flagged
“check my profile for the best deals”
Link bait. Flagged.
Flagged
A video about a different “Northline”
Lookalike brand name. Counted as the rest of the category, never as yours.
Not yours
2

Analyse. How it reads.

The analysis runs in passes, each one building on the last, and every pass keeps the quotes it stands on. Four stages turn thousands of comments into a model of your market you can act on.

1

Read each video with its thread.

What kind of video it is, how the audience received it, and everything people volunteer in the comments: pain points, questions, buying intent, objections, praise, the moment someone switched. The transcript is read too, so a spoken claim counts.

Each insight keeps its exact quote. A quote that doesn’t match the source word for word is dropped, and the insight goes with it.

“asked three shops and nobody could explain the sizing”
Matches the source comment.
Kept · question
“nobody at the shops could explain sizing”
Paraphrased. Not what the person wrote.
Dropped
“the hip belt is the reason I’d never go back”
Matches. Praise, with a switching signal.
Kept · praise
2

Find the themes, and keep them.

Insights are grouped by meaning within each bucket: yours, each competitor’s, the rest of the category. A theme only stands once enough independent people have raised it; below that it’s shown as an early signal and never acted on.

Themes keep their identity week to week, so gaining, fading and emerging mean something.

Fit and sizing412 conversations
gaining
Hip belt comfort288 conversations
steady
Zips and noise143 conversations
emerging
Price vs the cheaper one197 conversations
fading
Airline carry-on37 conversations
emerging
Strap widthEarly signal
3

Compare you to the field.

With the themes in place, the buckets are read against each other: which topics each side owns, where the gaps are, what looks like a threat, and how sentiment differs between people talking about you and people talking about them.

Sentiment is how the audience received each video, shown as a share of conversations, never as a score.

Share of tracked videos
Theme they ownDurability on trailTheme you ownHip belt comfortGapSizing questions under your videos go unanswered. Under theirs, other owners answer.
4

Analyse the market.

From all of it: the kinds of person in the conversation and what moves each of them, the market insights, a short read, and ranked recommendations grounded in the quotes retrieved for them. A separate check compares what you say in your own videos with what the audience hears back.

Everything is said in calibrated words. A count of conversations and a plain label: strong evidence or early signal. No scores, no magnitudes the data can’t back.

ProfileThe long-trip planner · 41% of the conversation
WantsOne bag for ten days that doesn’t punish them on day six.
You say“Built for ten-day trips.”
They hearContradicted The ten-day question is answered by a competitor’s owners, not yours.
Sizing confusionStrong evidence
Strap widthEarly signal
3

Deliver. What you see.

The model lives in the app. The brief comes to you. And whatever someone else in the company needs goes out as a report with your name on it.

The app.

Every page is one view of the same model, and every claim on every page opens to the conversations behind it.

DashboardWhere you stand this week, the short brief, and what changed since last time.
MarketThe recommendations, the market insights, what you say versus what they hear, and the news around it.
VoiceThe theme map, what’s gaining and fading, the phrases people use, and the quotes.
Consumer profileThe kinds of people in the conversation and what moves each of them.
CompetitiveStandings, the face-off against each competitor, and the findings behind them.
ContentWhich hooks and formats work in your category, the questions under your videos nobody answered, and your own accounts.
AnalystAsk anything. Hand it a plan.
StudioBuild reports, your own or from a template, and schedule where they go.
ReportsEverything that’s been built and everything that’s been sent.

The weekly digest.

It goes out after the run, to the people you list. What changed leads. Then a short cover paragraph, the week’s numbers as tables, a link to the full report, and the PDF attached.

The email itself is never stored. Only who it went to, and when.

Your market this weekFrom Verbatim, Monday 06:00. To 4 people.
↑Fit and sizing questions doubled after two creator reviews. 63 conversations asked, nobody answered.
↑Zips are the new complaint, 143 conversations, rising for the second week.
↓Rain cover complaints fell for the second week.

The market spent the week on fit. Two creator reviews of the new range turned sizing into the biggest theme, and the questions are landing under your videos, where nobody is answering them yet.

Open the full report · PDF attached

Reports for whoever is in the room.

Five starters, or your own. Each one is built from the same model, written for the audience you name, with your company’s name on every page. Landscape, one section per page, so it drops straight into a meeting.

Weekly digestthe team
Monthly marketing reviewhead of marketing
Leadership one-pagerleadership
Sales: objections and competitorssales
Content: what to make nextcontent team
ScheduledEvery update, or the first update of the month. Up to 25 recipients. PDF attached. Review before it sends, if you want to.
Shared by linkNo login. Thirty days by default, or 7, 90, never. One click to revoke. Optional password. Never indexed.
YoursYour company on every page, written for anyone you name. Verbatim in the footer.

A link that works without an account.

Send it to the CEO, the agency, the board. They open the report exactly as you built it, evidence popovers included, and you can see who opened it.

Two different tools.

A listening tool
  • Starts from your name.
  • Reads what’s said when you’re mentioned.
  • Tells you when you come up.
  • Returns a dashboard for you to make sense of.
Verbatim
  • Starts from your category.
  • Reads the threads underneath, where people say what they really think.
  • Tells you what the market wants, and what changed.
  • Returns a market already analysed: a brief, the insights, and an analyst you can question.

If you need to know the moment you’re mentioned, choose a listening tool. If you need to understand your market, choose Verbatim.

Stop listening for your name.

Verbatim runs every week on a real brand’s market today. A few more brands join this quarter.

Replies come from Heinrich, usually within a day.