Mark and Comm brings enterprise-level social listening and intelligence solutions to Sri Lanka

As social listening evolves from basic brand monitoring into a strategic driver of business growth, Mark and Comm (Pvt) Ltd, Sri Lanka's leading boutique public relations and communications agency, is positioning Sri Lankan businesses at the forefront of this transformation through its exclusive partnership with Hootsuite and Talkwalker. 

The global social media listening market is projected to grow from $9.61 billion in 2025 to $18.43 billion by 2030, reflecting how central these capabilities have become for modern marketing and communications.

"The digital conversation is happening whether brands are listening or not," said Thanzyl Thajudeen, managing director of Mark and Comm. "What we're bringing to Sri Lanka isn't just software. It's the ability to transform how businesses understand their customers, respond to reputation threats, and make data-driven decisions that directly impact revenue. With over 12 million active internet users, Sri Lanka's digital landscape is evolving rapidly, yet most brands continue to struggle with fragmented monitoring tools, reactive crisis management, and an inability to connect digital activities to measurable business outcomes."

Traditional social media monitoring has evolved into sophisticated consumer intelligence that analyzes sentiment, identifies emerging trends, and predicts customer behavior patterns. Research shows that 62% of social marketers now use social listening tools, with listening ranked as the second-highest priority for organizations on social media. Companies using social listening effectively achieve up to 10% faster revenue growth compared to their peers. Today's AI-powered platforms can understand context, detect sarcasm, analyze visual content, and surface insights across 30 social networks and 150 million websites—capabilities that go far beyond simple keyword alerts.

The Hootsuite-Talkwalker partnership brings two complementary capabilities to Sri Lankan brands. Talkwalker provides comprehensive consumer intelligence with real-time sentiment analysis, visual recognition technology for brand logo detection, predictive analytics for trend forecasting, crisis detection with automated alerting, and competitive benchmarking. Hootsuite, used by over 25 million professionals and 800 Fortune 1000 companies, offers enterprise-level social media management with unified scheduling across 35 networks, team collaboration workflows, advanced analytics, and over 100 tool integrations. G2 recently recognized Hootsuite as the number one platform for Social Media Listening, Social Media Analytics, and Social Media Suites.

"These aren't just operational tools—they represent strategic advantages," Thajudeen explained. "Consider a financial services company monitoring customer sentiment around service changes, detecting potential reputation risks before they escalate. Or a hospitality brand analyzing guest experiences across all review sites and social platforms in real-time, responding to service issues immediately. Every day without proper social listening is a day of flying blind in your market."

The platforms address Sri Lanka's specific challenges including fragmented data sources that create blind spots, reactive crisis management where reputation threats gain momentum before brands detect them, difficulty linking social media activities to concrete business outcomes, limited competitive intelligence, and the complexity of monitoring across Sinhala, Tamil, and English conversations. AI-driven capabilities now enable marketing teams to sift through millions of social mentions in seconds, categorizing conversations by topic, sentiment, and cultural context—augmenting human judgment rather than replacing it.

Mark and Comm's approach extends beyond platform provision to strategic counsel and ongoing support. The agency's 15 years of experience in Sri Lanka's communications landscape provides crucial context for interpreting social intelligence. "Global tools need local expertise," Thajudeen emphasized. "We understand Sri Lanka's cultural nuances, media landscape, and business environment. We help brands ask the right questions, interpret findings correctly, and take actions that resonate with local audiences."

The partnership includes comprehensive platform training, strategic consulting on social listening strategies, crisis management protocol development, regular insights briefings, integration support with existing marketing tools, and ongoing optimization guidance. Mark and Comm is now accepting inquiries from organizations interested in exploring these platforms, offering customized demonstrations tailored to specific industry needs and use cases.