Q&A with 2024 Nonprofit/Social Enterprise Research Project Award winner, Thinks Insight
Editor’s note: Thinks Insight is the winner of the 2024 Nonprofit/Social Enterprise Research Project Award, a category in the Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards. The award winners were announced during a virtual celebration on November 19, 2024. To learn more about the awards, visit https://www.quirksawards.com/.
During a virtual celebration on November 19, 2024, Thinks Insight was awarded the 2024 Nonprofit/Social Enterprise Research Project award.
The National Theatre wanted to make sure its platform was effectively reaching students across the U.K. and asked Thinks Insight to help with this endeavor.
Thinks Insight and Strategy used a bespoke behavioral science approach with deep qualitative research and advanced statistical analysis. But the team did not stop there.
To help the National Theatre receive future funding, the team at Thinks Insight created a return on investment model using regression analysis, and a tool to allow the National Theatre to continue to calculate reach with refreshed annual usage data.
Ella Jenkins, associate director, behavioral at Thinks Insight enjoyed working with the National Theatre.
“The National Theatre Collection really is a fantastic learning resource for students,” Jenkins said. “If you’re based in the U.K. and know a school-aged child or a teacher, make sure they’re making the most of it!”
Jenkins and Elsie Lauchlan, director, quantitative at Thinks Insight, explained the award-winning project further in this Q&A.
Describe the research project and the impact it had on the National Theatre Collection.
Elsie Lauchlan:
The National Theatre (NT) is a flagship cultural institution, with a mission to make theatre accessible for everyone, particularly young people, nationwide [U.K.]. The organization approached [Thinks Insights] to help ensure its resources were effectively reaching schools in order to support this mission.
The National Theatre Collection’s core resource is a digital platform providing free access to productions for U.K. state schools, ensuring world-class theatre is available to stream on-demand in every classroom. However, NT needed support to understand how many students the platform reaches, and how it is used – to secure vital funding for this resource.
[The Thinks Insights team] combined a bespoke behavioral science approach with deep qualitative research and advanced statistical analysis to unearth new insight that has been used to understand usage and to enhance engagement opportunities. By understanding what was stopping teachers and students from engaging with the platform, we provided evidence-based recommendations to increase access for students.
The team worked closely with NT to understand its objectives, going above – and beyond the project requirements by developing an innovative tool that NT can use year after year to track reach. These recommendations will shape platform development and support expansion, so NT can continue to champion arts and culture and increase access to it.
We’re very proud of the project!
What were some of the challenges you faced during this project?
Elsie Lauchlan:
The Thinks Insight team needed to identify the best methodology for estimating the audience reach for NT. This was far more difficult than it sounds given the wide breadth of use and lack of reliable data. The approach needed to be comprehensive and statistically robust to ensure it stood up to scrutiny to help NT secure much needed funding.
To solve this challenge, the team sought the support of a statistician – Harry Tatten-Birch from University College London – to inform the design. We worked with Tatten-Birch to develop a regression model to calculate how many students engage with the Collection nationwide. This took into consideration a variety of school types, class sizes and subjects for which the platform was used. We found that a whopping 1.3 million pupils were reached in the U.K. last year, across 76,000 classes.
We wanted to ensure NT can continue to secure funding in future years, so we went on to design a return on investment tool. This will allow NT to continue to calculate reach with refreshed annual usage data, maximizing the value of the project and providing them with user-friendly tools to determine reach independently.
What type of qualitative research methods did you find most effective?
Ella Jenkins:
From the beginning of the project, we quickly identified that use cases for the platform varied significantly, as did broader challenges faced by schools. We wanted to ensure we understood usage behavior and school contexts in depth to tailor our recommendations effectively.
We included a qualitative stage of research to probe schools’ use of the platform, including their motivations, frequency of use and platform engagement. To effectively explore their barriers to using the platform – and potential solutions to overcome these – we needed to understand the wider school context, including the profile of students and challenges facing the school.
We conducted in-depth interviews with schools that were located in under resourced areas and/or served a high proportion of vulnerable or disabled students.
To bring these stories to life, we created case studies to help the NT team understand nuances in usage and engagement. These case studies will inform development of platform resources, which will support NT in creating content tailored to different schools and their varied requirements.
What was the most rewarding part of working with the National Theatre Collection?
Ella Jenkins:
The most rewarding part of working with the NT collection was toward the end of the project, where we ran a co-creation workshop with key stakeholders from the NT. The aim of this was to use the insights from the research to generate tangible ideas for how NT could improve the Collection. The ideas from the workshop included ways of communication, marketing activations or even digital optimizations to the product itself.
The workshop itself was special because it combined behavioral science principles with creative thinking techniques, which meant that participants were able to think outside the box and create novel, counterintuitive ideas.
Our behavioral team ensured that workshop participants were guided through the process of applying behavioral frameworks to idea generation – in a fun and engaging way.
Following the workshop, we split recommendations into quick wins, cost-effective communications ideas designed to address immediate problems and longer-term growth and retention ideas, such as ways to optimize the platform. These ideas are already being used to improve the platform and enhance accessibility for students who need it most.