Client
Department for Education and Skills

Design Consultancy
The Team
Julian Grice
020 7089 5801
juliangrice@theteam.co.uk
www.theteam.co.uk

The Brief
The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) needed to inform parents from traditional working class backgrounds and those on low incomes, about changes in policy regarding their children’s education as well as new choices and services. This social group is traditionally hard to reach: often time-poor, low-income, single parent families with no web access, they have great difficulty accessing information broadcast through conventional media or websites. The traditional approach to such a campaign – above the line advertising which encourages people to call a freephone number and then be sent a booklet – can be expensive, slow and complex.

The Design
The Team developed a new approach to customer engagement by putting education policy information into supermarkets. An unstaffed Parent Advice Centre called Parent Know How was created near the school uniforms in 14 ASDA stores inside the M25. Parents self-selected information leaflets relevant to them, choosing from 32 booklets on topics defined according to audience segments and key stages. The branding ensured clear ownership by the DfES but was complementary to the ASDA brand image, balancing authority and accessibility with a direct, inclusive and non-selling tone. In-store communications, including trolley media and point of sale, drew shoppers’ attention to the Parent Know How display.

The Results
The results exceeded expectations and the print run of the booklets was doubled during the 10-week campaign. In total 583,780 booklets were self-selected by 145,000 parents. On average, four booklets were picked up at any one time and 85 per cent of people kept hold of the material: follow up interviews found that parents were keeping the material for future reference. The cost per booklet was 31p, while in a comparable orthodox media campaign the cost per response was £177.99 per booklet. This makes Parent Know How 574 times cheaper on a cost per response basis or 54,000 per cent more effective.

Judges’ Comments
The judges were particularly gratified to see government and business working together and Raymond Turner, Chairman of the Judges commented that this was ‘An inventive approach to communicating with hard-to-reach customers, this project exhibited great lateral thinking.
It was a cost effective use of public funds’.