NORTH WEST REGION
Research Brief
TO
Grant Litchfield
FROM
Lucie Child
SUBJECT
UPDATED Market Research brief: The Story of England
CC
Amanda Snowe, Marketing Director; Neil Goodland, CHI
DATE
11 November 2011
Background
English Heritage has within its care a collection of over 400 of England’s most significant
heritage sites and monuments, 500,000 historic objects and the National Monuments
Record, the public archive of English Heritage. We care for and open these sites for public
enjoyment and each year welcome 11 million visitors.
English Heritage was subject to deep spending cuts in the last Comprehensive Spending
Review. As a result the Chief Executive and Commission has agreed that English Heritage
needs to reposition itself to convince opinion formers, stakeholders and the general public
of the value of our work and to raise awareness and understaning of the significance of the
collection as a whole.
This coincides with the need to develop a strong consumer-facing brand to support our
commercial income generating goals, one which will help us to engage with visitors and
members, and will help us grow our membership base and our share of the visitor
attractions market over the coming years.
We have identified an outline brand proposition internally and have been working with CHI
to develop thinking on how the proposition may come to life for our audiences. The
proposition is that the English Heritage National Collection as a whole tells the ‘The Story of
England’; with English Heritage being both the keepers and the tellers of the story of
England.
This proposition is believed to resonate internally but obviously there is a requirement to
test this with our key consumer audiences before moving forward with a full brand
development project.
SUITES 3.3 AND 3.4 CANADA HOUSE 3 CHEPSTOW STREET MANCHESTER M1 5FW
Telephone 0161 242 1400 Facsimile 0161 242 1401
www.english-heritage.org.uk
The National Monuments Record is the public archive of English Heritage
NORTH WEST REGION
The proposition will be presented to Commission in December. We want to be able to tell
them then that we have tested it with our target audiences, summarise their reactions to it
and tell them how we will be moving the idea forward.
Objectives
Therefore the primary objective of this piece of work is to test the reaction to the overall
proposition of ‘The Story of England’. We want to spend time exploring the idea of storytelling; specifically:
 How people feel they learn about England’s story today
 Who has the ‘right’ to tell that story today
 What role they envisage English Heritage playing in telling that story
We need to find out how the proposition could work to make people understand, value and
feel passionate about the work that English Heritage does as a whole. We also need to find
out how motivating and engaging the idea is in terms of encouraging people to visit our
properties and become members.
We then need to ask consumers to help us develop our thinking around the headline
proposition by exploring how we’ll tell the ‘Story’ and which ‘voice’ we use to do so.
This is also our very first opportunity to meet our priority segments ‘face to face’ which will
be fascinating in itself.
In advance of the full brand development work we will be incorporating some of the ‘story’
elements into some of our work next year; for example a chronological ‘story of England’
introduction within the 2012 member handbook, and potentially reformatting our annual
flagship Festival of History event to tell chronological and thematic ‘stories’ of England’s
history. It would therefore be useful to have feedback to steer this work in particular.
Methodology
We envisage conducting the research via qualitative focus groups.
We have recently completed a market segmentation exercise and wish to test the
proposition with our three priority segments, conducting two groups with each segment.
These are:
SUITES 3.3 AND 3.4 CANADA HOUSE 3 CHEPSTOW STREET MANCHESTER M1 5FW
Telephone 0161 242 1400 Facsimile 0161 242 1401
www.english-heritage.org.uk
The National Monuments Record is the public archive of English Heritage
NORTH WEST REGION
Experience Seeking
 A broad range of leisure interests – including heritage and culture
 Excitement, adventure and interactivity important
 Younger, with younger children
Culture seeking
 Culture enthusiasts – strong personal interest in historical sites, museums and
galleries
 Motivated by learning and are independently minded
 Older, typically empty nesters
Child pleasing
 Primary motivation for a day out is fun for all the family
 Spending time together as a family is key driver for days out
 Families of all ages, particularly secondary school age kids
Members and non-members of English Heritage should be represented in the groups as well
as those people who do and who don’t have experience of English Heritage through visiting
our properties. Suggest sample composition as follows:
Experience Seeking
Culture Seeking
Child Pleasing
Experience of English
Heritage (members and
non-members)
1 group
1 group
1 group
No experience of English
Heritage
1 group
1 group
1 group
We should ensure all respondents are non-rejectors of taking heritage-based days out.
However we will need to phrase this carefully to ensure that we do not exclude those who
visit spontaneously or as a result of hobbies and interests outside of history and heritage.
A regional spread of locations for groups is preferable. As a guide, our member base breaks
down as follows:
 South East 25%
 East of England 14%
SUITES 3.3 AND 3.4 CANADA HOUSE 3 CHEPSTOW STREET MANCHESTER M1 5FW
Telephone 0161 242 1400 Facsimile 0161 242 1401
www.english-heritage.org.uk
The National Monuments Record is the public archive of English Heritage
NORTH WEST REGION
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London 12%
Yorkshire & The Humber 10%
West Midlands 9%
South West 8%
East Midlands 7%
North East 6%
North West 5%
We would like to be able to view at least one or two of the groups, preferably with the
‘Child Pleasing’ or ‘Experience Seeking’ segments.
We would look to work with the agency to devise a screener questionnaire to appropriately
capture each of the segments. We would use the quantitative ‘golden questions’ as a start
point for this. In the interests of group harmony I suggest we focus on the defining
demographics for each segment (e.g. older empty nesters for Culture Seeking). We will need
to accept that we will miss out on those who share the same motivations and attitudes but
come from different life-stages.
Deliverables
A face to face debrief of findings with the English Heritage Marketing Director and Customer
Insight Manager and project team from CHI in London.
A written document of findings.
Timings
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Stimulus briefing meeting @ CHI’s offices: Friday 18th November
Focus groups: w/c 28th November
Debrief of the findings: end of the w/c 5th December.
Presentation to Commission: December 13th.
Cost
Please provide a cost for this work including all expenses such as venue hire, respondent
incentives etc.
Attachments
SUITES 3.3 AND 3.4 CANADA HOUSE 3 CHEPSTOW STREET MANCHESTER M1 5FW
Telephone 0161 242 1400 Facsimile 0161 242 1401
www.english-heritage.org.uk
The National Monuments Record is the public archive of English Heritage
NORTH WEST REGION
English Heritage market segmentation document which gives detailed information on the 5
market segments.
SUITES 3.3 AND 3.4 CANADA HOUSE 3 CHEPSTOW STREET MANCHESTER M1 5FW
Telephone 0161 242 1400 Facsimile 0161 242 1401
www.english-heritage.org.uk
The National Monuments Record is the public archive of English Heritage