Kokoro have worked with Big Issue Group (BIG) since 2020 building a collaborative relationship with our insight having a significant impact. It has faced specific challenges since the pandemic with external factors impacting street magazine sales and the need to boost revenue to support its ambitious goal to end poverty in the UK. With a huge 14.2 million people (1 in 5) in the UK trapped in poverty, BIG’s impact has never been more important.

Our initial 2020 research provided a robust starting point for understanding brand perceptions – despite high awareness and much love for the brand, the Big Issue lacked impact, relevance and momentum for consumers.

Since then, we’ve supported BIG with research and insight to develop and launch (in 2022) its five-year strategy and mission.

In 2023, we partnered on two challenges – one to support its vendors at Christmas (amid a cost-of-living crisis) and the other to explore a membership model to secure more sustainable revenue for BIG.

Capitalising on Christmas support

With a creative and innovative research approach, we combined data from our sentiment tracker, The Score, with immersive Christmas workshops in springtime. As a result, the research directly impacted the strategy for the Christmas campaign, sales of its Winter Support Kit exceeded targets by 20%.

Launching a membership model

Over the course of a year, we used a multi-faceted, highly collaborative and iterative approach to identify the opportunities and tensions around membership dynamics. Stakeholder and consumer groups with a staged, test and learn approach identified membership model ideas to test quantitively with consumers, investees and corporates. Ideas were also stress tested with experts in launching similar products. Our insight has directly fed into the development of its membership model which launched in October this year (2024).

“Working with Kokoro has been a collaborative journey and was critical to understanding the perception of the Big Issue brand coming out of the pandemic. Kokoro’s research and insight has supported us and was critical in developing our five-year strategy, mission and re-brand launched in 2022.

We continued to build on this strategy, working to identify and research new opportunities, products and services to drive revenue and further brand perception changes.

Alongside the 2023 projects, Kokoro has demonstrated through quant research, the significant change in brand perception that we have delivered over the past four years, firmly establishing the organisation as a social business with a range of enterprising products and services to end poverty in the UK.

We are hugely grateful to the team at Kokoro, and we look forward to continuing to evolve this wonderful partnership.”

Zoe Hayward, CMO