Project Talent
Situation
Large-scale, nationally representative longitudinal studies offer almost limitless opportunities to examine how experiences, abilities, interests and personality types demonstrated early in life impact the health and wellbeing of individuals as they age. This can have profound implications for public policy, government funding, educational approaches and interventions.
Project Talent is the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal study ever conducted. In 1960, more than 400,000 American teenagers completed a two-day survey that assessed aptitudes and abilities, socioeconomic status, attitudes and aspirations. Project Talent is the only study that tracks participants from adolescence to retirement age. The scale of the study also enables the examination of important subgroups such as women, twins, racial and ethnic minorities and veterans.
While participants had been tracked through their late thirties, the project had entered a long hiatus, primarily due to difficulty tracking and engaging a representative sample of participants. More than 30 years after the last follow-up study was conducted, the project was resurrected. Cloud Street was engaged to develop and execute a communications strategy to re-engage participants and secure their participation in a new series of follow-up studies.
Approach
We knew that the right messaging would be critical to the successful recruitment of participants back to the study. This was a particularly complex process given the diversity of the audience. Some participants also expressed anxieties about providing in-depth personal information to a government-funded study. We framed the study as an extraordinary portrait of a generation of Americans that came of age on the cusp of a new era and at a time of profound upheaval–from the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War to the Space Race and the Summer of Love. We encouraged participants to contribute their own story to this kaleidoscopic chronicle by continuing their relationship with the study.
The messaging we developed informed an arsenal of letters, news bulletins, and website content as well as a major media relations campaign that encompassed national, regional and local outlets. Particular attention was paid to reaching participants designated as “hard to reach”–often hailing from poorer, rural and minority communities. We also worked with an acclaimed documentarian to develop a documentary short that featured participants sharing their remembrances of taking part in the study as teenagers and reflecting on the trajectory of their lives, reinforcing our key message: Tell Your Story.
Impact
Significant increase in survey respondents and in those willing to participate in additional focus groups and cognitive interviews
Significant increase in the identification and recruitment of participants of color
Story placement in more than 60 media outlets, including the Washington Post, NPR, the Chicago Tribune
Recruitment of scores of project “ambassadors” to engage in peer-to-peer recruitment