The Sentences That Can Reduce Sentences

Say what you will about the United States, there’s no denying we’re world leaders in places named after George Washington, Super Bowl championships, and incarceration rates. If, like us, you’re not happy about that third feat, it may be encouraging to know there are people working passionately to initiate transformative change in America’s criminal justice system. One organization leading the charge for criminal justice reform and public safety innovation is The Just Trust. 

Over the past year and a half, Gradient has partnered with The Just Trust to develop an evidence-based, reusable playbook that criminal justice advocacy organizations can use to mobilize Americans from all walks of life to do something about the urgent problems facing the criminal justice system today. This project is funded by The Just Trust’s donors, perhaps even someone like you!

As part of our partnership, Gradient worked with several grantees of The Just Trust, including organizations active across the political spectrum, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU faced a familiar problem to criminal justice reform advocates: How can they craft convincing, pro-reform messages that are true to the ACLU’s values and voice?

This challenge requires a creative and flexible approach, so we applied a conjoint analysis to the ACLU’s message-testing question. The advantage to this approach is, rather than being limited by testing one complete message at a time, our unique methodology allows us to test several messaging components simultaneously to maximize impact. This is definitely our most consequential use of a conjoint since we used it to reveal whether people would rather vacation on the moon or on Mars. What can we say? It’s a flexible method.

We found that the most important messaging elements for the ACLU to get right with the American public are Policy & Benefit, Messenger, and Villain. These components have the most impact on the persuasiveness of the ACLU’s message with Americans. On the flip side, the Value component of ACLU’s messaging did not play nearly as big of a role in persuasion. Turns out Americans most want to hear what organizations will do about the criminal justice problem, especially if the message is delivered by their preferred messenger.

The ACLU research is just the start of what Gradient and The Just Trust have planned for research with criminal justice reform advocates. Given the demand for this type of conjoint-based messaging component analysis, Gradient and The Just Trust are building an interactive message-testing lab for advocates to initiate rapid message-testing projects and quickly improve the topic’s persuasiveness and ability to affect change at a large scale. We’re proud to partner with The Just Trust and more of their grantees as they pursue criminal justice reform across the country.

Does your organization want to test elements of your marketing campaign? Let us know and we can help.

Gradient Featured on “What Gets Measured” Podcast

You know we love to talk about data—and how organizations can use data to make challenging strategic decisions a little less challenging. That’s why we were thrilled when Kyle, Gradient’s Head of Research, was interviewed to talk about exactly that on NinjaCat’s “What Gets Measured” podcast!

Kyle’s episode with NinjaCat Content Strategist Jake Sanders focused on marketing data interpretation and how every business can use quantitative research to make sense of their audience and their market. "We developed a statistical model for every country,” Kyle explains of Gradient’s research approach, “and found that what matters in this market is not [necessarily] what matters in that market." This insight reveals the necessity of custom research for every organization, something we do for global brands every day. 

Want the details of Kyle’s full episode? Listen here!

Gradient x Oatly

Gradient partnered with Oatly to conduct a modeled mindset segmentation of Gen Z (yes, the Gen Z). The results helped guide where and how Oatly grows its market share among those hard-to-parse Gen Zers. 

We were lucky enough to have Heidi Hackemer, Former Executive Director at Oatly Futures Lab, speak about her experience working with Gradient. Check out the video below!

That’s a wrap, folks

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About Gradient

In a continuously changing world, intuition isn't enough. To address this, Gradient partners with startups, Fortune 100 brands, consulting firms, and political campaigns who aren’t confident answering strategic and directional questions. Through our partnership we help these organizations achieve objective clarity by providing custom and actionable insights based on statistical rigor. Want to learn more? Visit our website!