Emergent signals: shifts in parenting

Challenge
Primrose Schools, a premium leader in early education and franchise network, faced stagnant parent enrollment despite strong digital engagement and top-rated facilities. Their advanced analytics-driven enrollment model failed to convert parent interest into action, signaling a disconnect between brand messaging and parent expectations. As they prepared for aggressive national expansion, they needed to better understand the emotional and cultural factors influencing new parents.

Insight
Using immersive video-based ethnography, we uncovered that modern parents prioritize emotional resilience and character building over pedagogy expertise—seeking a peer to peer relationship, and sense of community within the school. The study revealed critical blind spots in how Primrose communicated its proprietary curriculum and positioned itself as a partner in parenting, not just a service provider. Insights were derived from deep contextual research that included home visits, school tours, and parent storytelling—capturing the nuanced decision-making process that standard analytics missed.

Impact
The research became a catalyst for a full brand transformation across all departments—shifting tone, training, messaging, and even the school tour experience. Parent enrollment grew 4%, inquiries rose 18%, and social media engagement jumped 24%, making Primrose the top unaided brand in its category. Most notably, the ethnographic insights were scaled through internal training and video libraries, aligning over 10,500 employees around a more empathetic, culturally relevant brand experience.