The challenge

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic required the UK Government to run the biggest public information campaign and domestic opinion research programme that the British government has run since the Second World War.

Public First was commissioned with just a few days warning, to deliver a large scale research programme to survey the mood and behaviours of the public and to test the effectiveness of Government communications on the virus.

What Public First did

Over the course of six months, Public First ran almost daily focus groups, testing hundreds of pieces of communications and helping the Government to refine their public messaging.

With the UK government especially anxious to understand whether BAME groups were receiving and understanding key public health messages, we came to specialise in surveying and researching “hard to reach” groups. For example, South Asian Muslim people living in multi-generational households.

Intelligence was fed back in real-time to officials and Cabinet ministers – with overnight reports from focus groups arriving on their desks the next morning. Our research and insight underpinned not just communications activity but also the decisions which ministers took

To ensure this research was properly understood and acted upon, we seconded a partner into Downing Street to act as an embedded research and communications Special Adviser for four months at the height of the crisis.