Overview

Grasshopper Communications was appointed by Whitehead-Ross Education to help influence the education and skills agenda and policies in Wales, while improving the visibility and leadership credentials of the education provider within the Welsh political and policy sectors. Grasshopper was also tasked with increasing the number of high-profile visits and engagements achieved by Whitehead-Ross Education.

What we did

Grasshopper developed a clear strategy to enable targeted and impactful engagement that would help to achieve clearly defined outcomes. This involved identifying key education and policy influencers within the Senedd and tailoring our messaging to help raise awareness and build meaningful dialogue.

We set up a series of visits to a selection of Whitehead-Ross Education offices, using specific and tailored localised programmes as a news hook for the visit. We generated PR stories and case studies to demonstrate the impact of the work of Whitehead-Ross Education to the wider community, while also engaging with the relevant influencers to demonstrate the services of Whitehead-Ross Education and the impact on the local community. We positioned Whitehead-Ross as the leaders in their sector by producing commentary articles airing concerns about funding and calling for more funding for specific programmes that were at threat of coming to an end.

Outcome

• Secured 37 pieces of regional coverage, reaching an audience of 75K and 95 brand mentions.
• We supported Whitehead-Ross Education in reversing a funding decision around employability services, after Welsh Government supplied an additional £2.5m to employability services.
• Arranged direct engagement with four influential regional MS’s who visited the Swansea, Merthyr and Newport offices to find out more about the services and programmes offered to local people.