Market Research Projects & Case Studies

Urgent pain point:

A nonprofit public health initiative created an online resource for Black and Hispanic families with adolescent children. After early success, the organization faced a critical decision: would this same tool be embraced by Asian American families, or would cultural differences require a different approach?

Stakes were high: Asian Americans, as a group, are notably reluctant to seek mental health care. If the existing resource wasn’t appropriate, the client organization would fail to reach vulnerable middle schoolers.

How should the team proceed: promote the existing resource to Asian American families, or develop different, culturally tailored approaches?

Urgent pain point: A municipal political action organization needed critical Asian American support to prevent the election of a mayoral candidate that the organization strongly opposed. Beyond generating support for preferred candidates, the client organization needed to understand how to educate these voters on how to utilize ranked choice voting to express their preferences confidently at the ballot box.

Facing tight timelines and high stakes, the team needed to craft messaging that resonated with Asian American voters, and deploy voter education on ranked choice voting.

Urgent pain point: The client's advertising images risked not resonating with Asian American families — threatening to slow growth of premium branded vacation experiences among a priority segment.

As a global leisure and entertainment organization (confidential), the team faced real pressure to build business with Asian American families while ensuring that a major ad campaign reflected authentic, high-appeal imagery and family moments.

The immediate trigger for research was clear: validate which visuals and creative directions would appeal strongly to this demographic before the campaign launched.

A small independent high school faced stiff competition from numerous private high schools in its major metro market. The client's ad agency had developed five alternative brand positioning concepts, each with a distinct advertising campaign.

Target consumer research was needed to guide the client's branding and advertising strategies just prior to launching a new campaign for the peak recruiting season.

History Museum Striving for Relevance with GenZ. A well-established history museum with a social mission worried about its dimming relevance with younger generations. The museum needed to understand what America's GenZ thought of its social mission and the global events that spurred its very creation.

The museum realized that without buy-in from younger generations, it could become a dusty relic of the past, rather than an inspiration for a better society.

Immediate pain point: A prominent international news organization needed to grow its US audience but lacked clarity on how to target and serve racially and ethnically diverse American news consumers.

Facing an urgent market opportunity, the client engaged Springboard to uncover how diverse Asian American news consumers perceived its product and what would make its editorial offering more compelling. This was a sensitive change for a legacy brand: the organization had to expand reach without losing its core identity.

The trigger for the research was a clear belief that US growth depended on better targeting and a more inclusive editorial approach. The central question the project addresses: how can the organization reshape its editorial strategy and audience targeting so it resonates with racially and ethnically diverse Americans while sustaining its existing readership?

Urgent issue: a national public health campaign risked missing its audience — parents of adolescents from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds — and with it the chance to prevent risky adolescent behavior.

The client was a non-profit public health initiative. They needed timely, representative feedback from parents of adolescents to ensure that the national campaign would land with the right tone, content, and reach to resonate across income levels, education, and cultural contexts.

Immediate pain point: A start-up cultural museum needed to build public awareness and support, implement a major capital campaign, and develop programming that would engage community members both before and after the museum campus opened. They faced the common but urgent dilemma of new cultural institutions: how to turn early interest into sustained community endorsement and financial commitments.

To move forward they required rapid community input and to validate messaging, prioritize funding asks, and design programs that resonate with local audiences. The core question we answered: how can this start-up museum quickly build excitement, accelerate fundraising, and co-create programs with the community to set the museum up for longterm success?

Immediate pain point: a shrinking, aging membership that threatened the organization’s future viability.

A large fraternal organization (confidential) faced an urgent membership crisis: declining numbers and an increasingly older membership base. This put volunteer capacity, chapter sustainability, and long‑term relevance at risk.

Leadership commissioned research to answer a single, high‑stakes question: how can the organization grow and diversify membership while preserving core traditions and value? The challenge required clear, actionable insight for recruitment, retention, and engagement across generations in the fraternal sector.

The challenge: 75 ideas, six weeks, one global recommendation

L'Oréal wanted to define the next generation of online-plus-offline (O+O) beauty retail. The team arrived with 75 ideas and six weeks until its annual global meeting.

The brief was complex. As a brand, not a retailer, L'Oréal needed recommendations that would win over retail partners, hold together globally while flexing locally, and get past internal bias. The team had already narrowed the list to 20 hypotheses but couldn't be sure they were the right ones.

The challenge: Steering a restage in real time

A leading financial services brand launched a bold restage: a new name, a new visual system, and an integrated campaign debuting at a major national event. The stakes were high. The restage had to protect existing brand equity while building cultural relevance fast.

Traditional tracking couldn’t keep up. It was too slow and too siloed to pick up early signals, read sentiment in context, or explain which audiences and messages were landing. The brand needed evidence it could steer with while the campaign was live, not months after.

The challenge: Brand trackers that measure every category the same way

Most brand trackers apply one model to every category. Awareness, consideration, NPS, the same funnel whether you’re selling a car or a bag of chips. But categories don’t behave the same way. 51% of snack purchases are spontaneous. For cars, it’s 5%.

When a tracker can’t see that difference, it can’t tell you what’s actually driving choice. Teams end up with dashboards full of metrics and no clear direction on what to do next. We set out to prove the difference with data.