Talking Futures

Client: Gatsby Charitable Foundation

What if the biggest barrier to a child’s success isn’t their ability or ambition, but their parents’ outdated perceptions of what success looks like? Research shows parents are the biggest influence on their children’s education and career choices, but they’re not aware of it, and they often rely on their own (outdated) experiences.

Over the past decade, reforms to technical education (TE) have improved young people’s options, but parents’ understanding of these qualifications lags behind. In 2021, Kindred was appointed to deliver a comms campaign to encourage parents to support their kids by having regular, informed conversations about their education options. However, what became clear was that by encouraging parents to consider all the options, there was a widening knowledge gap for new technical qualifications. In January 2025, we relaunched the Talking Futures campaign with a renewed focus on TE to help parents better understand these qualifications and consider if they’d be right for their child. Through advertising, creative PR, press office and partnerships with household names, we smashed every single KPI with three months of the campaign still to go. We generated 150 pieces of media coverage, drove 678k visits to the Talking Futures website, 47% of parents have heard of ‘technical education’ and claim to know a fair amount about it (up from 36% 12 months ago) and most importantly, 46% of parents have discussed technical qualifications with their child, which means young people can achieve their potential in highly skilled careers, supported by those they trust most.