\ SECTION III — ABOUT US AND METHODOLOGY

About Us

Backslash is a cultural insight studio based in Los Angeles and powered by a global network of 250 Culture Spotters, part of the TBWA collective. We produce daily content to make TBWA—and our clients—smarter about culture. A dynamic hybrid of strategy, analytics and storytelling, Backslash translates what’s happening in culture for brands and audiences. Check out our daily culture brief on Instagram @tbwabackslash.

Hall & Partners is a strategic brand consultancy powered by data and insight. We are a 500-strong team of cultural experts, data geeks, strategists, insights journalists and marketing-science wizards, working across global markets, with hubs in Europe, the US, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. We help shape some of the world’s biggest consumer and healthcare brands through disciplined strategic thinking, unlocking new opportunities for them to grow and co-invent the future.

Methodology

At Backslash, our signature approach to understanding culture is a hybrid of strategy, analytics, and storytelling. For this project, we wanted a bespoke quantitative study and a specialist research team with a deep understanding of American people and brands to be part of the mix—so we invited our friends at Hall & Partners to partner with us. This cultural report explores American Activism today through a combination of ethnographic film, primary quant, and strategic cultural analysis.

For the quant study, we interviewed 2,199 respondents within the US market, using an online panel. The sample was nationally representative in terms of age, gender, and region, with natural fallout across ethnicity, income level, and political affiliation.

The questionnaire was designed around a series of 44 actions that Americans might have taken or considered taking within the past year, as well as 33 behavioral/perceptual, or “feel” statements, asked on an agreement scale, ranging from “Completely agree” to “Do not agree at all.” These lists of actions and perceptions (developed by Hall & Partners and Backslash) were built with the intention of capturing key aspects of American life, including: the media, arts and entertainment, health and well-being, education and opportunities, family life, politics, and freedom and rights, among others.

Asking all respondents about both actions and perceptions allowed us to determine not just what people are doing, but some of the feelings and emotions they’re experiencing in today’s climate, giving us a more complete picture of what might be driving Americans to take action.

Finally, we captured additional perceptions regarding the USA, the American Dream, and media consumption, including social media usage.

Credits

Images courtesy of AP, Creative Commons (Flickr—Alisdare Hickson/alisdare). Cover image courtesy of Instagram—Yasser Ansari/@urbanorganism. A special thank you to Spotter at large Sean Monahan (@folksy_sean).