Bethan Whaley

Associate Director, Cultural Strategy (Numbers, Amsterdam)

Bethan joins the Crowd DNA Numbers team in Amsterdam, following a move all the way from Melbourne, with an appetite to experience a new culture, and immerse herself in this creative hub of a city. Her curiosity for understanding people kickstarted during her psychology and marketing undergrad, where she did her honours thesis on the rise of influencers and value co-creation on social media (not that today’s definition of ‘influencer’ even existed back then…). Primarily a quantitative insights strategist, but with a love and appreciation for qual, she’s partnered with leading brands to explore the evolving landscape of charitable giving, design behaviour change and intervention strategies, and map segment needs and white space opportunity areas. She is particularly passionate about behavioural economics and using data to drive socially positive behaviour change, and recently received an ADMA certification in BE. In her spare time you can find Bethan exploring the arts and music scene in her new city, indulging in her passion for Drag Race and custom-making extravagant (note: drag-inspired) costumes.

Narrated Galleries

We love films, but narrated galleries – fusing showreels of still images and audio of participant commentary – creates outputs that allow for high levels of reflection and audience empathy. Ideal for user experience work, in other words
Crowd Communities

We’ve a wealth of experience at setting up and managing communities for clients, with learnings on how best to engage audiences and a full box of tricks for maximising what we get out of the work – including geo tagging, streaming in social media data and a mobile optimised platform
Pinterest

We’ve used Pinterest to really good effect on a number of projects recently, helping us to explore differences and commonalities among different typologies in areas such as fashion and style, home, holidays and entertainment. Engagement levels with participants always rank high, and clients love the vividness and clarity of the findings.
Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism works on the principle of making reporters of our participants, briefing them to capture what’s happening in the lives of their friends and family via video dispatches and blogging. It gets us places where we can’t otherwise get. It bypasses the bias of having a researcher in attendance. People are often more accurate reporters on those around them than on themselves, so that’s another bias circumnavigated.
Network Audits

If you want to really understand how people interact with those around them, it’s logical to research interconnected groups of friends, family and work colleagues. First developed as part of our award winning word of mouth research for Guardian News & Media, and since then refined and reconfigured across a range of global projects, our network audit approach helps us understand who’s influencing who as authentically as possible.