Understanding a diverse diaspora audience

The brief

The Cypriot Federation in the UK wanted to grow its reach. But their audience spans 18-year-olds to people in their 70s, with wildly different levels of interest in Cyprus-related issues. Before any comms strategy could work, they needed to get clearer on who they were actually trying to talk to.

Getting aligned

Before any research, we ran a four-hour discovery workshop with the Federation's team. The goal was to surface internal assumptions, get honest about the challenges, and align on which audiences actually needed prioritising. That session was as much about the organisation understanding itself as it was about setting up the research. It set the direction for everything that followed.

Listening

From there I ran 10 in-depth interviews with Cypriots living across the UK, exploring identity, media habits, and how people felt about the Federation's current presence and tone.

The same theme kept coming up: people cared about the community but didn't see themselves in what the Federation was putting out. Not just younger audiences - people across generations felt the gap between what the organisation represented and what actually resonated with their lived experience. Brand perception, inclusivity, and relevance weren't abstract concerns. They were the reason people had quietly drifted away.

What we found

The research distilled into four core personas spanning three generations, plus a report covering:

• Brand perception - how the Federation was seen vs. how it wanted to be seen
• Content preferences - what people actually wanted to read, watch, and share
• Event feedback - what worked, what felt exclusionary, and what was missing
• Youth engagement - where the biggest disconnect was and what it would take to close it

The findings pointed clearly toward modernisation, stronger regional inclusion, and a broader events programme that went beyond the political.

What they walked away with

The Federation came away with four concrete personas to design around, not just assumptions. And a report that gave them an honest picture of where the gap between their identity and their audience's reality actually was - specific enough to act on.

What stuck with me

Well-established organisations are often the hardest to do research with - there's more invested in the existing way of doing things. The Federation leaned in anyway. That willingness to listen properly, and to sit with uncomfortable findings, is what made the work useful rather than just validating.