Roald Dahl Story Company partnered with KI to help define the future of the beloved literary children’s character, Matilda. With Matilda spanning books, film and stage, RDSC wanted to understand what Matilda means to audiences today, both children discovering her for the first time and adults with deep nostalgic connections, and where she could go next.
To do this, RDSC needed to go beyond just brand love. They wanted to know how people connect with Matilda emotionally, what they want (and don’t want!) from her, and how to grow the brand across storytelling, products, experiences, visual identity and more.
Given Matilda’s wide generation appeal, we needed to understand how different audiences connected with her story. We designed a two-phase, multi-market research study combining both quantitative scale and qualitative depth. We began with a large scale online survey across the US and UK, speaking to over 1000 children and adults. This helped us establish a baseline of Matilda’s current brand awareness, key engagement touchpoints, emotional associations, and appetite for future experiences. We followed with in-depth qualitative interviews, with children and women in both markets. This allowed us to explore Matilda’s deeper emotional meaning, what values matter most, how to shift engagement with the brand and keep her feeling meaningful for different audiences, and exactly what audiences want to see next. By speaking to both children discovering Matilda for the first time and adults with strong nostalgic ties, we were able to identify points of connection, tension, and opportunity across age groups. This was essential to crafting a strategy that honoured the brand’s legacy while unlocking its future.
KI equipped RDSC with a clear understanding of Matilda’s superpowers, as well as an audience-defined route to Matilda’s next chapter, all while making sure we were staying true to all the things that make Matilda iconic. Insights from the work are now informing brand positioning, content direction and product development, helping RDSC identify where to lean in, what to preserve, and how to deepen engagement across generations in meaningful and exciting ways.
"I think everyone has somebody in that film that they can relate to, whether it's the best friend or the girl that flies over the fence or whatever it might be, it's an ultimate classic. There’s something for everyone"
