When a research agency wanted to get beyond what people said they ate and see what actually happened across a normal week, they came to Acumen to recruit the people who could bring that picture to life.
The project involved a seven-day online community with 12 participants across the UK, designed to explore everyday eating occasions and, more specifically, the role bakery products played within them.
Rather than completing a survey or turning up for a one-off interview, participants would be creating their own mini documentary of the week. That meant capturing eating occasions as they happened, alongside food shopping, meal planning, preparation, snacking and all the assorted rummaging-in-the-cupboard moments that make up real life.
In other words, we weren't just looking for people who fitted the demographic criteria. We needed people who would actually do the research properly.
The sample needed to provide a broad view of UK households and eating behaviours, with participants spanning four age groups from 18 through to 61+, alongside a carefully balanced mix of gender, ethnicity, socio-economic group, household income, family circumstances and locations across the UK.
We also needed variation in:
All participants needed to be heavily involved in shopping, planning and preparing food within their household, buy bakery products regularly and cover multiple eating occasions each week.
So far, reasonably chunky.
Then came the practical requirements.
Participants had to download and confidently use a mobile research platform, have reliable Wi-Fi and mobile data, feel comfortable filming themselves, and be willing to upload content in the moment, every day, for seven days. Each participant was expected to contribute on at least 20 occasions over the course of the community.
A beautifully balanced sample wasn't much use if half of it disappeared somewhere around Wednesday lunchtime.
We used free-find recruitment to build the sample around behaviour and suitability rather than relying on a single source.
Screening looked beyond whether somebody technically met the criteria. We also assessed confidence with smartphones, comfort recording selfie-style videos, ability to communicate clearly and, crucially, willingness to commit to a sustained piece of research.
The sample was then carefully managed to make sure the final group offered genuine variety without creating geographical or behavioural clusters.
Before the community began, every participant also attended a short client briefing call so they understood exactly what would be expected of them during the week and had the chance to ask questions before filming started.
That extra bit of preparation mattered. When research asks people to capture real life as it happens, clarity at the beginning helps everything downstream run much more smoothly.
Acumen successfully recruited 12 engaged participants from across the UK who could deliver against both the detailed demographic quotas and the practical demands of the methodology.
Over seven days, the research team was able to see eating behaviour in context: not reconstructed days later or tidied up for an interview, but captured around real shopping trips, meals, snacks, family routines and everyday decisions.
The result was a much richer view of how bakery products fitted into people's lives, supported by participants who were selected not simply because they matched a screener, but because they could genuinely contribute to the research.
Because sometimes recruitment excellence is finding the right age, income, household and shopping behaviour.
And sometimes it's finding someone who will still happily film their toast on day seven. 🍞
