Background

We’ve been working with Hannah and Jude at Wren Insight since April 2023, and since then we have built up a strong partnership, supporting with their recruitment needs.

The project

The project, run for Wren Insight’s client, a major book publisher, aimed to help them better understand the behaviours, motivations, and preferences of different types of readers. Working in partnership with Wren Insight, our team recruited participants for a series of four online customer closeness sessions via Zoom, designed to dig deeper into how people engage with books.

The sessions were structured around clearly defined reader segments, from very light readers (who may only pick up a book once a year) to heavy, highbrow readers who enjoy intellectually challenging content. The publisher was interested in everything from where readers get inspiration for new books, to what draws them away from reading and what might entice them to read more.

Following these sessions, there was also a large in-person customer closeness event at the publisher’s offices. Around 50 internal stakeholders attended, with a selection of participants forming a live panel to discuss their reading habits and answer questions. The success of this event relied heavily on the quality and accuracy of the recruitment throughout the earlier rounds.

The challenge and how we overcame it

While each round only required six participants, the recruitment was highly complex due to the specificity of the client’s reader segments. Participants needed to go far beyond basic eligibility, they had to truly reflect nuanced reading behaviours, motivations, and lifestyles defined by the client.

Although screeners included quantifiable measures (e.g., number of books read annually, fiction vs. nonfiction preference, audiobook use), this wasn’t enough to guarantee a match. In many cases, participants looked ideal on paper but didn’t fit once spoken to either by us or Wren. This required multiple rounds of checking and shortlisting, particularly for segments involving more highbrow or literary readers.

To address this, we introduced an additional step: collecting a list of favourite books from potential participants and sharing it with Wren for pre-selection before any calls took place. Despite this, further filtering sometimes occurred based on the quality of these follow-up conversations. Meaning the process evolved into a longer exchange that encouraged participants to be highly engaged, responsive, and approach the experience with openness and flexibility.

A further layer of complexity was introduced through the requirement for all participants to complete a detailed homework task (selfie-style videos explaining their book choices and reading habits) prior to the sessions. While this significantly increased participant quality and buy-in, it also required rigorous follow-up, reminders, and occasionally replacements.

Despite these challenges, having a long lead time and close collaboration between Acumen and Wren meant recruitment could be carefully paced and highly tailored, with no dropouts or no-shows across the entire project

There was very little room for error in this project, the recruitment had to be right. Each participant went through a two-step screening process: first with our team, then with Wren, ensuring they fit their assigned reader segment, understood the nature of the sessions (including the panel format), and were fully prepared to complete the pre-task homework.

Having run a similar project in 2023, both Acumen and Wren were aware of how crucial participant quality was.

A participant couldn’t simply be “close enough.” They had to be replaced quickly and seamlessly, which made the upfront screening and engagement process all the more critical.

Fortunately, all sessions ran without issue, and Wren provided positive feedback after every round, a clear indication the recruitment had delivered exactly what the client needed.

Benefits/results

All quotas were filled for each round. While some segments were trickier than others to recruit for, we worked closely with Wren throughout to flag challenges early and identify where there was room to flex without compromising on participant quality.

Thanks to this close collaboration and clear communication, all segments were recruited successfully, and sessions ran smoothly.

From the original recruitment we carried out for them in 2023, the book publisher returned to Wren and asked for the same format again in 2024 which suggests they gained useful insights from the previous sessions and saw enough impact to justify repeating the approach.

The ultimate goal for them is to better understand and reach their different reader segments, tailoring how books are marketed and promoted to drive greater engagement and sales.

Repeat business, especially for a high-stakes project like this, is a strong result in itself.

Testimonial

“We are always so impressed with Acumen’s recruitment services, and this project was no exception. The spec was complex, requiring more of a qualitative approach to recruitment vs regular recruitment against quantitative measures.

The participants had to ‘feel’ like their segments, which can be a tricky recruitment ask, as well as be suitable for a client-facing, in person event. The team adopted a number of approaches to achieve this including in depth screening calls with potential participants to get to know them personally, proactively adding extra screening questions to get to bullseye segment representatives and iterative briefing calls with us to understand segment nuance.

As a result, we ran a series of engaging customer closeness sessions – some virtual and one face to face event. For this to be a success, participants needed to not only be 100% on-spec, but to also bring energy and personality to the sessions, which these recruits delivered.

We appreciated Acumen’s flexibility and patience as the project (and spec!) evolved.”

The Study

In addition to conducting qualititative market research  on consumer goods and shopper behaviour we also frequently work on a range of projects which seek to understand complex social issues or sensitive subjects. As a fieldwork supplier we often relish the opportunity to work on these projects as they require a slightly different approach to the work we do.

We were recently asked by a research agency to assist them with one such project. The research was exploring the issues of relationship breakdown, the various factors involved when families separate and what, if any, support services had been accessed either during or after such a life-changing incident. The client wanted to speak to wide range of people, including low social grades and ethnic minorities, whose relationships had broken down for a variety of reasons. Some of these included relationships ending due to infidelity, a lack of intimacy, or for financial reasons.

Our Approach

When working on this project our team were acutely aware of how important it was to consider how best to approach such a sensitive topic with potential participants. We worked closely with our client and liaised with our team to ensure that all parties were fully briefed on the finer details of the project before commencing recruitment.

We’re also fortunate in that we are able to work with our in-house recruitment team, who have an active database of over 100,000 participants that have all opted in for research and are engaged and enthusiastic. They were able to tailor their approach to the project, emphasising the importance of the research in shaping the way future support services could be delivered or accessed. This meant that the participants who applied to take part were enthusiastic about sharing their experiences, knowing that it would help others in their situation.

The Outcome

We were overwhelmed by the response to this project with many people throughout the UK coming forward to share their experiences of personal trauma and relationship breakdown. We were able to recruit participants from a variety of backgrounds ensuring that the client was able to get detailed picture on the varying experiences of a variety of people. It was gratifying, for all those involved, that we were able to contribute to something as important as this.

The Study

Acumen were contacted by the Greater London Authority to help find participants for a quantitative research project on how people from marginalised groups and communities accessed support services for issues relating to employment. The GLA specifically wanted to speak to low-paid workers and migrant workers – people who are usually underrepresented in research. The purpose of the research was to understand the levels of awareness of employment rights amongst those groups and also to gain an understanding of what barriers they faced when trying to access relevant services.

Our Approach

We were aware that the lack of engagement with institutions amongst these demographics would be a significant barrier to our usual research recruitment methods. We overcame this by working with local community groups, snowballing recruitment and explaining the research process in detail to try to allay any suspicions about the nature of the research. Through this we were able to recruit a full range of backgrounds, including Vietnamese nail salon workers who were being covered in the news at the time about the issue of modern day slavery in their profession.

The dynamic and flexible approach to the recruitment in addition to finding venues which would seem neutral to the participants enabled us to succeed in providing the GLA with participants who met the specific criteria but also had a willingness to share their personal stories and experiences which went to the heart of the initial brief.

The Outcome

As we were working directly with the GLA on this project, it was thrilling to learn that the insights we provided were being used to identify new ways to tackle economic fairness amongst some of London’s most vulnerable workers.

Myles Wilson, who commissioned the research for the GLA said, “Low-paid migrant workers are a particularly challenging and hard-to-reach group so recruitment was a key concern for us when planning this research but Acumen were very proactive and updated us throughout.”

For our work on this Acumen were named as finalists and eventually won the award for Best Data Collection (Face to Face) at the 2018 MRS Operations Awards.

See another quant research case study on online market sizing