Real Folk Insights
Real people,
shaping better work

Trusted by leading brands and organisations, we help our clients understand their audiences better than their competitors do, enabling more relevant, trusted, effective work and long term growth.

In a crowded market, the brands that win are the ones that understand real people better than anyone else and turn that understanding into work that actually connects.

When a brand gets it wrong, it’s rarely because the team lacked data. It’s more likely because they didn’t truly understand the people behind the numbers. Without real human understanding, brands can’t build the kind of emotional connection that drives attention, trust and long‑term growth.

Real life is far more complex than how standard research often represents it. It’s shaped by overlapping pressures and lived realities that don’t fit neatly into segments.

In the UK, underrepresentation is no longer a niche. It’s the majority experience. Over 58% of UK adults identify with at least one underrepresented or excluded group. When these lived experiences aren’t in the room, brands lose relevance and trust. Brands that invest in understanding real UK audiences are better placed to build stronger relationships and unlock significant growth over time.

How you can use Real Folk Insights to create better work

1

The Real Folk Panel:
Cultural expertise, grounded in real life.

Our cultural consultants can:

  • Work with your team as part of a campaign or as a standalone project
  • Spot where work may not connect and why
  • Understand how different audiences may respond
  • Challenge assumptions and unconscious bias
  • Strengthen ideas, messaging and journeys before they go live

Designing for the full range of your market isn’t a diversity objective. It’s a growth one.

Design your Real Folk Panel

Our cultural consultants combine communications expertise with lived experience shaped by the realities people navigate every day. They’re voices for disability, neurodivergence and mental health, ethnicity, faith, sexuality, caring responsibilities, financial pressure, grief, illness, ageing and more.

Choose a topic
Start your project

Three ways to include a Real Folk Panel in your project

Real Folk POV

Audience, culture, context and lived experience discovery

Curated panels and groups based on real, relevant lived experience

Moderated interviews, workshops and immersions

Audience and context maps, needs and barrier frameworks

Clear opportunity areas for strategy, creative and comms

Have a question? Let's chat

2

The Real Folk Community:
For real-world perspective, at scale.

Alongside the Panel, the Real Folk Community gives clients access to a broader group of research participants, allowing you to test, explore and understand how your work is received at scale.

This service can help shape strategy, inform creative direction and sense‑check ideas before they go live, giving your team a clearer picture of how work will land and more confidence in the decisions you make.

We gather both qualitative and quantitative research, with sample sizes from 100 to 1,000 diverse individuals from different backgrounds, communities and lived experiences.

This insight helps brands understand how different audiences think, feel and behave not just how they respond to the work.

Got a question about your audience?

Let’s talk about how the 
Real Folk Community can help you.

Send your brief