At Acacia Avenue, we comply with data protection legislation and are committed to ensuring the security of your personal information. This policy explains how we collect information, what we do with it and what controls you have over your personal information when using our website www.acacia-avenue.com and when working with us.

Your Privacy

We aim to be transparent and provide easy to understand notices about how we process your personal information.

We may change this document from time to time to reflect the latest view of what we do with your information. Please check back frequently; you will be able to see if changes have been made by the date it was last updated at the end of the document.

Refer to the sections below for more details on how and why we use your personal information:

Website Usage

When you are browsing our website we have some essential cookies in use, this makes the website work and ensures the security of the website. You can disable these cookies, but it will significantly affect the way the website works for you.

When you become a participant for a project

When you agree to become a participant for a market research project, we will gather contact details and basic information from you, to ensure that you can proceed with the research. We will also ask you for payment details so we can pay you for taking part. At the beginning of each research project, you will be provided with specific details about how the research will be conducted and how your information will be collected, stored and shared as part of the project. The information collected as part of the research project is anonymised wherever possible. If you have any questions, you can contact us via email at info@acacia-avenue.com.

When you become a client

When you become a client, we will need certain information to be able to work with you effectively. This will include contact and billing information as well as business information to understand your market research needs. Acacia Avenue will also keep you up to date with developments in market research and invite you to events which may be of interest, you can unsubscribe from these if you do not wish to receive them.

When you subscribe to our Newsletter

When subscribing to our newsletter, we ask for your name and email address. This allows us to personalise our communications with you. You will remain on the mailing list until you withdraw your consent by unsubscribing. You can unsubscribe at any time, either by using the unsubscribe option in any of our newsletters or by emailing info@acacia-avenue.com. We use a third-party provider, Mailchimp, to deliver our newsletter. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies including clear gifs to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter.

When you contact us via email

When you make an enquiry via email, the information in the email will only be used to respond to your request or question. We try to respond to email queries as promptly as possible, but it can take the team up to 48 hours to respond to email queries especially at busy times, so please be patient with us.

When you enter a prize draw

Occasionally, we may run a prize draw for our subscribers. We will be clear at the time about the terms and conditions of the draw and will not publicly disclose the name of the winner unless we have their consent to do so.

The information we need

Acacia Avenue is what’s known as the ‘data controller’ of the personal information you provide to us. Your relationship with us determines how much information we collect from you. We will only ever collect the information needed to work with you.

We will be very clear with you about the reason for collecting information and how we intend to use, share and store that information at the point we collect it.

Collecting your personal information

We collect personal information about you through a variety of different methods including when you:

• Sign up to our mailing list
• Ask for more information
• Send us correspondence via email
• Become a client
• Participate in a market research project
• Give us feedback

Children and Young People under 16 Years of age

The Acacia Avenue website is not intended for anyone under 16. If you are under 16, please ensure you obtain your parent/guardian’s consent before sending any personal information to us.

Lawful Basis for processing

Acacia Avenue need to have a lawful basis in place to process your personal information. In the table below we set out different circumstances where we process your personal information and the lawful basis we rely on.

Personal information collected	Lawful Basis
Screener information to see if you meet the criteria for a specific market research project	Consent
Contact information for contacting you about the research	Consent
Taking part in the research and having video and/or audio recorded	Consent
Payment information for your incentive	Contract
Sharing Video or audio footage with the client as part of the research	Consent
Visiting the website	Consent
Signing up to our newsletter	Consent
When you enter a prize draw	Consent
Becoming a client	Contract
Sending a client market research information and industry news	Legitimate Interests

Working Internationally

Acacia Avenue works internationally and understands the need to comply with the relevant privacy legislation in the countries where we undertake research projects. Wherever possible personal information will be anonymised before any transfer out of the originating country but where this is not possible, participants will be provided with privacy information which meets the legal requirements of the country in which the research takes place and the receiving country.

Where is your information stored?

Wherever possible, all the personal information we process is processed within the UK or European Economic Area (EEA). Some of our third-party service providers are based outside the UK or EEA so their processing of your personal information will involve a transfer outside the UK or EEA.

Whenever we transfer your personal information outside of the UK or EEA, we do our best to make sure a similar degree of security of personal information by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal information to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal information by the European Commission or the UK Information Commissioner’s Office; or
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission or Information Commissioner’s Office which give personal information the same level of protection.

Sharing your information

We will never sell or rent your personal information to other organisations.

Other than in the following circumstances, we do not share your information with any other organisations or individuals:

• Unless we are obliged to by law, for purposes of national security, taxation or criminal investigations.
• Where we are working with other organisations to provide our business services and we have a contract in place with that organisation which ensures the security of the information and the rights of the individual.
• If you have agreed that we may do so.
• If we sell the business – the new owner may obtain subscriber and past client and participant information. This information would only be used for the same purposes for which it was originally obtained.
• If we run an event or research project in partnership with other named organisations, your details may need to be shared. We will be very clear what will happen to your personal information when you register or at the time of recruitment.

Retaining your information

We hold your information only as long as necessary for each reason that we use it. For example, your email address on our subscriber list will be held for as long as you are a subscriber. If you become a client, we will retain financial information for up to seven years for accounting purposes. During the retention period we ensure the security and integrity of the information.

Securing your information

Acacia Avenue are ISO27001 certified, this is the international information security standard and our compliance with the standard is independently verified each year. We have put in place security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorisation. We ensure that only those employees and partners, who need access to your personal information as part of their business role, are given access. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and our contracts ensure that the information is kept confidential.

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach as appropriate.

What are your rights?

You have a number of rights about how the personal information you provide can be used. These are:

• Transparency over how we use your personal information (right to be informed).
• The ability to request a copy of the information we hold about you, which will be provided to you within one month (right of access).
• Update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong (right of rectification).
• Ask us to stop using your information (right to restrict processing).
• Ask us to remove your personal information from our records (right to be forgotten).
• Object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes (right to object).
• Obtain and reuse your personal information for your own purposes (right to data portability).
• Not be subject to a decision when it is based on automated processing (automated decision making and profiling).

If you wish to exercise any of your rights, then you can email us at info@acacia-avenue.com. If you would like to know more about your rights under data protection law, you can find out more at the Information Commissioner’s Office website

If you wish to complain about the way we have handled your personal information please contact us. If you are not happy with our response you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

How to contact us

If you wish to talk through anything in our privacy policy, find out more about your rights or obtain a copy of the information we hold about you, please contact us by emailing info@acacia-avenue.com and we will be happy to help.

About Us

Acacia Avenue is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a Data Controller. Our registration number is Z2997195.
Acacia Avenue International Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales. Registered company number: 07535674 whose registered office is 353 City Road, London, EC1V 1LR.

Last updated: March 2024