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client stories

Driving transformation through audience-led agile marketing

with RNIB

25% increase in team confidence

around process clarity and collaboration

66% higher confidence

in agile delivery post-implementation

RNIB is one of the UK’s leading disability charities, providing support and breaking down barriers for two million people with sight loss. Over 13 months, we partnered with their marketing and engagement team to transform how they work. We moved from a fragmented, siloed function to an integrated, audience-led one built on shared process, collective confidence, and a culture of change.

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Challenge

RNIB exists to make sure no one faces sight loss alone. But after a significant restructure, the conditions to deliver on that mission had become strained. A new, centralised marketing and engagement function had been created with real ambition — but without the process or shared culture to make it work.

Priorities flooded in from across the organisation without a filtering mechanism. This reinforced silos and led to missed opportunities for collaboration. We needed to shift from an organisation centric approach to one that puts the audience first. 

Solution

We helped build and implement an end to end agile marketing engagement process to support all work at RNIB.

The most important thing we did was slow down before we sped up. In the discovery phase  we reviewed more than 50 organisational documents, interviewing 23 stakeholders, and running a directorate-wide maturity survey. This wasn't a process for its own sake. It was the foundation of genuine empathy: understanding the organisation and its people well enough to design something that would actually hold.

To clarify how the work flows, we defined the process using an agile framework divided into three stages:

  • Upstream: Strategic planning, research, and audience insight.
  • Midstream: Content creation, design, and production.
  • Downstream: Distribution, measurement, and feedback loops.

Working as a collaborative partner, we co-designed a new end-to-end process through iterative workshops, building around five tailored variants that reflected the real operational contexts of RNIB's work:

  • Reactive campaigns: Streamlined for high-speed delivery (under six weeks).
  • Single-channel campaigns: Simplified for focused, direct activity.
  • Integrated campaigns: Robust frameworks for complex, multi-touchpoint campaigns.
  • Rolling campaigns: Designed for 'always-on' activity.
  • Engagement journeys.

But the moment that defined the project came midway through implementation. After a training session where engagement was low and the message wasn't landing, we went back to the drawing board.

Earlier in the project, we had introduced the Kubler-Ross change curve  to RNIB. This framework, originating from the five stages of grief, identifies  the  common emotional reactions of a party navigating change and transition, at different points of the journey. For example, someone who is at the beginning of their change journey, and therefore still in a “status-quo” state, will respond to the change with shock and denial.  Someone who is further along, maybe is willing to explore, will respond with acceptance.

At this critical juncture, we  mapped each key RNIB stakeholder, as well as the organisation as a whole, to where they were on the change curve. By focussing on individual states and, therefore, individual reactions we uncovered something crucial:  we had been designing for where we wanted people to be, not where they were, and that’s why the strategies and tactics were failing. We readjusted our goals, redesigned our activities, and committed to meeting people where they were. That pivot made the difference.

Impact

Since implementing these changes, we have seen measurable improvements across the marketing and engagement directorate:

  • 25% increase in team confidence regarding process clarity and collaboration.
  • 66% higher confidence in agile delivery post-implementation.
  • A unified vision for integrated marketing journeys across the entire directorate.

RNIB's marketing and engagement function now has the frameworks, the confidence, and the shared culture to work as one. Teams collaborate across the directorate with a unified vision for integrated, audience-led marketing. The strategy-to-execution gap that had frustrated the organisation is closing.

For the two million people RNIB serves, that shift is what matters most — a charity that can reach them consistently, speak to them clearly, and prioritise what genuinely helps people living with sight loss.

The upstream, midstream and downstream framework, the change curve work, the five process variants: these are assets RNIB's teams now own. The next phase of growth has a foundation to build on.