See Sport Differently: Overcoming barriers for RNIB and British Blind Sport

Discover how Mongoose drove awareness and leads for RNIB and British Blind Sport in a multi-channel campaign designed to tackle barriers for blind people.

If you’re blind or partially sighted, you’re twice as likely to be inactive. 

This is just one of many stark facts to come out of a recent study by RNIB as part of its See Sport Differently campaign.

So when the charity, together with British Blind Sport, challenged Mongoose with motivating blind and partially sighted people to adopt a more active lifestyle, we proposed a multi-channel campaign built on the inspiring stories of real people. 

Accessibility at its heart

Mongoose, RNIB and British Blind Sport needed to work seamlessly together from the beginning of this campaign to ensure each element of the campaign was completely accessible to those living with sight loss. From penning descriptive alt text for adverts whilst working with tight character limits, right through to creating a campaign film which could successfully deliver the See Sport Differently message to anyone, no matter their level of sight - each stage required multiple rounds of feedback and the involvement of an expert panel. 

Sharing inspirational real stories 

The campaign, designed to create mass awareness as well as change the hearts and minds of blind and partially sighted people, shone a light on the stories of nine people and nine activities. From Cyreeta, who found her confidence with the Couch to 5K app, to Gordon who - until he found an accessible bowling club - thought his passion was over, the stories show a hopeful vision of the future for people with  sight loss.

A highly targeted ad campaign

The Real Story films were disseminated through RNIB and its partners’ owned channels, bolstered by a highly targeted paid campaign across Meta and YouTube. Together with scroll-stopping graphics that shared punchy quotes and stark statistics, the ad campaign generated just under 14 million impressions and 5+ million reach. Total paid video views alone were 1.4 million, with an engagement rate of 5.2% on Meta, well above industry average. The overall CTR on videos was 3%, helping drive more than 11,000 sessions on the newly created See Sport Differently hub, just under half of which were engaged sessions (a session lasting longer than 10 seconds or at least two page views.) Average page views were 1.22 and we drove more than 7,000 new visitors to the website. 

Driving engagement and awareness

In total, the ad campaign, implemented by the Mongoose Group , garnered over 5,000 reactions, 300+ comments and 200+ shares and 146,000+ link clicks. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with ads leading to conversations between people about where they could find out more information, and sharing details of their own adventures.

Maggie

Keep going, I have felt negative at times but just push yourself though and just bowl for yourself, don't worry about anyone else.

Rich

I go riding a tandem with a group. As I'm registered partially sighted it's great to be able to ride again with a sighted person on the front. It's made a great difference in my life.

Donna

Brilliant doesn't this just prove everything is possible !! 

Proving the impact

A major tenet of the See Sport Differently campaign was to push people to find out more about accessible activities, pulling them in via the See Sport Differently hub on RNIB’s website and signposting them to specific external sites such as the British Blind Sport’s activity finder. Mongoose designed and provided SEO-rich copy for over 30 pages, collaborating closely with the website team at RNIB to ensure copy and images fit an exacting template designed to be fully accessible.

For those whose interest was piqued by the real stories, they could find the perfect activity using the See Sport Differently quiz. The quiz, which was made up of 10 questions and built by developers from Mongoose’s sister agency, Mission, sought to divide respondents into sporting personality profiles. These profiles lent a lighthearted, highly shareable element to the campaign, ranging from ‘The Social Butterfly’ right through to ‘The Outdoor Explorer’, giving respondents ideas of the type of activity they might enjoy, depending on their answers. The subsequent insights will be used in future campaigns and to foster two-way communication between RNIB and its follower base. 

In total, the quiz had a click through rate of 1.16%, with over 40,000 people clicking to the quiz landing page from the ad campaign . Those who completed the quiz received their profiles over email and are now added to RNIB’s ongoing stewardship journey, an essential part of showing the impact of this campaign and allowing RNIB to reach and support new communities. 

Getting people motivated

The campaign was driven by a national PR launch that garnered wide broadcast coverage, including Sky and ITV News. You can read and listen to the Sky coverage here. We also engaged Britain’s best loved fitness instructor Mr Motivator who created a series of accessible home workouts which can now be accessed on YouTube for free. Mr Motivator also shared See Sport Differently content to his Instagram Stories, meaning RNIB was able to leverage his audience too. You can watch Mr Motivator’s home workouts here. 

In total, we secured over 650 pieces of coverage, of which 60% were broadcast features. The total opportunities to see the campaign through earned editorial was over 25.5million. All coverage included campaign key messaging, and 100% of stories contained links through to the RNIB website. 

For more information, and to access all the content, go to: www.rnib.org.uk/our-campaigns/see-sport-differently/