BITE Insight

The & Partnership’s rebrand of the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has set out to break the charity ad mould. They want to improve people’s understanding and challenge their perception of sight loss, inviting them to “see the person, not the sight loss”. Their strategy was not to make people feel sorry for those with sight-related conditions, but to relate to them on a human level.

For the RNIB’s 150th anniversary, the charity and agency worked together to refresh the brand and create a new visual identity. The TV ads as part of the positioning See Differently, take on a humorous, hopeful and optimistic quality, reminiscent of the Malteser’s ads which place a comic spotlight on disability.

The slots focus on regular people living everyday lives who just happen to suffer from sight loss of some sort. Sarah’s clumsiness is down to a dreamboat TV chef, Dan’s hesitation by the escalator is because he’s just spotted his ex and Sid’s excursion into the supplies cupboard is because he’s after the packet of biscuits.

The way the ads are filmed forces us as the viewer to face our inbuilt preconceptions. In each film the ‘punch-line’ is delivered only after we’ve been given time to jump to the conclusion that the behaviour is due to the disability. These ads address the commonly held preconceptions about sight loss head on but not in a preachy, presumptuous manner. Rather we are shown the regular humanity of each person.