Ultimately only 50 businesses in the UK control the majority of food packaging. ‘Packcessible’ was designed to reach those heads of supermarkets and FMCG brands with the power to make change. But research told us the importance of social proof in B2B decision-making, so to engage them we also needed to create a groundswell of public support for more accessible packaging. This led to a B2C2B approach, first driving public empathy and engagement, using that to create social proof that would motivate businesses to talk to RNIB, followed by a direct campaign targeting the decision makers themselves.

The RNIB is the UK’s leading sight loss charity. Through their ‘Designed for everyone’ programme, they pioneer accessible design to create a world where there are no barriers to people with sight loss.

The brief for this campaign was to convince major businesses to make their packaging more accessible. We targeted heads of brands who had the power to do this, but also the general public & media outlets who could help get the issue talked about enough to apply pressure on those businesses.

The aim was to increase the number of new conversations between RNIB and major businesses about accessible design. With the ultimate result being the rollout of integrated visually accessible solutions into the packaging of their brands.

We knew that a traditional marketing campaign wasn’t enough to get businesses to change the way they design and produce their packaging. So as part of RNIB’s commitment to accessible design, we created ‘Packcessible’.

The campaign launched with a retail experience with a difference: a store full of packaging with no information whatsoever; putting fully sighted people in the shoes of visually impaired shoppers. And encouraging the public to engage with and share the campaign on their social channels.

We also designed a range of deliberately information-free packaging and sent the products as direct mail to decision makers at UK supermarkets and FMCG brands with the power to make change. All the products featured a Navilens QR code, an RNIB-backed wayfinding technology which gives users information on a product, and can also point out where a product is on a shelf.

Social proof is a powerful cognitive bias that influences B2B purchase decisions. To convince decision makers at supermarkets and FMCG brands to prioritise accessible packaging, we needed to create social proof through a groundswell of public empathy.

But public empathy towards sight loss was lacking. Crucially, our research revealed why: the public lack exposure to its experiences. People are half as likely to say they have a good understanding of sight loss if they don’t know someone with sight loss.

To create public empathy, we needed to make people ‘See Differently’ by exposing them to the experiences of sight loss. In this case, the experiences of inaccessible packaging information. Exposing this injustice to the public would ignite an unmissable public reaction, convincing supermarkets to act.

We also had a crucial advantage over most causes: you can recreate the experiences of sight loss in a physical sense. So we did.

Firstly we created our own shop in London for a week in August 2021. Inviting the public and business decision-makers to experience the retail pop-up first hand. Cameras were put in place to record the reactions of our visitors and amplify the idea further by creating a sharable film of people reacting to the blank products.

The week after the retail experience, our information-free products were sent out to 30 business decision-makers across the UK. Meaning even those who couldn’t attend the event still had 6 products and a ‘receipt’ with a call to action to drive change.

The same products also featured in a digital OOH campaign in proximity to grocery retailers.

Thanks to ‘Packcesssible’ 14 corporations, with a combined annual revenue of £746 billion, are now working with RNIB to incorporate NaviLens accessible technology onto their packaging. Among them are 6 major UK supermarkets, with a combined market share of 61.5%. In the first year post-implementation, this is forecast to give the UK supermarket industry an annual sales boost of £20.4 million; and to save the UK’s 315,000 blind and partially sighted people a combined annual saving of £13.6 million. From a tiny marketing budget of £202,000 this equates to an ROMI of 66:1.