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Fiona Burles has been at the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) for just three months, but the new director of marketing and communications has been waiting a long time for the job.

She first became fascinated by the fate of the blind and partially sighted some years ago, on a trip to see missionary friends in Cambodia. 'They took me to a voluntary project, massage therapy by blind and partially sighted people, and I was inspired that people could excel despite a disability; I thought we should recognise that,' she recalls. 'There ought to be a widespread change to the quality of life of blind and partially sighted people in Europe, but that is just not going on in a visible way.'

Challenging environment

It's a big change for someone who, until recently, was in charge of selling Scotch whisky to the world. Burles, 38, was formerly global branding director of Glenfiddich, and claims to be quite an expert on whisky. Before her stint at Glenfiddich she worked on marketing for other William Grant products, which include Grant's whisky, Hendrick's Gin and Reyka Vodka.

Previous jobs saw her help launch Rumblers, a cereal and milk combination for people on the go, and head up European marketing for the Schweppes side of Cadbury Schweppes. 'I've spent 16 years in commercial marketing, but I wanted to get involved in the not-for-profit sector,' Burles says. 'This was the perfect charity job, and I waited a long time for it.'

The job she has taken on is not without its challenges. The RNIB has been taking a long look at how it is perceived by the outside world, and is about to drop its old logo: a man with a white stick. It is also changing its strapline to 'supporting blind and partially sighted people' from the current 'helping you live with sight loss'. These might sound like small changes, but for a body as venerable as the RNIB they are cataclysmic. Burles will not even discuss the new logo - a 'sort of lozenge'- but says the charity needs to reflect the fact that it does not just deal with the totally blind.

'I think some people don't know we deal with the partially sighted as well,' she muses. 'Mind you, some people don't know what we do at all. We are well aware of what the perception of the charity is. Like any organisation we have been through change and we continue to go through change. Now we need to be very brave and confident, because we have a very engaging story.'

Burles' newly created job blends marketing and communications at the charity for the first time, and demonstrates the RNIB's desire to put these functions at the centre of what it does. 'It is difficult to put your message across in this crowded marketplace,' she notes. 'Charities are waking up to the fact that they need to put communications at the heart of what they do. We are using marketing to raise our profile and bring our agenda into the public eye.'

Burles says she is bringing what she has learnt from the commercial world and applying it to charities. 'It is about using customer insight to inform all you do, to make things emotionally affecting,' she explains. 'We need to communicate who we are and tell people what we do in order to encourage people to engage with us.'

Wide briefs

She says she has been surprised at the charity's breadth of activities. For example, as well as supporting people with sight loss by helping them to claim benefits and giving them tools to help them work, the RNIB campaigns against avoidable sight loss. Recent operations have attempted to raise awareness of diseases such as glaucoma and the link between smoking and blindness. The charity has also been involved in press campaigns on age-related macular degeneration, a gradual form of blindness that can be controlled with drugs not yet available on the NHS. 'We have a very active campaigns team, supported by marketing and communications,' Burles says.

One of the things that really surprised her was the charity's recent Sony Award for InSight, the first radio station for blind and partially sighted people. 'That is walking the talk in very, very practical terms,' Burles observes. 'It brings widespread and lasting change.'

Having seen how the RNIB employs the blind and partially sighted in its offices with relative ease, she now wants to communicate to other employers how possible this is. 'It is easy to say employers should make more of an effort but they need to know how possible it is, how innovative the solutions can be,' Burles says. 'If I had been aware of all this it would have reduced any barriers I'd had to employing blind and partially sighted people before.

'We are providing practical solutions like large-print computer screens, talking emails and Braille pads; it is amazing. Now we need to engage people more. We need to educate people in the whole area of what it is like to be blind or partially sighted. We need to make people realise it is not just about fund-raising. We want people to sign up to help us campaign, to get people who are blind and partially sighted to sign up as members. There is a lot to do.'

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