Marketing Strategy in a Sector Under Transformation
Client: Gambling Lived Experience Network (GLEN)
Type: Non-profit, Health & Social Care
Background
GLEN is an independent, not-for-profit network championing lived experience at the heart of the gambling harms sector. Founded by and for people who have experienced gambling harm — directly or as family members — it exists to ensure that those who understand the issue most deeply are at the centre of how it is addressed: by commissioners, by services, and by the public.
What makes GLEN distinctive is its independence. It takes no industry funding, carries no institutional agenda, and draws its authority entirely from the experience of its members. In a sector that has historically been shaped by the very industry causing harm, that independence is not a small thing. It is GLEN's greatest asset.
The Brief
When GLEN secured three-year funding in early 2026, the timing could not have been more significant. GambleAware, the primary commissioner of gambling harm treatment, research and education for years, and one of GLEN's own founding funders was closing by 31 March 2026. Its responsibilities were transferring to newly appointed national commissioners, NHS England and OHID, none of whom had established relationships with the sector's lived experience community.
Simultaneously, the Gambling Levy Regulations 2025 brought an estimated £100 million annually into the system which was welcome new money, but also new decision makers with no lived experience lens. The old system had collapsed. And the new one was not yet built which left a huge chasm of negtive potential for people at harm of gambling.
GLEN needed a marketing strategy that could establish them as a trusted, credible partner to the new commissioners, before those commissioners made decisions without them.
Our Approach
We began with a full day's workshop in London with GLEN's founding team. Rather than arriving with a framework to fill in, we spent the day listening to GLEN's history, its values, the relationships it had built, the tensions it was navigating, and the opportunity it could see ahead.
We followed the workshop with desk research: auditing GLEN's existing digital presence across LinkedIn and its website, mapping the shifting commissioning landscape, reviewing the gambling harm evidence base, and identifying where GLEN's voice was most needed and least represented in the emerging system.
The strategy we produced is built on both: the inside knowledge of the founding team and the outside perspective of independent research.
Our Recommendations
Brand positioning and messaging architecture
We defined GLEN's brand archetype — sitting between the Outlaw and the Hero — and developed distinct value propositions for each core audience. Each message operates in a different register while remaining unmistakably GLEN:
Hope without judgement — for individuals seeking support
Our insight turns good policy into real change — for commissioners and ICBs
One experience changes a life. A thousand change a system — for community and sector engagement
A three-pronged marketing strategy
We structured GLEN's entire external activity around three interlocking approaches:
Direct to decision makers — targeted outreach, quarterly roundtables, LinkedIn activity from named individuals, and a Westminster engagement route to get GLEN into commissioning conversations before decisions are made
Storytelling and community engagement — a 'Send Us Your Story' campaign, a voice bank of people willing to speak publicly, and a storytelling capture system to turn a single story into multiple pieces of content, with particular focus on communities least well served by existing provision
Broad public awareness — media outreach prioritising BBC Radio 4, a public petition, an ambassador programme, and a co-created manifesto
Digital audit with immediate actions
We audited GLEN's LinkedIn presence and website in detail, identifying what was working, what was absent, and where the quick wins were — written so an incoming Digital Marketing Manager could act from day one.
A 90-day implementation plan
We translated the strategy into 16 prioritised tasks for the new hire, structured across their first three months, alongside immediate pre-work for the existing team including press release angles and specific journalist contacts at the BBC and national press.
The Results
The strategy was delivered to GLEN's founding team in Spring 2026, at the precise moment the old commissioning system had closed and the new one was taking shape. The messaging architecture developed through this engagement, including the value propositions, brand positioning and audience framework, is now embedded in GLEN's public-facing communications and informing how the organisation presents itself to the new statutory levy commissioners.
GLEN enters the new funding era with a clear sense of who it is, who it's talking to, and what it's asking them to do.
Ipsa Consulting works with purpose-led organisations at moments of genuine consequence. If your organisation is navigating a funding transition, a sector shift, or a need to articulate its value to new audiences, we'd like to talk.