FAQs

What is Red River Blue?

Red River Blue is a consultancy specialising in customer engagement, business transformation, and growth through insight-driven strategy, content, and organisational change.

We work primarily with media owners, marketing services firms, membership organisations, and brands that produce or deliver content.

What services or capabilities do you offer?

We offer a broad set of services that we tailor to client needs. Key capability areas include:

  • Research & Insight (audience, market, competitive analysis)

  • Content Strategy & Development (premium content, subscriptions, content audit)

  • Business Strategy & Transformation (portfolio reviews, growth planning, business models)

  • Brand & Marketing (brand definition, reputation, digital marketing)

  • Commercial & Financial Advisory (valuation modelling, metrics, bids & tenders)

  • People & Team Development (workshops, coaching, culture change)

Because every client is different, we assemble bespoke teams to match the specific combination of skills you need.

What is the “Smarter Listening” programme?

The Smarter Listening programme is one of Red River Blue’s structured offerings. It puts your audience (existing and potential) at the centre of your content and strategy decisions.

Essentially, it helps you to understand audience needs, preferences, behaviors and pain points—and to use those insights to guide content, product, and engagement strategy.

Which types of organisations do you typically work with?

We work with a wide variety of organisations, including:

  • Media owners and publishers

  • Marketing services and agencies

  • Membership organisations

  • Brands with content or research / intelligence products

  • Organisations undergoing transformation or seeking growth via new revenue models

We have experience engaging with small organisations through to large (including FTSE-100 level) clients.

How do you typically work with clients?

Our approach is collaborative, practical, and oriented around delivering value, not just delivering reports.

A typical engagement might include:

  • Discovery and scoping — to understand your business, challenges, and goals

  • Research & insight — gathering data from audiences, markets, competition

  • Strategy development — working with your team to build roadmap(s)

  • Implementation support — workshops, project support, change management

  • Ongoing evaluation & refinement — tracking metrics, adjusting course

We aim to embed ourselves in your teams (rather than operate purely as external advisors) to help make change stick.

How long do typical engagements last?

That depends on the scope, complexity, and ambition of the project. Some shorter workstreams (e.g. audience research, content audit) may last a few weeks; more transformational programmes (business model shifts, organisational change) could run several months.

We tailor timescales to your context and always aim to deliver results in a practical, time-efficient way.

How much do your services cost?

Because each engagement is tailored to client needs and complexity, we don’t have fixed “packaged” pricing.

If you’d like an estimate, we’d be happy to speak with you, understand your objectives, and propose a scope with associated costs. To get started, see our Contact Us page.

How do I get started or talk to you?

You can reach out via the contact form on the Contact Us page on the website. Alternatively, you can send an email to admin@redriverblue.com

We’ll typically arrange an initial call or meeting to discuss your challenges, explore how we might help, and agree on next steps.

Do you publish thought leadership or blog content?

Yes. We have a “Think / Blog” section (labelled Out of the Blue) where we publish articles on topics like content strategy, media trends, subscriptions, business models, and industry commentary.

These posts reflect our thinking and experience, and are meant to stimulate ideas and discussion.

What makes Red River Blue different from other consultancies?

Some of what sets us apart:

  • Content & media expertise — many consultancies don’t bring deep experience in content, publishing, subscription models, etc. We do.

  • Hands-on and practical orientation — we focus on implementation, not just theoretical advice

  • Tailored teams & bespoke models — we build the right mix of capabilities per client, rather than one generic team for every job

  • Value focus — we aim to deliver tangible outcomes, not just deliverables

  • Audience-centric approach — we believe in smarter listening, putting users and customers at the heart of strategy

What do “stop, start or accelerate” mean in your approach?

These are part of our language for change and prioritisation. The idea is:

  • Stop doing initiatives or projects that no longer serve strategic goals or waste resources

  • Start new initiatives or projects that are needed to capture growth or transform

  • Accelerate what’s working, giving it more resources or focus to scale up

  • We use this framing to help clients think clearly about where to invest, where to exit, and where to double down.