Hill was part of the team responsible for instigating a major shift in the charity's strategy with the launch of a brand campaign, created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO (AMV), that features cancer patients and survivors, rather than actors. The activity spans TV, radio and the web.
'The fact that the ad uses real patients and survivors is making people talk about it, because they are living proof of the work that we do,' she says. 'It is because of research that people are surviving, and demonstrating this increases people's consideration of the charity, encouraging them to donate more.'
The use of real people has also deflected the negative responses that charity campaigns can provoke. 'Advertising has to be slightly edgy to create an impact, but you need to be careful to create the right balance,' says Hill. 'You can't replace people's own words - they are the raw truth. While some viewers may feel emotional about what's happened to them, and our ads could be accused of portraying the disease in too negative or positive a light, the fact that this campaign features real patients and survivors telling the truth has prevented a negative reaction.'
Indeed, early indications are that the campaign has produced a strong positive response. It has significantly boosted visits to CRUK's website and the number of people clicking on its 'donate' page had doubled by the end of its first week. The creative has also been used for 60-second DRTV slots that broke at the end of last month.
The brand campaign has been a key project on which Hill has worked alongside her communications and brand colleagues, but the Race for Life and Run 10k activity have commanded much of her attention.
The 43 Run 10k events, which will take place across the UK next month, have been backed by a widespread campaign across national and regional press, with outdoor ads and an online game called Rooftop Runner. So far, more than 60,000 people have signed up, representing a major hike in participation.
Hill is also proud of the response to this year's Race for Life events between May and July. 'We have had a phenomenally successful year,' she says. 'We have exceeded our targets and attracted the most runners since the events' inception [in 1994], with nearly 740,000 participants.'
This is due, primarily, to a change in media strategy apportioning a greater budget to regional campaigns and introducing experiential work through Brave - testament to Hill's fondness for numbers and targeting as well as innovative ideas.
Work has already begun on next year's Race for Life, which will involve a fresh creative strategy. This will move the TV campaign on from its 'You're invited' positioning, which has been in place for two years, to the more emotive idea of 'You are not alone'. Footage was filmed at the biggest Race for Life to date at London's Hyde Park last month and the national TV campaign will break in February.
The theme is intended to work on two levels. 'People tend to run with someone else, but usually have someone in mind that they are running for,' says Hill. She recalls one participant who said they felt like their mother was with them as they ran, but rather than feeling sad, it made them feel amazing. 'I could get quite choked up thinking about it,' she adds, visibly moved.
While Hill's obvious gift for empathy is having a clear influence on the direction of the campaign, her strategy is also smart. 'Building advocacy and word-of-mouth means that if just 10% more people bring someone else along, it could increase donations by millions.'
She has developed a strong working relationship with her ad agency, AMV. Her empathy with agencies stems from her 12 years at Rapp, where she was as 'big favourite', according to former colleagues.
She says her eventual role, heading the fund-raising division, provided her with an invaluable insight into the workings of many charities, working with CRUK as well as animal charity The Blue Cross, RNIB and Crisis. 'It gave me a breadth of knowledge and a line of sight into the challenges charities face,' says Hill. 'I was also privileged to be given the opportunity to really see how things worked at the top of these organisations.'
Insight was not the only thing she gained at Rapp: she also met her husband, Richard Hill, now head of planning at Touch DDB, with whom she has two children.
Hill's accessibility, coupled with a passion both for ideas and hard data, make her ideally suited to the charity's focus on building supporter engagement, something that has been brought into sharp focus by the ongoing recession, which has led to greater attrition and a subsequent decline in funds.
Her response has been to push the use of film online and look for other innovative ways to personalise the charity and build loyalty from and relationships with donors. A subsequent development has been to seize on the trend, which began in the US, of showing donors exactly where their money is going.
To this end, the charity launched an interactive map last month for existing supporters and a web tool that allows donors to choose a specific area of research to fund and includes film clips of the scientists whose work will benefit.
Not only is this level of relationship-building key to boosting donations from existing supporters, it also makes them less likely to move on to more niche charities that raise funds for research into a specific type of cancer.
There is no let-up. In the build-up to Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, CRUK will for the first time run fundraising activities around breast-cancer awareness under the integrated banner 'Join the fight for women's survival', an idea developed by Ogilvy, the agency on the brand campaign account.
In these tough times, and with an office move to Angel on the cards, Hill's work will need to stand up to the challenge. However, with her commitment and passion for the cause, there seems little doubt that she will achieve the results she wants.