Royal Mail seeks new agency as AMV declines to repitch

Royal Mail is hunting a new creative agency following a statutory review of its advertising account that has seen AMV BBDO – which has handled the business for more than a decade over the past 20 years on two separate occasions – decline to repitch.

AMV was first appointed to the account in June 2003, taking over from Bates, and retained the brief after a review in 2008. It continued to work on the account until 2011, when it first declined to repitch and the account was awarded to Beta.

However, the agency was reappointed in 2022 and is the current incumbent on the account.

The review, being conducted by AAR, does not affect the media planning and buying account, which has been handled by the7stars since 2022, or the influencer marketing business Social Chain, which was appointed for projects in April this year. The account for Royal Mail Marketreach is handled by MSQ-owned The Gate.

Last month, Royal Mail launched its first ever ad-funded TV series, designed to show how it supports small businesses across the UK and gives founders and creators more time to focus on growing their ventures.

“Be Your Own Boss” is a five-part series which is running in partnership with ITV, True North and the7stars and is hosted by small business champion Holly Tucker (pictured), founder of NotOnTheHighStreet and Holly & Co. It offers practical business advice to small enterprises, from side hustlers to marketplace sellers.

The agency review comes after the £3.6bn sale of Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distribution Services, to Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group was approved by shareholders in April this year.

Under the terms of the deal, the EP Group agreed to maintain the Universal Service Obligation (USO), however, Royal Mail was fined £21m by the regulator Ofcom last month for failing to meet its 2024/25 delivery targets for both first and second-class mail. This is the third consecutive year the company has been fined for breaching service obligations, with Ofcom demanding an urgent and credible improvement plan.

Even so, Royal Mail has now started to deliver second-class letters on every other weekday and not on Saturdays to help cut costs, following a review of the USO in which the postal service said the move would save up to £300m a year and give the business “a fighting chance”.

The changes mean second-class letters are now delivered either on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or on Tuesday and Thursday, in a two-week cycle.