Carat fends off double WPP challenge to win Post Office

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The Post Office is set to award its consolidated media planning and buying account to Carat after a protracted pitch process.

(Picture: Post Office ad 2015/YouTube)

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Omar Oakes Omar Oakes is a senior journalist, editor, columnist and event moderator with over a decade of expertise in the advertising and media industry. He was founding editor of The Media Leader, led its launch and US expansion, and built it into a leading industry publication. His TML column was nominated for the prestigious BSME B2B Columnist of the Year 2024 award. He is now a freelance writer and commentator and founder of oomph., a marketing consultancy for advertising and media businesses.


The Post Office is set to award its consolidated media planning and buying account to Carat after a protracted pitch process.

Carat, the incumbent media planning agency, fought off a challenge from two WPP agencies – MediaCom and Wavemaker – to win the business.

The Post Office consolidated its account into one agency. Omnicom’s Manning Gottlieb OMD  had previously handled the media buying.

Carat, part of Dentsu, has handled media planning for the Post Office since 2016 after the media account moved from WPP’s Mindshare.

The account is worth £60m over five years, according to a source quoting the media review tender documents. This would be a significant uplift on the £7m spend quoted from Nielsen figures when the review was called last year.

The pitch process had taken more than a year to complete after apparently being delayed by social distancing restrictions and business reorganisations prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic.


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