Author: Archive

The first thing Alex Batchelor did when he joined Royal Mail as marketing director last September was to accompany postmen on their rounds.

“He wanted to understand the business from the bottom up,” says Neil Jones, MD of Royal Mail’s media buyer Carat.

It takes little stretch of the imagination to think of the genial Batchelor mucking in with Royal Mail postmen. “Very lively, perceptive, funny, with a brain the size of a planet,” is how former colleague Graham Hales, executive director at Interbrand, describes him.

Batchelor joined Royal Mail at an interesting juncture in its 350-year history. Since 1 January, the postal services market has been opened fully to competition, and Royal Mail is fighting to retain its place as the market’s biggest player. Batchelor, the former executive director of worldwide brand at Orange and before that joint MD at Interbrand, was hired for his commercial marketing nous.

The loss of key government contracts with the Royal Mail could lead to thousands of the country’s post offices having to close, it was claimed last night. The Department for Work and Pensions has decided not to extend the pounds 1bn contract for the Post Office account card, which is used by 4 million people to draw their pensions and benefits, when it expires in 2010. Meanwhile, a change in the passport application process will also hit Royal Mail revenues. Baroness Prosser, a non-executive director of Royal Mail, has told the House of Lords that as well as the decision not to renew the card account contract which, according to the Work and Pension Department, is worth pounds 1bn from 2003 to 2010, the government’s plans to set up high street offices to vet passport applications would “dig into” the pounds 12m that the Post Office made from processing passports. She told peers: “It is simply not possible to maintain the service politically demanded while at the same time being deprived of the wherewithal to underwrite the cost of that service.”