ITV drama causes drastic decline in Post Office brand reputation
The Post Office's brand suffers significant decline in buzz and reputation following the airing of an ITV drama, impacting key brand metrics
The Post Office’s reputation has suffered a blow in the wake of renewed attention to the postmasters scandal following the premiere of the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Following the airing of the drama on New Year’s Day, which shed light on the legal scandal involving over 700 innocent postmasters falsely accused and convicted of fraud and theft due to faulty IT software, The Post Office’s brand health has been negatively impacted.
According to YouGov’s BrandIndex, the Post Office’s reputation score has declined from 1 January to 9 January.
This data is based on YouGov BrandIndex's tracking of brand health, which revealed that the firm's reputation score dropped from 6.4 on 1 January to 4.8.
Similarly, its comprehensive brand index score, which measures the overall brand's health, decreased from 4.6 at the beginning of the year to 3.1 yesterday (9 January).
According to YouGov, the Post Office was already facing difficulties with its buzz score, which measures whether consumers are generally hearing positive things about a brand over a two-week period, starting at a disappointing -1.1 on 1 January and further plummeting to -4.5.
The UK government has announced plans to pass a law that would clear the names of victims of the scandal and provide them with an additional compensation payment of £75,000. As of now, the most-watched TV program of 2024 is ITV’s Mr. Bates vs The Post Office, with 9.2 million viewers tuning in to watch the first episode. The show has contributed to ITV's strongest start to the year in over ten years, with a record share of 18.4% for the first eight days of 2024.
The Post Office's various sub-brands, such as utilities and services, as well as life insurance, pensions, and wealth management, have also seen a decline. Utilities has the highest performance with a positive brand index score of 16.2, down from 22.6 on January 1st. Similarly, the brand index score for life insurance, pensions, and wealth management is 7.3, down from 10.4 at the beginning of the year.
