Royal Mail '500 Years' website

Celebrating five centuries of postal history for one of the world's most iconic brands

the challenge

The year 2016 commemorated 500 years since Henry VIII knighted Brian Tuke, the first Master of the Posts and the catalyst for the creation of the Royal Mail. The company’s ‘500 Years of Royal Mail’ campaign marked this milestone and aimed to deliver an engaging strategy to encourage wider interest in the brand’s unique position in British social history.

We were tasked with creating the centrepiece of this integrated, multi-channel campaign – 500years.royalmailgroup.com – an online gallery commissioned by Royal Mail and its heritage partner The Postal Museum. 

what we did

Speak Media designed, developed and created engaging and interactive user experience content for the microsite, allowing a range of visitors to explore the history of the brand and engage in each of the various campaigns planned throughout the year.

The microsite is now the digital home for the extensive Royal Mail historical archive with hundreds of key artefacts digitised for the first time and presented in a fully responsive, searchable gallery. 

We organised the content into six key sections for easy exploration. As well as a standard free search function, content can be filtered quickly according to century and/or theme. Each collection thumbnail is optimised for both desktop and mobile and is complemented by in-depth content. Additionally, every item is also shareable, direct from the gallery, via links to social channels.

the outcome

The visually appealing, yet easily updatable site means Royal Mail’s content team can publish heritage-related stories and assets with more frequency, impact and reach than ever before. This includes feature articles, videos and site takeovers for marketing calendar milestones such as the ‘Letters of our Lives’ campaign and Valentine’s Day.