Full Service Strategic Creative Consumer Agency

Ordnance Survey Ltd is Britain’s mapping agency and is responsible for the surveying, production, maintenance and marketing of a wide range of geographic information, relied on by government, business and individuals. Further information on us can be found on our website www.os.uk ↗. OS is a private limited company (company registration number 09121572), and the entire share capital is owned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Ordnance Survey is split into three overarching business units – Consumer, Business and Government & public sector. However, this contract and the subsequent sections, relates to Consumer only. Consumer is the B2C (Business to Consumer) part of the business, where we are inspiring even more people to get outside more often (which aligns with our wider organisational purpose of showing the world how to get to a better place). We build content and tools to make it easier for everyone to have an active outdoor lifestyle – helping people live longer, stay younger and enjoy life more. We operate in both the retail and digital market spaces:

• OS Maps subscription (desktop and app): this is our flagship product, which is our priority in FY2425. OS Maps helps customers plan and navigate to locations, so they can enjoy amazing experiences outdoors. Our main competitors in this space include Komoot, AllTrails and more recently, Strava.
• OS Shop: now includes our core OS products (paper maps, Custom Made personalised maps, OS Maps Digital), OS-branded products (such as towels, water bottles, guidebooks, books) and a number of well-known third-party brands such as Osprey, Vango, Silva, Garmin, DryRobe.
• Retail partners: we also operate through via our retail partnerships who distribute, sell and market our products within the high street and online retail market (high street retailers (e.g. WH Smith, Waterstones), outdoor specialists (Blacks, Millets, Cotswolds Outdoors etc), wholesalers and Amazon). The common thread across all our products and activity is the Consumer mission which is: to help people to get outside more often. The purpose of this tender is to find a best-in-class integrated creative agency partner for Consumer, for digital and offline. The overarching scope is to provide strategic, concepting and delivery of through-the-line hero creative campaigns, for a three-year period (with the option of a further 2 x 12-month extension), subject to performance. The campaigns are integrated across the full customer journey (ie paid media through to owned channels). Traditionally, our hero campaigns have been live during the warmer months of the year and key retail periods (i.e. Black Friday and Christmas) and focused on the consideration and conversion stages of the funnel, driving downloads of OS Maps app and revenue from the OS Shop. Amongst our core audience of outdoor lovers, OS is iconic and they have a strong affinity with our paper maps and the OS brand. However, this brand relevance was built 20 years ago and the audience is aging. We need to build a new emotive connection with a new generation to ensure that we stay relevant.As a result, we have recently changed our strategic approach for hero creative campaigns. We are targeting Gen-Z and Millennials within paid media through creator-driven activations, driving shareability and virality. We have ensured that there is a hook between the two audiences – Gen-Z and Millennials vs our existing customer base – which is carried through owned channels, ensuring we don’t alienate our loyal base.