PO appoints Abbey marketer to top role

The Post Office has appointed Abbey marketer Gary Hockey-Morley as marketing director. He will take over from acting marketing director Simon Carter, who is leaving the company. It is not known if Carter, previously head of marketing, has a job to go to.

Carter has held the interim role since sales and marketing director Gordon Steele left in January this year. He had joined the Post Office as sales and marketing director in 2001.

Hockey-Morley will report to Post Office managing director Alan Cook when he takes up the post at the end of October. At Abbey, he was customer retention and marketing director for insurance and asset management.

Prior to that, he was retail marketing director and held a number of marketing and brand development positions at the Banco Santander-owned financial services company. Hockey-Morley, who joined Abbey in 1993, has also worked for Unilever and London Electricity.

A number of internal and external candidates have been linked to the marketing director role since the departure of Steele. The Royal Mail’s former head of media markets, Richard Roche, was in talks about the position after being left without a job in a reorganisation of the company’s marketing. He later left the company (MW March 30).

Earlier this year, the Post Office appointed former MoreThan head of marketing communications Neil Scaife to an interim post in its joint insurance venture with Bank of Ireland. The business has also done a deal with WH Smith to include counters in some stores (MW June 29).