London agency AMV BBDO has parted company with the Met Police after handling its creative account for close to 15 years. The moves comes as the service prioritises different funding areas.
AMV BBDO was initially appointed as the Met Police’s lead creative agency in 2009 by then-assistant director of public affairs Stephanie Day with a remit to create awareness campaigns and target specific community groups and demographics.
The service has suffered from a series of public scandals in recent years, which have severely affected public perception and complicated its communications strategy immensely.The Casey Review recently found it to be “institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic”.
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According to Campaign, the Met Police has opted to shift its budgetary focus away from creative and comms in order to prioritise a significant recruitment drive.
As a result, the service is now focusing more on its in-house comms team, in a bid to “to rebuild the public’s trust and confidence, [reduce] all types of violent crime, [increase] professional standards across our workforce and [help] attract the right people to join us as police constables”.
AMV BBDO confirmed that it had resigned the account, but did not release any further comment. The Met Police has also chosen not to comment on the news at this stage.
