PostBug was Founded by Martin Loat OBE (founder Propeller Group, Chair of Equal Civil Partnerships campaign) in 2016 and operated by Duane Raymond (founder of FairSay and the Campaigning Forum events and community and a pioneer of digital campaigning) since 2019.
It was founded on the idea that digitally enabled traditional communications like postcards and letters paradoxically become more powerful in the digital world as digital communication becomes dominant. Its power comes not only from the fact that so few people receive printed postcards and letters these days, but it can be touched, put up on the wall, passed around, left on a desk, doesn't require recharging and more.
The results speak for themselves: decision makers notice and respond, supporters love not only sending them, but are willing to help pay for them, campaigners appreciate their novelty. When it really counts, printed post delivers.
Martin had the original idea to merge digital creation, physical print and postage delivery at scale to people in power. This idea grew into Postbug.
In 2023 Martin was awarded an OBE for his voluntary work as Chair of the Campaign for Equal Civil Partnerships. This campaign ran from 2015 to 2020 and resulted in law changes in throughout the UK that permitted opposite-sex couples to enter into a legally-binding civil partnership as an alternative to marriage. Previously, only same-sex couples had been allowed to have a civil partnership. Campaigners successfully challenged this anomaly and inequality in the English courts and backed a successful Private Members Bill in Parliament.
A journalist originally, Martin has had a successful business career. He set up the PR and marketing agency Propeller Group at the start of the 2000’s.
With clients ranging from global giants such as Google and Samsung to emerging tech companies and smaller start-ups, Propeller grew to become a top ten UK-based business agency by 2021, with 50 people and operations in London and New York.
Martin successfully sold the business in a bank-funded MBO in 2023.
Martin now has more time for travel, cycling and paddle-boarding.
He qualified as an accredited business mentor recently and now advises business founders and entrepreneurs on meeting their goals on a part-time basis.
He is in a civil partnership with his partner Claire. The couple live in west London and have two children who could be better described as young adults.
As a pioneer of digital campaigning since the early 2000s, Duane introduced to the UK and Europe (via his work at Oxfam) many of practices we now take for granted: online petitions, emails to decision makers, faxing MPs (= sending blurry paper over a very slow connection), using social networks and many of the practices that go with those. Yet he always yearned for a tools to be a bridge back to the physical world. When he was asked to advise PostBug in 2017, he jumped at the chance.
Whereas the original PostBug was a public platform for individuals to use to send postcards and letters to not only decision makers, but to celebrities and beyond, Duane's saw the potential for PostBug to be used by campaigning groups as they had the content, the supporter base and the budget to make it work. He took over formally in 2019 to put this into action. Yet there is still potential for the public offering of the platform to return.
Duane's founded his business FairSay in 2004 after leaving Oxfam with the aim of helping other organisations be more effective at using digital strategies, practices and tools. He organises the UK's longest running campaigning event for practitioners: the Campaigning Forum (formerly the eCampaigning Forum). He is Canadian-born and left Canada in 1994 to live and work around the world. He has three amazing children which he has had the privilege of being a hands-on father to from a young age.