The US Postal Service will launch a major advertising campaign in September seeking to promote use of the mail as a marketing tool by American businesses.
Postmaster General Pat Donahoe announced this morning that the campaign will target the sizable 75% chunk of US businesses that currently do not use the mail for advertising purposes.
Speaking at the start of the National Postal Forum in San Diego, Donahoe said the Postal Service will seek to involve its mailing industry customers in the campaign – building a unified industry voice in America to promote overall use of the mail.
“This won’t be just a Postal Service campaign,” he said. “We are committed to making this campaign serve two purposes: to generate Postal revenues and to grow the entire mailing industry.”
The campaign will include television spots and direct mail, building on the lessons learned from the USPS package delivery advertising campaign, “If it fits it ships”, which has so far seen 25m extra flat-rate boxes mailed in the US so far this year alone, a 35% increase year-on-year.
“We are ready to apply the lessons from our package marketing and develop a major advertising campaign to support mail,” he said.
Donahoe said the Postal Service hadn’t focused on promoting mail through significant advertising in 10 years. The new campaign would be “a little unusual, but it could be very powerful”, he added.
The Postal Service looks likely to use its existing advertising agency Campbell-Ewald on the campaign, and Donahoe said that as well as involving mailers in the campaign, the USPS would seek to share insights from the campaign with customers. A rough cut of a TV spot shown at the National Postal Forum this morning promoted the slogan “Delivery in New Ways”.
“If our industry aligns around the same marketing insights about mail, the potential exists to multiply that advertising effect,” he said.
The new campaign fits into one of the US Postal Service’s key priorities to turn around a general decline in mail volumes, targeting the business-to-consumer channel, which is responsible for around 70% of its revenues and 80% of mail volume.
The concept of working closely with its customers on the campaign builds on a theme at this year’s National Postal Forum of “seamlessly aligning with your business”. Around 4,000 delegates – mailing companies, equipment and suppliers as well as Postal Service staff – are expected at this year’s event, which runs until Wednesday.
Source: James Cartledge, Post&Parcel
via USPS to promote mail through major advertising campaign | Post & Parcel.
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