Save the Post Office?

 

Okay, time for some charity work.  I know a number of readers of this blog are clever marketing types, who have probably tackled many challenges over the years.  So let’s set up a doozy of a challenge for you, and see what you recommend.  And we promise that the best ideas will be seen by ‘those who decide’!!!!

Let’s start with the positives:

• Brand with one of the highest brand recalls and awareness scores ever, across b2b and b2c.
• Automatic trustworthiness – most trusted ‘federal government institution’.  Well, that’s got to count for something?
• Brand with history – dating back to Benji Franklin, for goodness sakes!
• Employs a ton of people - nearly 600k, second largest in the civilian workforce to Wal-Mart.  Union, of course.  Not a minor issue to encounter, but you’ve got a lot of households you’re responsible for!

Now let’s deal with a few business realities:

• Does not benefit from companies and consumers going to email, web, social media … it cuts out a revenue source, in a big way
• Does not benefit from companies trying to be ‘enviro-friendly’ and encourage paperless billing
• Has failed to enunciate that paperless billing has, based on research, reduced customer relationship scores
• Has a huge retail estate which it has protected but underutilized for years.
• Can raise stamp prices only via Act of Congress, can shut branches only … via Act of Congress, can do almost anything only … via Act of Congress.  So highly flexible (?) approach to running it’s operational side.
• And the kicker … is due to lose $238 billion (yep, that’s nearly a quarter of a trillion) by 2021 based on current trends.  And you thought GM was a huge bailout cost!

So……………….

Let’s make a couple assumptions:

1.  You’ve been named CMO with vast power to change things, shake it up, etc.

2.  The USPS Board of Governors accept this designation, and promise to ‘butt out’ given the precarious state they’ve allowed the USPS to put itself in.

3.  The US Government isn’t about to foot the bill for anything elaborate, given the increasing loss making situation coupled with a few, minor issues like reducing the Federal deficit, staving off the Chinese from assuming financial control of the US, and preventing back-slip into recession.  So forget, at least for a few years, any “Super Bowl” funding requirements.

What would YOU do??  Let’s assemble the best ideas, and maybe save an institution which, by all accounts, should be consigned to the scrapheap of obscurity within a few years, at the current rate …

Ideas from retail specialists and shipping people particularly welcomed!!!

Born Today

Recently, a high school friend of mine posted on Facebook how her GPS had steered her through the back of beyond to get to a destination.  And how fondly she remembered ‘map reading’.  Indeed, I too remember spending many trips in the family car, navigating our way to Florida from Chicago for Spring Break.  It was usually a three day trip which my Dad managed in two, with militaristic precision and 6am starts.  And reading the map, being the ‘co-pilot’, was an honor and privilege.  Heaven forbid you made a wrong turn, which could have meant one less day in the sun.  For a winter weather worn Chicagoan, losing a Spring Break day was heresy.

Unlike the GPS of today, with its choice of voices (I go for the British female … quel surprise!) and choice of animated cars (whatever resembles a Corvette … encore, quel surprise!), maps and atlases in my youth not only didn’t talk with accents but rarely told you any of the following:

1.  What road to take when you move into ‘the fold’ on the page – a cartographers joke

2.  Locations of restaurants, hotels, or gas stations – the last being particularly fun when Dad decided to play Russian Roulette with the gas gauge at Empty and drive past a station.

3.  Local streets in large cities or towns – the ‘insert’ on the page might show, for example, Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive in Chicago, but heaven help you if you needed to find a side street.

4.  Time and distance with any degree of accuracy – we knew the miles from Chicago to Naples, but somehow our route always had a few hundred miles bolted on for good measure.

Now you could say ‘good riddance’.  And there’s no doubt the web and all things mobile and digital have made life easier in some ways.  But then it hits you:  if you were born today, odds are you would probably grow up with no experience of not just map reading, but potentially many of the following:

• Books called Webster’s or Oxford English or Encyclopedia Britannica … indeed, printed books of any kind.
• Printed telephone directories like Yellow Pages and White Pages … or for that matter, fixed line telephones (POTS – Plain Old Telephone Services).
• Pen pals … or anything involving a pen/pencil, as opposed to a touch screen pad or motion sensor device
• Laptops and Desktops … iPad9 will be de rigor by the time I turned 7.
• The 6:00 national evening news, weekly news magazines, daily local newspapers, printed newsletters. 
• Libraries and book stores
• Movies not streamed to your viewing device, but purchased on a thing called a DVD or seen in a cinema
• Signs that are only in English, and not also Spanish or Chinese
• Gasoline stations that sell gasoline instead of having electric plugs
• US Mail

What do you think will be a distant memory for those born today?

What do you HOPE will be a distant memory?

Web 2.0 Complements Traditional Methods

We’ve all seen how brands like Doritos have turned crowdsourcing into advertising campaigns.  In Doritos case, it resulted in a series of Super Bowl slots for the last four years, and full engagement with a community of snackers to promote their brand.  Fretful Madison Avenue types have been quick to disparage this effort as unlikely to succeed with regularity.  But they cannot ignore that more brands are at least exploring/considering this highly cost effective means of generating creative content.  And it is contributing to the debate about the future structure of traditional agencies.

We’ve also witnessed the intriguing drama of ‘Friday’ and Rebecca Black:  a song so BAD it went viral, and led to a variety of amusing knockoffs (I like the Bob Dylan version here in particular – it almost sounds like a good song).  Once again, the creativity of the masses has weighed in, not just with lots of LOLs but with some creative input.  Again, it’s a case of the masses having their voices heard, and in many cases creatively interpreting the music in ways which used to be the preserve of late night comedians and SNL.

So what is the message here, in the wonderful world of Web 2.0? 

Is it to just enter a contest, instead of spending time in training to be a copywriter in the advertising profession?  Call me old fashioned, but if you want consistently good ideas which build a brand, you need people who are vested in it as a livelihood.  You need what Leo Burnett called 'the lonely man'.  Social blogger Geoff Livingston views crowdsourcing as little more than a source for sophomoric content.

Is it to enter contests like Idol or X Factor, or self-publish from a dorm room, and not develop the skills of Sinatra by working two bit clubs and pressing the flesh with a demo tape?  Or is it to produce something so awful that you’ll get noticed?  Let’s face it: great music, versus one hit wonders, comes from not just being discovered but also having some experience and refinement to the craft of musical entertainment.  Even Justin Bieber, one of the internet celebrities, has developed a stage presence, refined under the tutelage of Usher no doubt.

One interesting application, if you haven’t heard about it, is the application of crowdsourcing to publishing, with a charitable goal.  The 2:46 project, or #Quakebook on Twitter, is a soon to be published compendium of words, art, and photos covering the immediate aftermath of the Japan earthquake/tsunami.  Proceeds go to the Red Cross to provide relief to people in the stricken areas of Japan.  Does this mean the end of publishing as we know it?  No.  It’s simply a way, globally, to connect people in a manner which would have been difficult years ago.  It’s the Web 2.0 version of Live Aid, I guess, with a noble goal.  It doesn't supplant calling, wiring, or mailing a donation to the Red Cross, but complements the fund raising. 

Web 2.0 is highly egalitarian, enabling many who are undiscovered to surface, allowing creative talents to flourish, and changing how business is done in the world.  Check out the top 10 celebrities ‘discovered’ via the web.  Certainly it has changed the world of marketing and music.  And countless others. 

But we need to keep it in perspective.  Web 2.0 is a complement to the ‘traditional way’, not a pure substitute.  We’ll still have writers who enter the advertising profession, learn their craft on various accounts, and deliver the truly outstanding idea which transforms a brand.  And we’ll still have singers and bands who work their way up from the Cavern Clubs of the world to the Hollywood Bowl.