My little indicator of the economy picking up is the amount of junk mail coming to my home mailbox. Just as I was about to go to the DMA and put my name on the ‘do not send’ list the economy turned south and lo and behold
so did the amount of catalogs, promotions, and credit card solicitations that up to that point had been arriving by the ton.

Last week I realized that tonnage was on the rise again and it increasingly is the only thing Uncle Sam is delivering these days. Our bills have gone paperless. People are emailing a lot more than sending
cards and letters and while many like their magazines they are increasingly being read online OR associated w/ environmental disaster and carbon footprint and people are cutting back on those too.

Which means that increasingly all that’s left is junk. And increasingly publishers who send magazines in print and direct mail in print are going to be associated with junk. In marketing they call this ‘brand association’ and increasingly it’s not a good thing for publishers to be associated with junk mail and the detritrus filling our mail boxes.

Case in point. Last Tuesday here’s what we received: one survey from the Republican Party with lots of questions clearly slanted to the right followed by a donation request, a solicitation from the Sierra Club and
local police officers association, a credit card promotion from Delta Airlines Skymiles program in partnership with American Express, a promotion for Invisalign dental products, coupons for Costco, and one
request to participate in a class action lawsuit (that turned out wasn’t relevant to us.)  This does not make for a happy mailbox or home owner who proceeded to send this all to the recycle bin.  Having magazines arrive in
this heap is, I’m afraid to say, increasingly a brand experience nightmare, waiting to happen.

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14 Responses to “Brand Association with Uncle Sam’s Postal Service”

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