The Tray Way: April 2012

Monday, April 30, 2012

The Tray Way: Winners and Losers in the USPS Legislation

The Tray Way blog has been covering the ongoing issue of the USPS for several months, and last week, a new chapter was added to the debate with the passage of Senate Bill 1789 by a 62-37 vote (not along partisan lines). The bill states that the May 15th closings would be delayed, as would the 5-day delivery model that the USPS would be hoping to implement. Blogger Jim Tierney gave a tremendous overview of the bill in his latest blog post. Here are some highlights:

Gives the Postmaster General access to money USPS has overpaid into one of its retirement funds to provide incentives to encourage 100,000 eligible employees to retire. This would help voluntarily “right-size” the workforce to take into account the steep decline in first class mail volume in recent years.
Reduces the amount of money that USPS has to prefund for retiree health benefits by amortizing the costs over 40 years and calculating those costs more appropriately.
Retains overnight delivery of first class mail, but limits it in some cases to shorter geographic distances.
Prevents the Postal Service from going to five-day delivery for the next two years and requires it to exhaust all other cost-saving measures first.
Requires USPS to set standards for retail service across the country, consider several alternative options before closing post offices, and provide for increased opportunity for public input.
Allows the USPS to sell non-postal products and services in appropriate cases.
Allows the USPS to ship beer, wine, and distilled spirits.
Creates a Chief Innovation Officer to foster innovation at USPS.
Reforms the Federal Employees Compensation Act, the federal workers’ compensation program.
Expands the alternatives the USPS must consider before closing a post office and it establishes a Strategic Advisory Commission, charged with developing a new strategic blueprint for the Postal Service.

While the bill has not been signed into law yet, it appears that 3,700 Post Offices and more than 220 mail-processing sites around the country will be saved for the time being. So who will benefit and who will be hurt by this?

The Winners:

The Public - Their lives will not change. There may be a postage increase as an effect of this legislation, but their post office will remain and jobs will seemingly not be lost.
Business and Industry - Companies utilizing the post office and its capabilities, will not see significant changes to their service.
Legislators - They can be seen as job savers and supporting local business in an election year.

The Losers:

The USPS - They had developed a plan to regain control of their finances in - what they considered - a responsible and cost-feasible manner. This bill, as written, will supersede their plan and mandate the status quo, which currently stands at a daily loss of $25 million and has a debt of more than $13 billion, as well as increased restrictions on what they are allowed to do BEFORE resorting to closures.

Those that want to keep the USPS as is say it is everything from a safety issue to a matter of fair access,
and now it will be up to the House of Representatives to determine if these factors loom large enough to mandate the organization endure the ongoing debt.

The Tray PML Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.traypml.com

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The Tray Way: Attaining Brand Love (and what you can learn from Indiana Jones)

Brand Love. Marketers drool at the idea of attaining it because for all intents and purposes, it is the holy grail of the industry. But, how do you get it? This is the ongoing debate happening in brainstorm sessions and conference calls in agencies and creative departments across the world right now. No one has truly come up with the answer, but many have come up with some interesting ideas.

For example, the American Marketing Association created an impressive analysis of the idea of brand love from an academic perspective (To read the Executive Summary, click HERE). Models were compiled based on source data, which led to the creation of a theory on what differentiates brand “love” from brand “let/s just be friends”, as well as how this love can be fostered. According to their research, they found:

Brand love, as consumers experience it, is best represented as a higher-order prototype that includes, but goes beyond, brand attachment and self–brand connections. Using survey data, they then develop a valid and parsimonious structural equation model of brand love based on this prototype.

The study is an intriguing idea, and offering ideas from an analytical perspective on a creative process can be an intelligent way to organize a strategy to achieve potential success. But, any marketing person will tell you there is no perfect formula. So what can be done? That is tough to answer because, as we all know, the public has a funny way of determining what they love and don’t love at any given moment, which is why brand love should be a goal, not an expectation (similar to how a viral video isn’t created. A video is created and it potentially goes viral).

So, if there is no answer, how do you move towards an answer? Well, aside from hiring us, it is a matter of being flexible and attentive. We mentioned the holy grail earlier, which made us think about one of the film heroes that found the holy grail: Indiana Jones. In each of his movies, he achieved his goals through research, perseverance and a little luck. Add to that an understanding and the willingness to fail, combined with the ability to learn from your mistakes, and you at least have the building blocks creatively to attaining Brand Love.

Do you have any tips or best practices? Share them with us.