USPS Holiday Site Helps Consumers With Seasonal Shipping Stress

It's holiday season and consumers everywhere are stressing out about all the cards they have to send out and shipping gifts on time. Understanding the stress of the holiday season, the U.S. Postal Service created a fun, festive, and useful site to help consumers with their holiday mailing needs. This one-stop-shop has a lot of helpful features including tutorials for printing labels and scheduling pickup, custom card creator, locator for finding post offices with extended hours, and holiday countdowns for Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanza.

The site is effective because it provides value to consumers by making their lives easier and keeps them engaged with the Web site and the brand. The experience of using the site is great way to keep consumers coming back to USPS for their shipping needs instead of using other providers.

All-in-all it's a good site and next year's site could be even better by adding:

• Sharing: Make the site more shareable and increase word of mouth by adding functionality for sharing on Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, etc.
• Augmented Reality: USPS has a cool and innovative Virtual Box Simulator. It is a perfect fit for the holiday site and should be a featured tool.
• Branded App: An app that incorporates site features such as scheduling a delivery, countdown calendars, and post office locator as well as new features such as reminders and a to-do list would make for a very relevant and useful app.

--Marina Molenda

Babies, Puppies and Kittens! Oh My!

People can’t get enough of the economy. Aside from the usual subjects such as the chasm that is the Nation’s growing debt and the unemployment rate, a less obvious socio-cultural affect of the recession is taking place. I’ll give you a hint: it has to do with Pokémon, the Mini-Cooper and animals dressed in outfits.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of user-generated videos of animals and babies, not to mention miniature versions of popular foods such as the slider and cupcake. In November’s issue of Vanity Fair, Jim Windolf claims that the economic downturn is fueling our fascination with all things small, cute and cuddly.

Sure, cute stuff has always been present and appealing. However, it wasn’t until recently, Windolf argues, that the phenomenon took off on a mass scale of present-day proportions. It’s as if Americans have reverted back to familiar, child-like comforts during a decade that brought us 9/11 and the war in Iraq.

This trend has seeped into advertising, media and product design. Think of the small and rounded body of the SmartCar, the Snuggie, animated movies like “Up” and mascots like the Geico Gecko (a creature that has become more anthropomorphic as the years progress).

However, a small but growing cultural backlash is occurring. The cuteness craze is being mocked and satirized – signs that the “age of cuteness” could be losing traction and, possibly, coming to a close.

The implication for marketing and advertising is this: as professionals, we need to be cognizant of these larger societal trends as they bleed into popular culture and daily life. Doing so will aid in the understanding of consumer motivations and, subsequently, the development of more meaningful communications.

­--Mike Witham

Cable Networks Vying for Shelf Space

Search For the Amazon Headshrinkers? When Crocs Ate Dinosaurs?

The National Geographic Channel really worked it to get your attention with the Expedition Week line-up, which aired November 15-21, its answer to Discovery Channel’s annual hit, Shark Week. Now calling itself simply Nat Geo, the network underwent a major makeover. Last month, it debuted a new call-to-action tagline: “live curious.”

Targeting 25-to-54-year-olds, Nat Geo has been able to grow ratings for the past six years. With countless more tune-in choices to compete with every day, how does the network do it?

The answer can be found in the snack food aisle. Steve Schiffman, the National Geographic Channel’s General Manager and EVP, recently spoke at the Cable Mavericks Lecture Series at Northwestern. He drew parallels between consumer packaged goods marketing and entertainment marketing.

For instance, Nat Geo benefited from the cross-promotion of two seasoned labels – its #1 show The Dog Whisperer and PETCO, the retailer of show host Cesar Millan’s products.

In true brand-follower form, Nat Geo imitates Discovery, hence “reactivating” its image to keep up. But Nat Geo must be careful not to discard its historic pedigree, its true differentiator.

Today’s cable distribution model, much like a supermarket, allows a multitude of networks the chance to draw in consumers. The downside is both carry the threat of the private label. What’s the Safeway Select of cable? Look to the potential merger of Comcast and NBC Universal for a whole new type of station with a more efficient subscription-to-advertising revenue model.

What can Nat Geo learn from CPGs in this case to maintain its market share? Better, more nourishing ingredients. The Discovery Channel has infused its brand with its show hosts, characters who viewers can’t get enough of.

How will Nat Geo combat this threat?

--Susan Monahan