Speedy Delivery

by Egatz

It’s been a long time since I heard Mr. McFeely say, “Speedy delivery! Speedy delivery!” Even as a child I hated that show, although my father, a school principal, saw great value in it.

Looks like there’s not much for the USPS to be happy about these days. Mr. McFeely might be out of a job soon. Postmaster General John Potter went to Congress, hat in hand, to explain why this once noble institution is on the way out. Talk of pulling Saturday deliveries is on the table, but that move is like sticking your fingers in a dyke’s crack as water continues to pour out. Technology is largely to blame, of course. The implosion of the economy is largely to blame, but that’s helped fuel the continued run on Internet-based circumvention of the USPS.

I used to earn a living designing beautiful catalogs. It was a good living. I created big, glossy remnants of dead trees for Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Harrod’s, Sports Illustrated, Fidelity Investments, and countless others. I’d produce photoshoots, get flown to locations, hire photographers, and make works of art people would leaf through and then throw out after maybe ordering something. When I moved to the loft I live in now, which has little closet space, I threw out—quite literally—a large dumpster full of catalogs, brochures, press kits, sell sheets, corporate identities, direct mail and promotional items. It was a creative enema. I feel lighter. Amen.

One agency I subcontracted for had been around since the 1950’s. They created gorgeous, full-color catalogs for top businesses in many different industries. They’re gone today. Poof. No more. The Internet has flattened the world, making the nimble agency the winner. Talent in Famish Hills, Montana can compete with any bloated agency on Madison Avenue. The more astute corporate clients are taking chances with talent not located in traditional agency locations, like big cities. It’s Darwinian laws of survival as applied to a dinosaur of an industry, and it’s been happening for at least fifteen years.

Over a year ago I met my mail carrier in the lobby of my old building. She said, “My job is so different, I can’t believe what’s happened in the last year.” I thought she was referring to some new technology which had increased USPS efficiency. I was wrong. She told me her catalogs and circulars were down 80%. She no longer had to carry as many heavy catalogs, and it had literally changed her job, not to mention the health of her spine.

The cost of four-color printing (hence catalogs) never came down in price the way most technological advances make things cheaper as they trickle down across a period of years. It’s still more expensive to print a color booklet to be inserted in a CD jewelcase than it is to manufacture a CD, yet industry pundits swore the iTunes Music Store would never catch on.

Corporations have moved accordingly to bypass the costs of printing and postage. All their information is now on the Web in a dynamic form which can be changed on the fly. The only answer to a price change in the old days was created, print, and ship a new catalog.

The future is written. With an 80% drop in catalogs and other mail-based advertising, it’s time the USPS and/or the Feds figure something out. Online bill-paying, private shipping alternatives, and inevitably rising postal rates have made the US Postal Service an idea which needs major rethinking by progressive and inventive minds. I’m missing letters even more.