What’s Behind the Title of ‘Postmaster General’?

By Ron Wiener, CEO and Postmaster General, Earth Class Mail

People are often curious why some of our senior management-team members append their corporate titles with classic “postal” titles. For example, our Chief Operating Officer is also our “Deputy Postmaster General.”

The practice started at our company a few years ago when we introduced the novel concept of Earth Class Mail online postal mail to the media and reporters often responded with confused looks. Sometimes it took them awhile to understand that we are not an email-service provider – that we instead bring analog paper mail into the digital age and provide an online alternative to traditional P.O. Box and mail-forwarding services. We tried to address this misperception by weaving the words ”post” and ”postal” into our website copy, press releases, and marketing materials – and, yes, even into our titles.

Our aim was simply to overcome the natural pattern-matching that occurs inside the human brain. When a person hears about a new concept the first thing she will try to do is match it up with something she is already familiar with ― to categorize it and learn what it is by comparison with the known. Because our company name is most often seen or repeated with a “.com” on the end of it, people sometimes automatically categorize us, at first blink, as an email platform. Read more

October 6, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail, The Postal Future | Leave a Comment 

What Can Posts Have That Google Never Will?

By Cameron Powell, VP of Strategic Development, Earth Class Mail. A modified version of this article was requested for publication in the postal-industry media. Each image in this entry can be clicked to launch a larger version in a separate browser window.

People are always talking about Google. Google this, Google that. The talking heads say that Google – search, local, print, and wireless all in one – is the future of advertising. (More breaking news: the Google phone, “G1,” was just released to capture searches for and present advertising. Now back to our story.)

What they really mean, of course, is not Google the company but the new model Google has proven, because students of business know that like any father great or small, Google will eventually be overtaken or even eaten by its offspring. The connected-advertising model is growing at over 20% year after year, while mail volume is shrinking and will diminish for as long as the number of delivery points and the cost of gas go up. Is that why these smart people aren’t talking about the posts’ technology future?

What’s disturbing is that the posts aren’t talking about the posts either. Can it really be that they are too close to what they have, or too focused on what they have been doing, to see what they alone could do in the near future? Read more

October 1, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail, The Postal Future | Leave a Comment 

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