Last year, the U.S. Postal Service's blue mailboxes were outfitted to look like R2D2 for Star Wars' 30th anniversary. This year, for HBO’s John Adams miniseries, it’s what’s inside that counts.
The “Power of the Letter” promo is running in about 13,000 post offices and at www.poweroftheletter.com. There, one can enter a sweeps to win a trip to Colonial Williamsburg and follow a few steps to customize and snail mail a letter for free (yes, just like on the Internets!). Civic Entertainment Group is the agency.
Other 21st Century twists include a special cancellation ("Let us dare to read, think, speak and write") that will go on 3 billion pieces of mail this spring, and a marketing message (a quote from Adams, and the promotional URL) on receipts—a Postal Service first.
Adams and his wife, Abigail, exchanged over 1,100 letters over the course of their courtship and marriage. David McCullough relied heavily on these missives to write John Adams, the biography on which the March 16 miniseries starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney is based.
HBO also hyped the miniseries with an outdoor teaser campaign, in which the revolutionary call-to-action "Join or Die" was declared in a vintage script. Our fave: The "Join or Die" bus bench parked right in front of Los Angeles' Scientology building.
It's interesting to see literacy and what's more historical advocation of literacy as a marketing lever.
The cynical side of my brain tells me that PT Barnum was right and that nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of American consumers, but the idea of "Let us dare to read, think, speak and write" as a slogan seems so deliciously subversive in a world where "Shut up, stop asking and do what you're told" is the mantra-of-means.
I hope it gets them the attention they're looking for.
Posted by: Joe Kilmartin | March 06, 2008 at 01:26 PM