It was fitting that HBO’s campaign for the revolutionary Mr. Adams
included a complete takeover of the USPS site for one week.
major events and characters in that episode,” says Jeff Piazza,
a principal at Behavior. The site took three months to build.
Adding to the multiplatform nature of Power of the Letter was
HBO’s takeover for one week of the official USPS web site, which
averages 26 million visitors per month. That week’s traffic saw
John Adams images and tune-in messages worked into the site’s
usual postal information (see right).
Besides a sweepstakes whose grand prize was a trip to Colonial
Williamsburg, Va., the site of much of the series’ filming, another
aspect of the campaign was signage at 37,000 post offices throughout the U.S., including cutouts of John and Abigail. “This was a
national promotion in the truest sense of the word,” Enterlin says.
HBO declined to reveal how much it paid for the campaign.
And lest we forget that the John Adams quote— “Let us dare
to read, think, speak and write”—was printed on 3.75 million
post office receipts. The quote, and the Power of the Letter URL, the first time, the ability to offer online rebates and discounts
also appeared as a postmark, known as a postal cancellation, on 3 on packages, allowing it to be competitive in that business once
billion pieces of mail during the period. again, it believes.]
HBO and Civic were persuasive, however. “When [HBO] said
they’d pay to create POP [point of purchase] displays for post
offices,” we became more interested, Carrier says. Then the issue
of Web sites arose, and the USPS didn’t want to pay for design.
HBO offered to pay for that too, Carrier says, and to sweeten the
deal, it offered to use the USPS’ design firm.
But Carrier and Spencer Rice, a director at Civic, agree that the
concept really began to jell when HBO discussed the postmark.
“We said, ‘No, there are too many rules against us [promoting a
commercial enterprise on our postmark],’” Carrier says.
In turn, USPS officials suggested that they would try to come up
with a theme for the campaign that would fit their rules for the postmark. “That was really the start of The Power of the Letter,” she says.
“Once we got our head around the idea that letter writing was driving
this campaign” and that letters were crucial to the Adamses and to
McCullough’s book, it all came together. The USPS wasn’t promoting just any TV show, but one that praised the art of letter writing.
Quick thinkers at the USPS (see, they do some things fast)
realized the campaign could tie into its own annual Cards and
Letter Writing Month promotion. “It’s not always easy to come
up with things to tie into that,” Carrier admits. Who knew that a
patriotic couple from the 1700s who wrote thousands of letters
would fit that bill? ♣
The eureka moment — not!
How did the concept of letter writing to promote John Adams
arise? “It’s fun to say that someone came running in with the idea
and just like that we had a campaign. But it didn’t happen that
way,” says Stuart Ruderfer, CEO of event/branding firm Civic
Entertainment Group, which received the assignment from HBO
to develop a nontraditional campaign for John Adams. The idea
came during “brainstorming sessions,” Ruderfer says. An assist, he
notes, was “the comprehensive briefing” Civic received from HBO,
including scripts and copies of David McCullough’s book, which
was the basis for the series.
Yet the appeal of The Power of the Letter was not immediately
apparent to the USPS. I know what you’re thinking—can’t the
Postal Service do anything quickly? Of course it can, but the
USPS believes it’s best to be deliberate when its venerated brand
is involved, says Joyce Carrier, the Postal Service’s manager of
channel advertising (yes, that’s really her name).
HBO’s proposal, brought to the Postal Service by the network
and Civic, was just one of many the USPS receives. “We’re approached all the time by everything from movie studios to any
consumer product you can imagine,” Carrier says. The appeal?
With outlets and mailboxes in every part of the country, the
Postal Service has a ubiquitous reach, serving some 7 million
customers in post offices daily. One of 3 billion, yes
But when Civic and HBO approached the USPS in the fall BILLION, pieces of
of 2007 it was more of “a courtesy meeting,” Carrier canceled mail with
admits. “HBO is such a prestigious brand, we at the Adams quote.
least wanted to hear them out. But most of us
felt going in that while it was a lovely idea, we’re Fast Facts
not really into promoting letter writing right now. \ The Power of The Letter campaign marked the first time in USPS history that
I mean, we know that’s not the future of the postal post office receipts carried a promotional message; it directed consumers to
service, although we think [letter writing] is a beauti- poweroftheletter.com.
ful thing.” \ The USPS receives 50,000 submissions per year for stamp proposals. It takes
5-10 years from proposal to date of issue, so HBO’s proposal of a John Adams
[For the record, the USPS feels its future is in stamp was not doable.
delivering advertising mail, catalogues, periodicals \ The first postmaster general was Benjamin Franklin, a colleague of John Adams.
and packages. And in May the USPS will have, for
