US Post Office Uses Viral Marketing in Star Wars Stamp Campaign -Yoda Wins

Even the U.S. Post Office is into viral marketing, with a fun campaign that included consumer voting. Hundreds of thousands of people helped chose Jedi Master Yoda as the only Star Wars character to have his own sheet of stamps (released May 25th) in celebration of the 30th (yikes!) celebration of Star Wars.

If we're going to pay 41 cents for a first class stamp, it should be cool, and the new Yoda stamp certainly is. Four hundred RD-D2 mailboxes also have been placed around the country and there'll also be Star Wars Express Mail Pre-Paid 3-Packs. Fifteen new commemorative postage stamps celebrating the 30th anniversary of Star Wars are available, but only Yoda gets his own sheets.

I'd love to see customer generated advertising by Star War fans. Too bad that wasn't part of the campaign, because it surely would be attention-getting.

The Post Office media information page offers sample story ideas for media types who can't figure out their own angles.

They include the one I was losing sleep about: "How do they do it? With more than 280,000 collection mailboxes nationwide, just how and why did 400 of them magically appear as the beloved R2D2 on March 16 around the U.S."

Doh! Yoda put them there!

Yoda da man.
How do they do it? With more than 280,000 collection mailboxes nationwide, just how and why did 400 of them magically appear as the beloved R2D2 on March 16

Not that hard to figger... What's more perplexing is WHY!

The USPS should stick to its knitting... mail. No frills. Here to there guaranteed.
In a reasonable time, like three days, coast-to-coast, max.

Yesterday, I had to stand in line during my self-inflicted lunch hours and wait while a single USPS drone took care of the eleven people in line. While I waited, I noticed this esteemed organization is now selling mirrors! And envelopes.

This ain't "marketing", it's lunacy. And it gets subsidies from our taxes, so we're paying twice.

SWEIN?

That may be a silly question.