Labor Day 2025 Gives us Reason to be Optimistic

After several years dominated by pandemics and remote work, it should come as no surprise to anyone that digital fatigue is starting to set in. Microsoft released a study earlier this year reporting that Teams — the digital meeting platform many businesses have turned to as a replacement for in-person meetings — has seen an increase of 252% in weekly meeting times since February 2020. Digital marketing is just getting lost in the crowd right now, with consumers pulling away from connecting with brands on yet another platform that requires the use of a screen. This is a great time to put direct mail back on the minds of customers struggling to stay relevant in this day and age, and the numbers support it. According to the Direct Mail Advertising Global Market Report 2022, the average response rate of the direct mail is around 2.7% to 4.4%, while the email has around 0.6%.

The festive atmosphere at Cannes may have been cooled a bit during a panel, titled “Trust and the Future of Media,” presented during Day 3 of Bloomberg Media’s Cannes Lions programming. “Winter is coming from a data privacy standpoint,” said Tracy-Ann Lim, chief media officer at JPMorgan Chase. Lim urged listeners to bring the right people to the table when trying to comply with regulatory bodies, saying the parties should realize “that you don’t know what you don’t know.” GroupM’s CEO North America Sharb Farjami added that “consumers now see data as a case of ownership,” and that there are now more questions about what brands are doing with that “property.”

The U.S. Postal Service is at the heart of a postal system still dedicated to tying our country together today. Here’s one example: Recently, it issued “250 Years of Delivering,” a pane of 20 stamps by cartoonist Chris Ware that shows a carrier delivering mail across four seasons of the year. Kind of like the unofficial motto inscribed on New York City’s Farley Building: “Neither snow nor rain nor sleet nor hail shall keep the postmen from their appointed rounds.” According to a study by the Envelope Manufacturers Association, the industry accounts for 7.9 million jobs. Even more than USPS, that’s a lot of jobs in print, packaging, paper, and private delivery! There are a lot of people in workforces and businesses who use ink on paper to bring ideas to life. We’ve come a long way since the days of Franklin, railway mail, and big gleaming buildings made of limestone, granite, and marble. But the public service task remains the same. And improvements in printing, marketing, and automation technology make mail more relevant than ever.