As I watched Lance Armstrong win the Tour de France, again, my admiration for his achievement was dampened by the sight of a U.S. Postal Service logo on his chest. The post office spent $4 million for the endorsement. This came at a time when the price of stamps was increasing hourly while service cutbacks were constantly threatened. Performance by postal employees did not reflect performance by Armstrong.
Now $4 million, in the scheme of a big money operation like the postal service, isn’t a great deal of money, although it would be a few rolls of stamps. What was disturbing was that these quasi-public monies were being used to fund a private team for the purpose of marketing. I wondered, “wouldn’t the better use be to improve service, reduce costs, perform its public function,” than put its logo on Armstrong’s chest?
Apparently, I was the only one who thought this, as there was no cry of anguish at the sight of a stylized blue eagle (as if the lack of an up-to-date logo would have adversely affected the existence of the Postal Service) stretched across Lance’s yellow jersey. As much as it bothered me, I was alone.
Following the Superbowl, Jonathan Turley noted that there was a Navy flyover in the pregame that cost about $450,000. While these flyovers stir patriotic fervor, and can be pretty cool to watch, he still found it a bit problematic since the stadium was domed.
The Navy insists that it is good for public relations . . . for the public to see that it is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time of economic stress to fly over a closed domed stadium.
Much of the cost for the flyover stemmed from having to transport the F-18 jets from Virginia Beach to the Great Republic of Texas, even though the spectators inside the stadium watched the flyover on the jumbotron.
Turley raises another issue with the military’s expenditure of $100 million to sponsor NASCAR. For those of you unfamiliar with NASCAR, it’s the auto racing progeny of bootleggers escaping from the revenuers, reduced to turning left at high rates of speed. Via CNN :
Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minnesota, is offering an amendment to the 2011 House budget bill to ban the sponsorships, which her office said has cost the military $100 million over the past 10 years, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
The National Guard sponsors Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s team, the Army sponsors Ryan Newman, and the Air Force sponsors AJ Allmendinger, according to HamptonRoads.com.
“I would challenge the Pentagon to give me one example of someone today in Iraq or Afghanistan who saw the Go Army car going around the racetrack and that’s why they joined the Army,”
Not surprisingly, the people who get the money think otherwise.
“NASCAR fans are the kind of people who fight America’s wars, which would put into question the wisdom of banning the military’s ability to reach out to them,” NASCAR spokesman Randy Poston said in the HamptonRoads report.
He’s got a point about NASCAR fans, with the rest of us sipping champagne in our limos. Yet the point doesn’t seem to have any nexus, any connection between logos on cars and getting killed in Iraq. Well, maybe the getting killed part.
At what point did marketers infiltrate our government and whisper in the ears of elected officials that tax dollars would be best used to “authentically engage” with the public, thus making them desire to hand over their money, vote for the incumbent, offer up their children as canon fodder and subject their genitalia to a quick feel by overweight men?
I say this not because of any skeptical view as to the efficacy of spending $100 million on NASCAR, which could have otherwise been used to buy a couple of Bunker Busters in case Saddam is resurrected, but in sympathy with Turley’s point, that our schools are cutting teachers while the military is sponsoring race cars. This might trouble some people, especially teachers.
One of the fundamental benefits of being a government is that you’re the government. You have the ability to tax, as well as the ability to decide where those tax dollars get spent. While talking heads spew sound bites on television carefully crafted to impugn the other side while not cracking up on camera, you know that nobody else gets to form a government to compete with you.
Sure, there private enterprises challenging governmental hegemony, from Federal Express to Halliburton, but has anybody figured out that they way to maintain control is to do the job well rather than market? And if you can’t provide a service as well as a private company, then that’s just one less thing you have to worry about in office.
My guess is that marketers, of the sort who promote their services to lawyers and laundry detergent, can offer a ringing endorsement of why our tax dollars should be spent on promoting government services, with a bit of it going to the marketers who come up with these bright ideas.
Still, I have to wonder whether aficionados of NASCAR are willing to have their kids’ teachers laid off so that our military can put Army on the hood of Ryan Newman’s Chevy. What? Oh. They laid off their teachers years ago and nobody notice?
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Don’t forget the Army sponsorship of Don Schumacher’s Top Fuel Dragster or the National Guard’s primary sponsorship of the AMA’s superbike class. It’s official name is the National Guard Superbike Class (kind of like calling the major NASCAR class Sprint Cup).
I’m sure you missed those because you are a dedicated, lifelong fan of NASCAR and focus on little else.
While still on active duty, I represented a couple of soldiers assigned to the Army’s recruiting command. In those cases, it was the responsibility of the command to pay for my travel, lodging, etc. For most other commands, there were always questions about their ability to fund my travel to represent one of their soldiers–their budgets were tightly appropriated. Never for recruiting command. They were always flush with cash.
Of course, I could forgive the Army NASCAR thing, but only if they hire Dick Trickle to drive the car.
No Humvee class?
(FYI, the USPS sponsorship was justified on the basis that it was worth it to raise the profile of the USPS in the potentially profitable international overnight market. I have no insight on whether the investment ultimately paid off, but it doesn’t seem like an inherently unreasonable marketing initiative given that objective.)
My guess is most Americans are aware that we have this thing called the Postal Service. If the purpose is to inform us that they are engaged in the international overnight market, does putting their logo on Armstrong’s shirt tell us that? I’m not seeing it. USPS isn’t a private company, building brand awareness for its own sake, and the same rules of marketing do not apply when it’s our money spent to fund it.
Of course. No, the point was to market to *Europeans*. As you say, Americans already knew the USPS existed. Europeans didn’t, though, and the USPS wanted to expand its pool of potential customers.
Actually, I don’t think the USPS thought it would be marketing to Americans at all. Until Armstrong came along, few Americans had any interest in cycling. But in Europe sponsoring a bike team was a huge thing that put the USPS on the same footing as Deutsche Post, sponsor of the German team. The USPS was gunning for its customers.
If the point was to capture the German international market (or any European market) by this sponsorship, then the decisionmaker at the Postal Service spending our money was either stupid, nuts or high.
Perhaps I am ignorant (guaranteed, in fact), but how do I send things by Deutsche post, and how does someone in the EU send things by USPS?
You’re not. They don’t.