The Promotional Idea Showcase - Spring 2001 - Updated Quarterly

U.S. Postal Service District Rewards 10,400

When you do a recognition program for more than 750,000 employees, even a select group of winners is going to constitute a huge order. That’s exactly what happened with the United States Postal Service (USPS), which honored one of its districts with imprinted jackets. And that’s what happened to counselor Dave Hudson, who delivered an order of 10,400 shirts to the USPS’s Hawkeye district.

The Hawkeye, which includes Iowa and part of Nebraska, racked up a 95 score in each of four specialized categories, mostly involving overnight and priority services. Putting up four 95s is something that only happens to a district once every several years.

Those performance marks led to a decision to go for a higher-end promotional product than USPS typically opts for. It selected lined poplin jacket with the two-color embroidered imprint “United States Postal Service, Hawkeye PC” (“PC” is bureaucratese for “performance cluster,” one of 85 in the country.)

While not a uniform, the jacket was intended to be highly visible. “I think it was really just an item that could recognize the employees that they knew they would use, if not every day, then on a very frequent basis, and it would wear well, and they’d be able to wear it with pride,” says Hudson.

After the bidding process and subsequent contracts, there was the task of shipping out varying sizes of the jackets to all the different post offices. There was a mind-numbing array of sizes – including five gradations of “extra-large tall” and seven versions of regular “extra large” – going to myriad locations. “For instance, here, going to the Cedar Rapids post office area, there were 17 small, 97 medium, 352 large, 472 extra,” says Hudson. “So with every size, you had to package each box according to that (list).”

The jackets started going out in the summer, and reached their destinations with a minimum of problems. In fact, The USPS Contractor Performance Report gave American overall grades of “excellent.”

And once all the jackets got on all those backs, there was even more good news. “(We heard) from local people, saying they were very pleased, because it doesn’t happen very often where they actually get an award like that,” says Hudson.

This online version of IMPRINT MAGAZINE is updated regularly along with the printed version.