Custom Media Collaborations: Session Recap: Key Takeaways from Shalene Starr at ProcureCon Marketing

Day 3 Keynote Presentation: From Storytelling to Scale: How Custom Media Collaborations Drive Brand Engagement and Value

Announcer: So we have another great presentation for you this morning. This is gonna get us hopefully, maybe a little bit in the holiday spirit, much like Festivus last night. We're gonna keep it going. We have a presentation from Shaylene Starr. She is the manager of marketing services at the United Postal Service.

Please give Shaylene a welcome to the stage.

Shalene Starr, Manager, Marketing Services – USPS: I just want to I didn't have a chance to do this yesterday, but I wanted to correct. The way that my name is pronounced is Shalene, like shalene to the left and shalene to the right. Lately I've just been going by postal lady, so that's also okay by me. Today, I'm going to disappoint you because I'm not gonna talk about ai.

I'm gonna talk about custom. I'm gonna talk about custom media and how the US Postal Service uses this as a conduit to connect to its customers on a deeper level. All of the examples that I'm showing you today. Our projects that I worked on personally. So I am not just presenting something very canned.

This is very near and dear to my heart. I put a lot of effort into the success of these programs and I'm really excited to share these programs with you today. Our agenda will be a little bit of a history of how the postal service used custom media past and presently how we've made adaptations based on our market target audience.

I'll be sharing these case studies with you. I put little nuggets of info for you folks in procurement because this is procure con and you wanna understand what's in it for you. I'll have some takeaways and if I'm not successful, I'm running out the clock. I'll take some questions. So one thing about the US Postal Service is that we committed to doing custom media integrations at the start of our relationship with Universal McCann, who's our media agency of record.

In fact, we had to look at custom media as a solution because. We onboarded our media agency in 2012 in advance of our creative agency of record in 2013. And UN was very helpful in finding opportunities for us. But there were pros and cons to the approach that we had initially with them.

So case in point much like other brands, we decided to, hitch our wagon to stars and find ourselves with product integrations and a variety of talk shows or online platforms. And I've put some of these famous folks on this, on the screen here today. What's interesting, a little anecdote I wanted to share is, with the Ellen DeGeneres show when we walked into that integration we had really high hopes. Lots of people on the team felt very connected to Ellen. We thought this was going to be huge for us, but when we started working with the team, it was really clear that. Our brand was taking a backseat, honestly, to the Ellen brand.

Ellen was really adamant about izing things. And so when we did our integration, we had very little creative control. On what was going to happen. What happened was, and I'm sad I don't have this video it was from some time ago, is they made a huge priority mailbox and had a contestant run through a maze and eat cream corn and things that really don't connect with the postal brand.

Additionally, Andy, her assistant. Ized our postal uniform. And so he was on set in extremely short shorts, letter carrier shorts. And I had a lot of explaining to do to the executive leadership team at the postal service where we struggled to try to ensure that our letter carriers are in regulation.

So while this definitely created a buzz for us, we knew there were better opportunities ahead. I would say we have it evolved because it's not just, okay, let's put our product in the middle of a scene and hope that it sticks with people. We have decided on projects that are really connecting to our customers on a very intimate level.

Additionally, this is a little more context here. It has a lot to do from a procurement lens. It has a lot to do with partner selection. Again, I just explained to you some of the challenges we had with the Ellen team, but for the teams that we've worked with recently they're active listeners.

They understand that our brand needs to be front and center and that it's more than just a product placement. It's really explaining to whether it's a consumer or a business. What the postal service can do for them and it meets them where they're at.

So here are some case studies. Many of you are probably familiar or I hope so with the docuseries. Dear Santa, I was still am an executive producer for Dear Santa too. And if you haven't watched it, I believe it's on Hulu. And you'll find a scene where I'm hovering over children writing letters in a post office in Oklahoma.

We put a lot of effort into making Dear Santa authentic for this audience. I was personally at several letter writing events as well as deliveries. Let me show you a video. I think that would be easier to explain the impact this had on our brand.

Marketing Video: Who's ready for Santa? Me

Santa's very busy.

He can only be at one place at one time, but we got a lot of elfs. Good

job.

I have Santa's

personal number.

No, everybody else got his work number. I got his personal number. Santa's super sweet and he loves everybody. Long as you're on the. Good list, not the naughty list. 'cause Santa don't play.

Why do you have the USPS shirt

on?

Because we, how do you think the letters go to Santa? We take 'em.

I don't think I ever realized how much work an elf has to do. It can be stressful

since it doesn't give raping lessons. When you get the job as a elf, you gotta learn on your own.

When you find that right letter that means something to you, it makes me feel like I have peppermint shooting out of my eyelid.

Langton Santa got your letter.

Yay. This a fish.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, he's so sweet.

This is from. Santa. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Santa.

I like Christmas.

Shalene Starr, Manager, Marketing Services – USPS: Thank you. Thank you. Really means a lot to me because as you could tell, just from the trailer, our letter carriers and other postal employees were actively involved in helping with that storytelling. In fact, I had to spend a lot of time on set trying to coach our employees on how to represent themselves as elves.

It's actually very challenging, but as far as the results are concerned, it's more than just. Oh, how much revenue did we drive? It's really building awareness of 113 year old program known as Operation Santa. That started when. Postal employees decided to start opening letters to Santa and fulfilling the wishes of those children.

That answered. Now that platform is digitized and I'm not plugging this program necessarily, but if you're interested in adopting a letter, you can go on Operation Santa right now and take a look at those opportunities. As far as the Dear Santa two series is concerned we were able to garner 25 million social media impressions.

3000 plus media mentions $35 million in earned media. So for us, that's a huge win. But more importantly, we know that we connected to our customers on a deeper level because again, you have to hand raise to get to that content you want to see. Our brand show up for you and you want that heartfelt message around the holiday season.

We are, if you were listening to the panel yesterday, I mentioned how the postal service is actually very focused on B2B, and we decided to endeavor into custom media efforts for business audiences. I would say that. Obviously it, it feels like custom media is more of a B2C play. But we've had great success in these two case studies.Shalene Starr, Manager, Marketing Services – USPS: The first has integration with the Wall Street Journal. This microsite is still active and on our end it meant, finding actual customers to help deliver business testimonials, showcasing our USPS Ground Advantage product. So the Wall Street Journal carved out a microsite and on that microsite live seven different stories of businesses that use USPS ground advantage.

And it was so well received that. This work received a Silver at Tele award this year, humble Bragg. And I'm excited to show you a video segment that lives on that site showcasing a couples small business. Ohio called All Out Nutrition.

Marketing Video: We are from Danville. We're in Ohio, and it's tiny. It is tiny. We've been here our whole lives. With us being so rural, we wouldn't be able to do what we do without the United States Postal Service and what they have to offer.

I have a really good friend. He got me into mountain biking and I fell in love with it.

I started getting really deep into the nutrition side of things, and then I noticed there was not a supplement company specific to the needs of mountain biking and motocross riders. I wanted something that gave me a little boost in energy, helped with focus.

We've got a lot of ingredients to offer in one product.

Yeah. It's a very unique formula.

We run a business out of our home.

We basically traveled coast to coast last year, spreading the word. When we show up to an event, we'll pull up, get our tent set up. Cheese behind the table and I am actually usually racing.

I've always loved racing. Mountain Biking's opened up a huge field of just great people that are very welcoming to us as a company.

It has been really nice to share Nick. And how our product can help them.

It's the right amount of

each ingredient. It helps with arm pump, it helps with focus.

It'll stick with you then

throughout the ride.

Yeah, absolutely. It's like a pre-workout. But for riders,

go ahead and try that. So we'll develop those relationships and they come back as repeat customers through E-commerce.

Good luck. Love you. I love you. We have three kids,

the girls are teenagers and our little guy, Tanner is five. Running everything from home gets crazy sometimes.

Nathan, so works full time, and then I manage the house, check deliveries, all operations,

and she's a trooper. I'll call her, Hey, did you get this done yet? I'm working on a, Tainer is hungry.

It's what load of laundry do I need to do? I package this shipment

and then I come home and go through emails and then it's a meeting of what we need to do for the next day.

So it's a constant grind, but we want to be a family team. Good hustle. Good hustle.

Getting the kids involved has been really fun. Marketing Video: I had love for one of them to take it over someday,

and you can stack 'em however you want. All the way up. All the way down.

When we get a new order in, we get the notifications right away.

I can immediately start working on it.

Somebody's gonna get our drink.

Yeah.

And then it's as easy for us as coming out the door and then I can just take it to the mailbox and it's off. So the ground advantage has been amazing. Yeah. Nowadays shipping expectations are really high. United States Postal Service makes sure that we can get our racers, their products quickly.

We'll sometimes get a racer who's Hey man, it's I need product by Friday. Can you get this out to me soon? And they will usually have it within two to four days. USPS is in very competitive with getting something across the country quick

with the reliability and the simplicity of everything.

The USPS we can see being there through her ride.Shalene Starr, Manager, Marketing Services – USPS: Thank you. Thank you. There are more stories like this on the micro sites and also on our thought leadership page at USPS delivers. But all of these stories are really unique and took us to some very different places. No one had. Danville, Ohio on their radar say, but I think what's great about these stories is how business customers can see themselves in these stories.

Shalene Starr, Manager, Marketing Services – USPS: So whether it's all out nutrition, which is, clearly a home-based business or something like MeUndies or a hat club, I think there's a lot of relatable content for e-tailers to get behind. More recently, we've moved, we've created a hybrid model where we are telling our story.

We are using recognizable folks. Shana KKE and Dan Olasky are sportscasters, they're former. We decided to take the learnings that we had when we worked with, again, Martha Stewart, Steve Harvey, et cetera, but then have those personalities. Engage in settings that speak to our customers.

So I'll play, these are short. Sorry about the long winning teams video before teams

Marketing Video: are built overnight. Look at the attention to detail here. That's USPS ground advantage. These kinds of handles are what Separate. Good and great. That's championship DNA on display right there.

And we're back live where this team is facing their toughest opponent.

Yet this looks like a tall task for our business owner. Folks. Coach, what are you and the team most focused on out here today?

Deadlines, logistics, but shipping, that's definitely the heart and soul of our organiz.

And they game planned for this one, they're going with USPS Ground Advantage service. Check out the attention to detail here.

Clean, precise. No flags on the play, and no hidden fees. Oh, and he is locked in. What a handoff. They're using free USPS package pickup for a completely seamless transfer. Let's take another look. I need to see that again. This is how it's done. Look at those eyes. Pure focus, pure determination. Taking care of the parcel.

No fumbles, maintaining possession all the way through. You love to see that kind of teamwork and USPS informed delivery means your customers can track this plate all the way to the zone. That was a masterclass out there. How does it feel to win so big?

Both teams played hard,

and there you have it. USPS.

Ground Advantage Service game changing shipping for your business.

Shalene Starr, Manager, Marketing Services – USPS: Thank you.

This is an integration we did with Team Whistle and Team Whistle, has a presence online. But we feel like the authenticity of the storytelling is what helped push these numbers to really unexpected gains. So we. We endeavored with, perhaps we'll get 11 million impressions.

Overall, as this is content that lives on social media predominantly, but we exceeded our expectations. There was. A lot of buzz, a lot of sharing of this content for Bo, Shana and Dan. And I think it also changed perception a bit. So a little bit about how that content was filmed. Shanae's content was filmed in our processing facility in Santa Clarita.

We again, I had to give some acting lessons to our employees. They engaged with her and likewise for Dan. The letter carrier that's in there making that great play is a letter carrier from Northern New Jersey. I don't know if you could hear his accent but he was very committed to the role and even the business owner that's showcased there.

Is a former USPS employee who thanks to her SAG card from being in A TVC that we had is now acting in retirement. We brought a lot of postal energy into that spot, and I think that's why the numbers are as telling as they are what a decision that we made is that when we saw that.

A lot of folks were engaging with Dan's content. We made a decision to work with our partner for data-driven Linear and CTV Simul Media and replace our TVC placements with the Dan and in some cases shee spots. And once we made that transition we also saw great gains. Here are some of the numbers when we first introduced it in a MJ and how it's been performing in July, August, September.

What's really telling about this, and this is another presentation I'd like to make in the future, is how much CTV can influence lead generation because not only are we able to trace. Behavior of folks that see the spot and then go to our Ground Advantage website. But we're also able to see them go into our promo reg website, which means that they want to talk to a sales person to learn more.

So amazing results with the team whistle integration. So just this is more the recap part of it. This is the evolution of talking to a consumer audience and then taking those. Learnings and bringing it back into a more business focus. So we could reach out to small businesses and executives at logistics companies.

Additionally, these would be the takeaways that I'd like to leave you with today. If you are considering adding custom media and to your creation mix. Again, custom media is built on making those connections, finding your audience where they are and where they want to engage in your content.

And if you're looking for someone to help you, whether it's Team Whistle or Wall Street Journal or our friends at Hulu, you should have a partner. That's excellent. It's matchmaking. So in this case, hats off to studios for finding those opportunities for us and, understanding who would be a great match for us.

Some of these KPIs, while we'd like them to be straight up roas and they're not always, and so sometimes you have to look at. Social media buzz or earned media. As part of the success story thankfully our more recent efforts have actually as you could tell made an impact on our business customers.

So I think revenue is a part of our success as well. Your brand has to be the hero of the story. Again, we had to share time with, ellen DeGeneres back in the day. But in all of these examples, I believe the postal service is a front and center, and I've given you some anecdotes. Yes. You have to put in a lot of effort into ensuring that your custom media approach is successful.

And that takes, work, working with employees and working with those partners. For the postal service, I believe we've created a cadre of brand ambassadors. Whether it's those folks in the Dear Santa film or the opportunities on the Wall Street Journal micro sites. It's elevated our brand in a fresh and different way, and it's created this two-way dialogue between the USPS consumers and business customers.

I am outta time. So no questions. Thank you.

Announcer: Thank you so much, Shalene. I know that I will definitely have questions about the Dear Santa Project because I just looked at them up on the website and the letters are so cute. Aw, you. We all should adopt one. Seriously. Thank you so much, Shelene. Let's give her one more round of applause everybody.

Thank.