But these articles about the Postal Services sponsorship of Lance Armstrong (here’s one) are really annoying me.

The Postal Service didn’t get much “free advertising” out of sponsoring Armstrong. They mostly got some graft and free tickets and trinkets and stuff. I mean, I mean, do you really think someone sees Lance Armstrong and says, “Oh yeah, I gotta go out and mail some stuff!”?

The unmeasurable amorphous feel-good branding stuff can go too far, and this is a fine example of that. The sponsorship of Armstrong is almost without value because it does nothing whatever to increase awareness or consumption of the USPS, nor does it even give them much of a halo effect. Think about it: are many companies going to consider switching from Fedex to USPS (the only place they don’t have a mandated monopoly) because of seeing them in Sports Illustrated?