"Churchill" wrote in message news:VucHc.45732

Speaking as a non-American I would never have heard of the "USPS" if it
wasn't for the Tour, so their marketing worked in my case

USPS is smart to do this, they are getting all of Europe focused on their
name, cycling 'I sense' is much more popular in Europe than North America



But this is pointless because the USPS doesn't serve European customers.
That is, as I understand it, Europeans can't even use the USPS to send mail
or packages from Europe to the US.

However, even though cycling isn't as popular here, Lance has very high name
recognition in the US and the commercials featuring him racing through
"sleet, snow, gloom of night, etc" are actually pretty effective images for
a delivery service.

As for the USPS advertising in general -- of course they have to advertise.
They're in competition with FedEx, UPS, Airborne, etc for the package
delivery business, which is the potential growth area. The rise of the
Internet has greatly increased package delivery (due to internet shopping)
while it has reduced ordinary mail delivery (due to email).

Mark