Whatever happened to the Mail Moment?
In the late 1980s Royal Mail defined something called the Mail Moment – that special time when the mail drops on the doormat and everyone in the household rushed to see what had come through the door. Today that moment seems to have passed and what we have now is an Email Moment as we respond, almost Pavlov like to Blackberry’s and iPhones.
That sense of anticipation and almost excitement has transferred to our pockets rather than the doormat. The question is can it ever be recovered.
The humble letterbox, once an important communication channel into the home and business, has become almost superfluous – a thing of necessity rather than of desire. Once people took pride in their letterbox – it took pride of place on their front door – was kept clean and sometimes polished, as it was important to the household. More and more households now try and hide them away or try and get rid of them all together – choosing rather to have a separate box which gets emptied sometimes – akin to a rubbish bin rather than an important communications channel.
The question is has the Mail Moment passed – is it too late to recover that moment – is the letterbox going to be passed into history and become a museum piece for our ancestors to try and guess what it was used for?
I propose that we need to get people to value their letterbox – maybe even have a range of designer letterboxes – try and kindle the pride people have in their mobile phones and laptops and put the same passion and excitement into that once important communication channel into their home and business.
Way back in the mid 1990s when I was still working for Royal Mail I suggested a ‘Letterbox Love’ campaign by getting a range of designers to come up with new letterboxes, to make the letterbox a feature rather than a thing of function – Nike, D&G, Tiffany’s etc. to produce something that was aspirational – get people to care and be proud of their letterbox – in this way they would care about what came through it – as they are with their phone or laptop.
Sadly nothing ever happened and maybe the timing is not right today but I would be interested in people’s views on this idea.
