Charles Dharapak/AP file photo
USPS Looking for Ways to Sell Its $3.6B Brand to Boost Revenue
Inspector general thinks the trusted Postal Service can better leverage its name.
The U.S. Postal Service’s brand is worth $3.6 billion, a review by the agency’s inspector general found earlier this year, and now the auditor wants USPS to capitalize on it.
The IG issued a solicitation this week seeking a contractor to help the auditor determine how the Postal Service could leverage its logo, uniforms and trademarked names to address is budget shortfalls and unfunded liabilities. The purpose of the contract, the IG wrote in the solicitation, “is to identify revenue opportunity by licensing or selling the Postal Service’s brand.”
In January, another contractor estimated the USPS brand to be worth $3.6 billion. The elements of its brand “convey information to consumers, allowing them to assign responsibility to the Postal Service for providing delivery of products and services,” the IG said. Awareness of the Postal Service is ubiquitous, that report found, and people are loyal to it. The IG suggested the Postal Service could create billions of dollars in revenue “as a direct result of its brand.”
The IG instructed its next contractor to conduct research and analysis to identify the potential revenue streams from licensing or selling the brand, and to make projections five years into the future. The contract recipient would be tasked with finding best practices for licensing or selling brands and would benchmark its assumptions against other companies or local government agencies engaged in that process.
The Postal Service receives the highest approval ratings of any federal agency, with Gallup most recently finding that 72 percent of Americans say USPS does an excellent or good job. Approval was especially strong among young people, with 81 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 giving positive ratings.
The inspector general specifically said USPS could leverage that trust to pay down some of its unfunded liabilities, including health care for its retirees. Postal Service management has estimated its unfunded liabilities to be about $90 billion. Selling the brand, however, could raise concerns long held by labor unions and postal-friendly lawmakers of attempts to privatize all or parts of the agency.
A recently introduced bipartisan bill to overhaul the Postal Service, authored by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., would create new avenues for USPS to grow revenue -- including an advisory commission to identify new ways to bring in more money -- but does not specifically address branding issues.