Postal disservice

Samuel Helbling on partially addressed advertisingMany Swiss people find unaddressed advertising annoying. Around 30 percent of all households therefore protect themselves with advertising stickers on their letterboxes. But at the end of last year, these stickers were increasingly losing their effectiveness. Partially addressed advertising has recently started to land in letterboxes with inscriptions such as "to all gardening enthusiasts at Blumenstrasse 6" or "to all women at Gertrudstrasse 19". This service is made possible by a new offer from Swiss Post: selectively partially addressed PromoPost, which - according to its own advertising - is delivered like addressed advertising. It is hard to blame Swiss Post for offering a service that allows companies to circumvent advertising stop stickers and exploit a legal gray area in the process. Another question is whether it is politically wise to provoke consumers who clearly signal that they do not want advertising mailings. Precisely because advertising is always an attempt to persuade, it always teeters on the edge of harassment. And this danger is naturally all the greater the further away the real need and benefit of the addressee is from the message. Anyone who has a stop sticker on their letterbox is unlikely to develop buying sympathies towards products whose promotion is forced on them against their will.
Even if the political agenda is currently dominated by an emphasis on the personal responsibility of citizens and consumers, this climate can change overnight. Developments in the USA, the EU and also in Switzerland (such as the announced ban on sex ads) show that the advertising industry can expect further waves of bans or restrictions at any time. Against this backdrop, Swiss Post is doing the communications industry a disservice with its new service because it is recklessly jeopardizing the "truce" with consumers.
> Samuel Helbling, Editor-in-Chief