The U.S. Postal Service has launched a new ad campaign, indirectly targeting businesses who have moved from snail mail to online statements. How are they doing this indirectly? By preying on their customers’ online security fears, all while selling the alleged strengths of sending mail the old fashion way.

So far, I have experienced two commercials from this campaign (see embedded video below) and cannot believe what I am hearing. In the first ad, they play on peoples’ fear of online security breaches:

“The refrigerator has never been hacked. An online virus has never attacked a cork-board.”

Am I really hearing this? Unfortunately it only gets worse in the second ad:

“Feeling safe and secure that important letters and information don’t get lost in thin-air. Or disappear with a click. But a delivery from person-to-person.”

I have been receiving online statements for many years and have never experienced an issue where one was lost in thin-air, let alone disappeared with a click. When compared with snail mail, my online statements have been considerably more reliable and timely, and a big reason for this is that less people had to touch it. For this reason alone, when afforded the option of managing my accounts online, I always opt-in because I feel that I have more control.

Businesses look at online statements from a different perspective: cost savings. Every piece of postal mail they have to send costs them money. Sure, they usually receive a bulk discount, but in the end they still have to pay to get that envelope to your mailbox. In contrast to the variable expense of snail mail, the largest cost for online statement processing is the fixed upfront development expense. Once that is paid off, it costs dramatically less per statement.

More businesses are trying to convince their customers to switch over to online statements, so it is obvious they have made up their minds. This is why I believe the ad campaign is actually targeting the security fears of customers rather than the businesses directly. By scaring people away from online statements, it forces businesses to continue to send mail the old fashion way, and the U.S. Postal Service continues to stay relevant.

With ~78% of the United States population on the internet, it’s obvious that not everyone can receive their statements online. From the U.S. Postal Service’s perspective, that is still a very large chunk of business that they are currently losing, and I understand their concern. But using fear to sell your service is short-sighted and may alienate you from the demographic that is already secure with doing business online today.