U.S. Postal Service Challenges College Students With 'P.R. Professional Experience'

New York, NY (PRWEB) February 11, 2006

The U.S. Postal Service is proud to announce the launch of the “P.R. Professional Experience,” a contest in which student teams from colleges and universities in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut compete to see who can devise the best public relations campaign for the Postal Service’s online products NetPost® (http://www.usps.com/netpost), Click-N-Ship® (http://www.usps.com/clicknship) and Direct Mail (http://www.usps.com/directmail).

The Postal Service is looking for the Public Relations executives of tomorrow by stimulating creative ideas from students majoring in Communications, Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Public Affairs, Broadcasting, Journalism or English.

Participating students could win over $2500 in prizes sponsored by Microsoft, JetBlue Airways and Travel Pro, and the chance to have their Grand Prize winning campaign featured in a future Postal Service Public Relations promotion.

Tri-state student teams have until February 15 to send in their Participation Forms. A one-page synopsis of the team’s proposed PR campaign must be postmarked by March 1, 2006 and received by March 6, 2006. Entries will be narrowed down to sixteen semi-finalist teams, who will each develop and submit a public relations campaign that targets 18 to 34 year-olds. Those teams will be narrowed down to six finalists, who will present their campaigns to a panel of celebrity judges at an awards ceremony in May.

Prizes include Xbox 360’s and a trip to anywhere JetBlue flies.

For Official Rules, log on to http://www.usps.com/communications/prpe.

About the U.S. Postal Service

Since 1775, the U.S. Postal Service has connected friends, families, neighbors and businesses by mail. An independent federal agency, the Postal Service makes deliveries to more than 142 million addresses every day and is the only service provider to deliver to every address in the nation. The Postal Service receives no taxpayer dollars for routine operations, but derives its operating revenues solely from the sale of postage, products and services. With annual revenues of $69 billion, it is the world's leading provider of mail and delivery services, offering some of the most affordable postage rates in the world. Moreover, today's postage rates will remain stable until at least 2006. The U.S. Postal Service delivers more than 46 percent of the world's mail volume-some 206 billion letters, advertisements, periodicals and packages a year-and serves seven million customers each day at its 37,000 retail locations nationwide.

###