Sally Helm
speaker
201 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 22 Apr
Sally Helm’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
This is Planet Money from NPR.
Okay. Three. Two.
My ears just popped.
It took exactly three minutes and 40 seconds.
As people went into military service during the war, they had all that knowledge built up about the route that they worked every day. They knew how many stairs they were going to have to climb. They knew how many mailboxes were on that street. They knew the farm next door and how you sort the mail to prepare yourself.
You might have a street with the same kind of sounding name where it's Oak Street or Oak Branch Place or something like that. And so if somebody forgot to put the number on there, it helps you be able to sort that faster and figure out, oh, Margaret lives in the neighborhood with zone number 10. Problem solved. For now.
And everything that goes hand in hand in generating. People sending in postcards to renew subscriptions and, well, and things like bills. As the economy grows, the bills keep coming in as well.
They're wondering, how do you handle this mail efficiently and accurately every day? Because you're simply going to probably run out of a labor force to be able to handle some of this.
It's kind of a whole zeitgeist of ushering in this modern 20th century.
Exactly. And also economize at the same time. Efficiency is really a key.
Zip code sounds like it's really fast, but it's just an acronym. It's Zone Improvement Plan.
Exactly. I don't think it was just serendipity.
Plan doesn't seem quite right to me.
The zin. Exactly. Right, right.
You've got this way to be able to oh, just finally be able to put a number two into something that, you know, it's just going to get larger and larger and that population area is going to keep growing. But we'll always be able to put that under number five, number six, number seven, and be able to expand and contract as the world's changing.
Some people, they feel a little bit, it's impersonal. You've got one more number assigned to you and it's not just your name anymore. It's not just your street name anymore. It's now all this series of numbers.
He is an amicable, very smiley letter carrier who, just like his name, is always zipping somewhere. He is leaning forward and his mailbag is kind of flying out behind him as he is speeding towards you.
And this campaign, it actually works. By 1965, about 50% of people recognize it and are starting to use it. And then that increases to about 85% recognition and use of zip code. Within the decade.
Yeah, it shows up in how marketers reach people and looking at the zip code. And they can get very granular to areas with people who might be interested in this product or this program.
Bueller.
Showing 181–200 of 201 · page 10 of 11
← Previous
Next →