Remember Mr. Zip? He introduced the ZIP code in 1963

Citizens across the land will observe the 60th anniversary of the ZIP Code in 2023. The system was rolled out July 1, 1963, and Mr. Zip was there to celebrate the day. 

He’s somewhat older. The original Mr. Zip character was created in the late 1950s for Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City to promote a “bank-by-mail” campaign. The artist was Howard Wilcox of the Cunningham & Walsh advertising agency. 

Ironically, Wilcox was the son of a postal letter carrier. His design was a child-like, simplistic sketch of a smiley-faced postman dashing through a patch of inclement weather with his mail bag.. The ad copy read: “In rain or hail, pay bills by mail.” 

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) purchased the rights to the character and gifted the design to the U.S. Post Office Department.

 

Joe Lawrence, a post office artist, freshened up the character a tad, and it was christened as Mr. Zip, a cartoon spokesperson/mascot for the revolutionary Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP).

 

The Post Office said its five-digit ZIP code system was guaranteed to speed up delivery of letters and parcels to every mailbox in America. 

The actual inventor of the ZIP code system was Robert Moon, a postal inspector in Philadelphia, Pa. He saw the value of coding early on, and he submitted a proposal to create a new national three-digit code system in 1944. 

He envisioned establishing mail processing hubs, all strategically located to serve various sections of the country. Moon said such a system would be necessary for the post office to keep up with the anticipated explosion in mail volume after World War II. 

Moon continued to modify his plan, and it was fully embraced (finally) and fast-tracked by Postmaster General J. Edward Day, who was appointed in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. Day was a sharp cookie. He graduated from Harvard University’s Law School. 

Day sought advice from executives at AT&T who had “lived through” a rocky rollout of the national area code telephone system in 1947. The AT&T officials stressed the importance of an effective, educational “public relations campaign” to make citizens aware of the value of ZIP codes to improve the speed and accuracy of mail delivery. (Once they got their ZIP codes, some rural towns finally added house numbers.)

A month after the ZIP code was introduced, Postmaster General J. Edward Day (left) resigned. He vacated his post in August 1963 to return to lawyering in the private sector. He said it was “hard to live on the $25,000 government salary.” In 1965, Day published a light-hearted memoir about his Postmaster General service, “My Appointed Round: 929 days as Postmaster General.”

Mr. Zip was the guy who was tasked with convincing folks that change was a good thing for the U.S. postal system. Mr. Zip responded by capturing the hearts of Americans; he was deemed to be a prolific icon. 

Vocalist Ethel Merman recorded a jingle to the tune of “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” She sang: “Welcome to ZIP code, learn it today. Send your mail out the five-digit way. For a time-saver to lighten the load, your return address should have the ZIP code.”

 

Mr. Zip had his own band. He appeared in a 1967 music video with “The Swingin’ Six.” The group was described as “having a Kingston Trio/Mamas & the Papas type sound.” Members were Steve Burnett, John Fisher, Pat Lanigan, Richard Neives, Ann Rachel and Carol Richards. 

The group’s sole album, “For the First Time,” was released by Decca Records in 1966.

 

Musicologist Gary Theroux said that the group appeared twice on television’s “The Mike Douglas Show in 1966,” but “The Swingin’ Six’s time in the spotlight was short-lived,” and the group dissolved. 

Mr. ZIP, on the other hand, continued representing the postal service until he retired in 1986. He still roams around, however, at the National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C., a unit of the Smithsonian Institution.