Interesting And Failed Scheme From The 1980-S

Picked this up recently in a box lot.
A sample "stamp" from a place that was intending on placing actual stamps on the sticker like an ad collar. The sticker would have advertising that would provide profit even selling the sticker with a stamp at a discount.

From what I could find out, they got all the way through testing with the post office, had some major customers, 7-11 as a seller, and big companies and the Post office as advertisers. Even had a press conference where they displayed covers from all 50 states.
Just after that the Justice dept squashed the idea. because attaching advertising to stamps wasn't allowed. The company was appealing that since they were attaching stamps to ads, not the other way around, pointing out that all advertising on envelopes would be disallowed following the logic of the ruling.

From the information included in the envelope, it seems the picked up Create America as a distributor, and they in turn were promoting it like a pyramid scheme. Stuff like "even if you can't use 500 stamps at 17 cents you can sell them to friends and neighbors for 18 cents" (Oh boy! a potential profit of $5!)

These are probably a second version, as the letter apologizes for the delay due to running out of sample stamps.

Interesting, I wonder how the legal appeal went. I agree, that ruling should disallow all advertising on letters (including pre-stamped envelopes and advertising postcards). Then I would argue, isn't "product placement" a type of advertising? Why then is a stamp commemorating Harry Potter, Disney, or The Monopoly Game not considered advertising for those products?

But I digress. My question is how this works .. what is the purpose of that $1.00 dog food coupon on the back side? From the first picture, it looked like this was just a sticker that you place on an envelope, and all the advertising was in the 'collar' around the stamp. Does the coupon stay with the sticker that is mailed or does it stay with the sender? OK, I see, so the sender pays 17 cents, they paste the ad collar on their next letter to promote this idea to the next guy, and the sender gets to keep the $1.00 coupon, win win. I can see a business willing to buy 500 of these ads to save money on postage, but what are they going to do with 500 dog food coupons? Does the buyer of the ad stamps get to decide what products or services they are promoting and/or getting coupons for?

You say this came with letter with more information? Could you post a scan of that also? Thanks.

It came with a bunch of paperwork, I'll scan it all and put it in the replies.

Basically yes, a company in this case Gaines would pay them to print coupons on the back of the carrier paper. Maybe with an ad on the sticker too, but that's not made clear.
I suppose they could have different coupons and ads like on the sample, getting paid by both.

From articles I read, the printer spent a lot of money on special equipment to make the stickers and I'd imagine affix the stamps.

The prohibition against advertising was eventually removed. About a decade late for this company if I recall it right.

The rest of the packet, I suspect he underpaid at a single rate.

The Q and A which I didn't really read answers some questions, and sounds even more like Create America sort of took it over as a pyramid scheme.

Very interesting facet of postal history. I had not seen this before. No doubt very uncommon to have survived. Somewhere someone likely has a sample cover which actually went through the mail. Too bad the cover here did use one of the labels.

If attaching advertising to stamps isn't allowed, how are ads within cancellations permitted?

That restriction was removed in I think the mid 1990's.

So far I don't think it's really gotten to the stamps.
To me the stamps from other countries with advertising on the selvedge are interesting.
The ones with ads printed on the gum side are even more interesting, but I don't have any.