Case Studied
Playing Tetris with parcels

Most sustainability changes inside a supply chain don’t make compelling marketing stories. Route optimization, fuller trucks, and better warehouse layouts are the mechanics that move emissions numbers, but they rarely give a brand something to talk about.

La Poste, France's national postal service, found a way to go against that norm in a playful way. 

This week, Case Studied explores how La Poste tripled truck capacity and cut emissions by operating like Tetris.

The Brief

La Poste Groupe is France's national postal service and one of the country's oldest institutions. It employs 227,000 people across more than 60 countries and operates roughly 40,500 service points.

The company became a mission-driven business in 2021, committing to reach net zero emissions by 2040. That target landed just as parcel volume kept climbing: La Poste delivered roughly 490 million parcels in France in 2024 alone, up 4.9% year-over-year, with global shipments projected to reach 256 billion annually by 2027.

Delivery transport already accounts for close to 3% of global CO2 emissions. So La Poste's challenge was to grow parcel capacity without growing emissions, and without slowing deliveries down.

The answer came from an unlikely source: the loading logic of a video game.

The Execution

La Poste launched "Delivered by Tetris," a campaign built around how trucks are loaded. At its core was software modeled on Tetris's central rule: never leave an empty space. 

It calculates each parcel's optimal position in a truck based on its volume, weight, and unloading order.The software was rolled out across La Poste's 35 national hubs and more than 30 sorting centers. Roughly 12,000 employees were trained to use it on about 20,000 trucks a year. La Poste then partnered with The Tetris Company itself to turn the change into a public story, unveiled on stage at VivaTech Paris in June 2025. La Poste CEO Philippe Wahl and Tetris Company CEO Maya Rogers presented the software together.

From there, the campaign expanded into a hero film, social and digital activations, and influencer content, complete with co-branded trucks. La Poste also released limited-edition Tetris-themed stamps and a merchandise line of sweatshirts, T-shirts, socks, tote bags, and pens, which were sold online and at the Musée de La Poste store.

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The Results

The Tetris optimization tripled how many parcels a single La Poste truck could carry, rising  from 1,500 to 4,500. That gain meantLa Poste cut more than 15,000 tons of CO2 a year and dropped fule consumption by 66%. Meanwhile, on-time delivery held at 99.1%. 

The public-facing campaign also drove attention beyond the logistics community. It generated over 26 million impressions and 13 million video views. La Poste saw a 20% increase in web traffic from the U.S. and a fourfold increase in Google searches for "French Post."

According to Ipsos data cited by the companies, 78% of viewers reported an improved impression of the La Poste brand, 25 points above benchmark. The approach has since been studied externally by organizations including PostEurop, EPOS, and think tanks such as The Shift Project as a model for cutting transport emissions through optimization rather than automation.

The Takeaways

1) Turn a quiet operational win into a visible story.

La Poste's loading approach wasn't built for this campaign. According to the company's own materials, a version of it had been running for roughly a decade before "Delivered by Tetris" launched. The opportunity La Poste identified was noticing that an existing, unglamorous result had a story worth telling.

Before building a campaign around something new, look at what's already working quietly inside the operation. A result that's been running for years without a public narrative can be a more concrete starting point than an idea built from scratch, and it arrives with real numbers already attached.

2) Pair the announcement with the people who built it.

La Poste didn't just issue a press release about the Tetris-inspired software; it had its own CEO share the stage with the CEO of The Tetris Company at a major tech event to jointly explain the partnership. That joint appearance lent the story credibility beyond marketing copy.

When a partnership or announcement has real substance behind it, consider having the executives or teams actually responsible for the work present it together, rather than routing the story exclusively through press materials or social content.

3) Let merchandise carry your message.

The limited-edition Tetris-themed stamps gave the public a small, tangible, collectible artifact tied to the campaign. It was something a press release or hero film alone couldn't offer. And as a bonus, it was something usable in the ordinary act of mailing something.

If your campaign has a strong visual or conceptual hook, look for a physical or digital extension that lets your audience hold onto or use it directly. Even if your industry isn’t the typical market for merchandise (like a postal service), it can be an effective tactic depending on your campaign. 

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