Why All Businesses Exist

A new UPS commercial aired yesterday.  With Deck the Halls playing in the background, the commercial opened with a guy trying to find the end of a roll of tape and then cut to a woman pulling the last short piece of ribbon off a roll.  The next shot was a guy turning over a package he had wrapped only to have sounds come from the package.  The next scene was a guy wrapping a package with duct tape and realizing that he had included his arm in the final wrap.  This cut to a woman attempting to get her fingers unstuck from tape.  She may have been the woman in the next scene taking out her frustrations by beating three inflatable snowmen.  In the following scene, a person set down a finished wrapped gift, and two arms popped out through the wrapping. 

This wrapped present was brought to the UPS store for packaging.  The announcer stated, “You deal with the wrapping.  Let the UPS store deal with getting it there.  We are your certified packaging experts.  Ask about our pack ‘n ship guarantee.”

In this holiday season, viewers can readily identify with the wrapping problems shown in the commercial.  These scenes get viewers’ attention and keep it.  Inserting the woman venting her wrapping frustrations on the inflatable snowmen increases this identification.  That scene makes me laugh. 

If the gift is being sent, packaging the gift for shipping is the next hurdle after wrapping.  Moving from the wrapping to the packaging step brings the viewer into the realm of UPS.  The message is to end the frustration of dealing with the gift once it is wrapped.  Bring it to UPS to handle the packaging and shipping.  The people at UPS are United Problem Solvers.

That is an interesting play on the UPS letters.

The commercial does an excellent job showing a problem and offering a solution.  The problem is dealing with packaging a gift after wrestling with wrapping it.  The wrapping is enough frustration.  Who wants to repeat that step with packaging for shipment?  Let UPS handle that step.  Be done with sending the gift and drop some stress by bringing the gifts to UPS for packaging.  Presenting this problem/solution in slice of life situations pulls in the viewer and increases the reception of the message.

Since all businesses exist to solve customers’ problems, using commercials to show the problem and offer the solution is smart marketing.  Do you make this presentation in your marketing?

This week's marketing trivia challenge is What marketing have you encountered that presented a problem and offered a solution?  E-mail me your answer.

Logistics

In a new advertising campaign, UPS is teaching customers the definition of a word: Logistics. What is logistics? Well, according to UPS, logistics is “When it’s planes in the sky for a chain of supply,” “When the parts for the line come precisely on time,” “A continuous link that is always in sync,” and “There will be no more stress cause you called UPS.”

Looking in Merriam-Webster, logistics is either the aspect of military science dealing with the procurement, maintenance, and transportation of military material, facilities, and personnel or the handling of the details of an operation.

Why do these definitions matter? They demonstrate how the definition of a word can be manipulated to suit the situation. Unfortunately, in this case that will not be helpful to UPS because the word logistics is not clearly understood by the audience. Therefore, UPS must educate the audience as to the meaning of the word. The TV commercial attempts to do this with a jingle that sings the above phrases to the tune of That’s Amore.

Any time that a company uses advertising to educate, a great deal of marketing effort is being wasted. You see, learning happens from repetition. Good education repeats and repeats and repeats so that learning takes place. Learning the meaning of a word requires the receiver to receive, focus, and think.

Today, people don’t think anymore than is necessary, and they certainly don’t do so when mindlessly watching TV. In order to absorb the new UPS message, they would need to pay close attention to the definitions that are sung and think how these definitions apply to their lives. Doing that requires way more attention and thought processes than today’s TV viewers will give.

This commercial caught my attention because That’s Amore is one of those songs that sticks in my mind after I have heard it. However, except for the refrain of “That’s logistics,” I didn’t understand any of the rest of the words. To write this Insight, I went to YouTube, played the commercial, listened carefully, and paused it after each phrase. The commercial is beautifully shot, but, if the audience doesn’t get the message, is it accomplishing its goal?

I think not.

On the contrary, UPS’s former message, what can Brown do for you, was clear and customer-focused. Now, UPS does not like being “brown” anymore. They wanted to change their image so they decided that they heart (love) logistics. Their challenge in this new message is that most people are not certain they understand logistics. “No problem,” the creative people at the agency for UPS said. “We will educate them.”

While much of marketing involves education, advertising does not. Advertising messages must be easily and quickly understood by the receiver. People easily and quickly understood “What can brown do for you” because the UPS trucks and uniforms are brown so UPS is associated with the color brown. With the old commercials, UPS had branded itself with a color, which is quite a feat.

Now they have abandoned brown, which everyone readily understands, with logistics, which everyone does not get.

What can logistics do for you?