NOT SURE WHO I'M MORE OFFENDED FOR...
There's a radio ad campaign you may have heard.
Some guy, obviously an actor, pretends to be a landscaper.
He says something like, "I'm great at what I do, which means painting lawns green and growing enormous dwarf maples. But when it comes to advertising, I couldn't find my butt with both hands tied behind my back."
Some woman (also obviously an actor) then pretends to be an employee of The UPS Store.
She says something like, "At the UPS Store, we're experts in helping you with all of your advertising needs!"
So, The UPS Store is now apparently able to help small businesses with all of their advertising needs.
Know why?
BECAUSE THEY OFFER PRINTING!
Yes, I swear, by all that is holy, that is the core message of this radio commercial.
This landscaper has upped the ante on his marketing because he goes to The UPS Store.
And the friendly UPS Store Employee--who, between taping up boxes and howling with laughter every time someone accidentally sits on the bubble wrap again, is all about devising ad campaigns.
And she makes it all happen by turning him onto high-speed color printers.
Fake Landscaper knows absolutely nothing about advertising. But that's OK. Because according to Fake Employee, The UPS Store has machines filled with toner.
Since this bubble-headed dolt knows how to press the "print" button on a big Canon color printer, the proud-in-his-ignorance landscaper (who sounds like he has a four-year college degree from the theater department at a big Midwestern university) is able to spend less time worrying about his advertising and more time worrying about raising frighteningly large dwarf maples and painting lawns green.
WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR FEDEX OFFICE?
My guess is that somehow, this is supposed to be a broadside at the photocopying behemoth now run by the overnight delivery behemoth.
That's not to say FedEx Office, formerly FedEx Kinkos, has ever been run by any kind of a brain trust. On the contrary, some of the most infuriating customer service in the world has been delivered with a joyful smile from behind the counter at Kinkos.
One can only hope that the introduction of FedEx management to an otherwise dysfunctional work environment has had some positive influence.
Either way, FedEx Office is a juggernaut of copying, printing, cutting and binding.
The UPS Store is a strip-mall wannabe that, apparently, wants to steal customers from FedEx's Temple Of Toner.
But exactly how they made the leap from printing services to marketing expertise is a little baffling.
DOES ANYONE ELSE FIND THIS IRONIC?
It's bad enough that The UPS Store is positioning themselves as small-business marketing experts simply because they have printers.
But this is an advertisement presumably created by an advertising professional.
Some poor copywriter is sitting there in a small windowless room, probably chained to his desk, waiting for his daily serving of gruel to be slid
through the slot in the door, and is tasked with creating an
advertisement about small business marketing at The UPS Store. And the
best he can do is create a fake drama that equates color digital
printers with marketing expertise.
That's a little like saying because I know how to open the DOS prompt on my PC, I'm Bill Gates.
Or because I have a piano in my living room, I'm Ludwig Van Beethoven.
Have you ever been to a UPS Store?
The bubble-wrap brain trust manning the counter are highly qualified to work with a loaded tape gun.
Yet, somewhere, some copywriter is creating advertising that says The UPS Store is qualified to help you do what the copywriter does for a living
because they found the printer's "On" switch.
DO WE BLAME THE COPYWRITER OR HIS BOSS?
Ultimately, the fault lies with the person who's in charge of this stupidity.
If it's an ad agency, there's some Junior Copywriter who knows radio is a dead medium (which is why 95% of the population still listens to it).
He's being told to write the radio swill until some more glamorous and
gilded TV spots come his way. Blame the Junior's Creative Director, and
ultimately whoever runs the agency.
If it's created in-house at The UPS Store's Corporate Crystal Palace, we blame it on the Chief Marketing Officer who oversees the Marketing
Manager who directed the Marcom Writer to write something clever about
printing up business flyers.
Either way, it's a professional embarrassment to the people who created it, it's a disservice to the consumer, and it's ultimately one more reason
why anyone with half a brain who's already encountered the joy of a UPS
Store shouldn't trust them: they don't even know what they sell.
I WANT TO THINK THE COPYWRITER KNEW BETTER
As someone who has spent time working inside corporate marketing departments, I know what it is to have a micro-engineering megalomaniac
at the helm of the company.
Sometimes, you do the best you can, and the guy at the top--the guy who calls the shots for your supervisor who also knows better--fancies himself more qualified than you to dot your I's and cross your T's.
Unfortunately, he's myopic and is dotting 1's and crossing 7's.
All that notwithstanding, how did a subsidiary of a global company with $45 billion in revenues get what they do so incredibly wrong?
They're selling printing and copying.
They think they're selling marketing and advertising.
Go figure.
But the bonus in this for us is that we know better.
And the next time a client tells you you've got his advertising wrong, despite what you know in your professional heart of hearts, let him
know: maybe it's time to try the marketing pros down at The UPS Store.
After all, they know how to find the print button.
