UPS delivers 'amore' in ad campaign

Package-delivery giant United Parcel Service is launching a global ad campaign to promote its expanding logistics business to small and medium-sized businesses that want to sell their wares globally, reported The Wall Street Journal.

In what the 103-year-old company calls its largest marketing campaign ever, UPS is replacing its memorable slogan "What can Brown do for you?" with the slogan, "We [Heart] Logistics."

Print, television and digital-media ads in the US, China, Mexico and the United Kingdom will start running today.

Scott Davis, chairman and chief executive of Atlanta-based UPS, said he was inspired to create the company's first global campaign partly by UPS statistics indicating that 70 percent of UPS's US customers export to just one country, typically Canada.

Davis sits on President Barack Obama's President's Export Council, a group of labour and business leaders who are working to double US exports in five years. Obama's export goal is "not going to happen" unless small and medium businesses get comfortable with cross-border trade, Davis said.

He said that the US is in a "mild recovery" but that "if you're looking to grow over the next 10 or 20 years, you've got to look at a customer base beyond the US."

UPS runs warehouses for larger companies, such as Merck & Co, overseeing the distribution of vaccines and medicines. Computer technicians at the company's Louisville, Kentucky, hub repair Toshiba laptops and UPS then ships them back to customers.

Conceived by Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, the campaign aims to educate businesses that logistics done well can be a competitive advantage, Davis said.

The TV ads feature a new UPS jingle set to the tune of the Dean Martin classic "That's Amore," sung in Mandarin, Spanish and English with lyrics such as, "When it's planes in the sky, for a chain of supply, that's logistics," and "There will be no more stress, 'cause you've called UPS, that's logistics."

Third-party logistics is a growing area at a time of globalisation and cost-cutting of in-house supply-chain operations, said Kevin Sterling, senior transportation analyst at BB&T Capital Markets.

"If you're a small business, would you know how to ship from China to the US, or are you going to hire a team to manage your supply chain?" he said.

Pushing logistics is also a way for parcel delivery companies to "feed their infrastructure," or fill capacity in their intensive networks of planes and trucks, Sterling said. Davis agreed that is a UPS goal.

At FedEx Corp, UPS's Memphis, Tennesse-based rival, spokesman Jess Bunn said that company's supply-chain services help drive business to the company's other units.

"As the economy has become increasingly global," FedEx is offering customers supply-chain services, such as filling orders, determining the best mode of transportation and "real-time information to manage inventory in motion," he said.

Davis said UPS's "We [Heart] Logistics" reflects the company's evolution since going public in 1999, from primarily shipping parcels, to a full logistics provider.

Supply Chain and Freight, the UPS logistics unit started after the company went public, is the company's third-largest unit.

The division brought in 16 percent of total UPS revenue of US$45.3 billion in 2009, up from seven percent of total revenue in 2004. The unit is growing faster than UPS's largest unit by far, its domestic package-delivery business.

Profit margins in the logistics segment have "improved pretty dramatically," Davis said. The past decade was "a time of adding capabilities," he said.

Since going public, UPS has bought more than 40 logistics companies whose specialties range from distributing medicine to clearing international borders.

UPS plans more acquisitions in logistics companies in Asia and Central Europe, Davis said.
(Source:www.cargonewsasia.com)