Daily Archives: July 11, 2008

UPS campaign is a joke. Really.

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This blogger has just learned that the UPS marketing mantra the last 10 years or so “What can brown do for you?” has been a big joke.  The brainchild of two young agency creatives while on a weekend bender, the line is absolutely meaningless. An anonymous source said that UPS needed something that translated across the globe and after numerous Google searches and 12 language translations the words “What can brown do for you” came through without problem.
 
An ex-UPS senior marketing executive who asked to remain off the record offered “No other company owned the word ‘brown’ so it was a defensible branding asset. And asking customers what they want is an age-old marketing ploy. The reality was, when we asked our customers what we could do for them their first answer was ‘deliver my package.’ Since that’s what we do anyway, it seemed like a can’t lose proposition. Wrap that up with a lot of brown and you have a classic branding campaign.”  
 
The unnamed creatives said the line was always a joke and that they were still a little high from a long night out when they presented it.