blog post-al service

you may (or may not) have seen the most recent ad campaign from UPS. to summarize, some dude is writing stuff on a whiteboard. that's about all I remember, except that he is doing this while music from Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello (aka The Postal Service) is heard. irony meter going off? it should be. but the UPS jab at the USPS doesn't stop at the TV spots.



if you take the commercial's link bait, you'll find the UPS Whiteboard site. there, visitors are once again greeted by the Sandy Cohen-looking, brown dry erase marker-wielding artist, 'Such Great Heights' playing in the background. listen to his 'What can brown do for you?' spiel or click on the 'Create Your Own Whiteboard' link below him for more corporate excitement. type in a message and send an e-whiteboard to a friend. you can then preview the slightly-cheesy animation of this guy sliding back and forth on screen 'writing' your message. it was at this point that I decided to test it out with what I thought would be an innocuous text string: UPS ads are using music by The Postal Service. animated man's response? 'Yeah, I'm not gonna write that. Why don't you give it another shot?'. the word 'Postal' was highlighted in red, as seen below. [click for largeness]


apparently 'postal' is flagged as an obscenity over at UPS, tantamount to the s- and b-words. (I didn't test any others for fear of further angering Mr. Brown.)

I think this ad campaign is a bit strange, taking what will mostly be an undetected pot shot at our nation's letter carrying brigade. I will say it was clever enough to get me to head to their site, where I have now been convinced to use their services for all of my small-business needs (read: none).

as an aside, I have always enjoyed UPS'eses 'we wanna race the truck' ads shown during NASCAR events wherein UPS-sponsored driver Dale Jarrett is coerced by those at the company to switch from his #44 Toyota Camry (née #88 Ford Taurus/Fusion) race car to a UPS package car (that's really what the call them internally, ask Wikipedia). he agreed to race the big brown truck in an ad during the 2004 season, shifting the focus of the campaign slightly. the original ads were better, though I can't find any on YouTube so this will have to do.



speaking of automobile racing, the first race of the ought-seven Formula 1 season is tomorrow in Australila, which mathematically translates to tonight here in the non-penal colonies. I'll be watching and can't wait to attend the USGP in Indy this summer.

ROCK,
Davit