SIGN BOY CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
FootJoy, owned by Fortune Brands, Inc., sold more golf shoes during the 1990s than any other company by keeping their innovative shoes on the feet of the world’s best golfers. Two events in 1996, however, caused the company, which also made socks and gloves, to restrategize its advertising. Not only did Nike, Inc., announce it would begin designing golf shoes, but it agreed to pay champion golfer Tiger Woods $8 million a year to endorse them. Fearful that Nike would dominate the burgeoning younger market of golfers, FootJoy released its quirky ‘‘Sign Boy’’ campaign to attract young players. In 1998 FootJoy awarded its estimated $5 to $7 million advertising budget to ad agency Arnold Worldwide Partners. Print ads and television spots appeared in January 1999 starring comedian Matt Griesser, who played the campaign’s character titled ‘‘Sign Boy,’’ a moniker for the standard-bearer or person carrying the cumbersome scoreboard from hole to hole during golf tournaments. In the first eight commercials Sign Boy pestered golfers, sometimes mid-swing, with his overzealous blathering and obsession over FootJoy shoes. With a background in improvisational comedy, Griesser ad-libbed every commercial, which appeared on channels such as ESPN, NBC, and ABC. In one spot Sign Boy dove into a water hazard while wearing nothing but FootJoy shoes. The golfers Phil Mickelson and David Toms looked on in horror. Another spot showed Sign Boy slinking into a locker room just to sniff the FootJoy shoes of professional golfers. Another featured him nabbing Ernie Els’s toothbrush. With the exception of a yearlong hiatus in 2002, the ‘‘Sign Boy’’ campaign expanded to include Internet ads as well as on-site promotions where Griesser would actually heckle players during golf tournaments.
The campaign collected a Silver EFFIE Award in 2001 and helped increase FootJoy sales 10 percent in the market of people under age 30. Andy Jones, marketing vice president at FootJoy, told the Palm Beach Post, ‘‘Ultimately the judge of any advertising campaign is market-share growth. During the campaign we’ve experienced significant market-share growth in both golf shoes and golf gloves.’’

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Fortune Brands, the corporation that owned alcohol brands such as Jim Beam and Knob Creek, purchased FootJoy in 1986. Running non-humorous advertising that usually featured golfers, FootJoy dominated the golf-shoe industry during the 1990s. It was only after Nike announced its upcoming golf shoe that FootJoy rethought its entire marketing strategy. Not only had Nike dominated the outside-athletic-shoe industry, but the titan was showing a growing interest in golf, first with its introduction of Nike golf apparel. Then it offered world-champion golfer Tiger Woods an $8 million endorsement in 1996. Woods, who was playing Masters Tournaments by the age of 19, appealed to the under-30-year-old age group. Soon afterward FootJoy senior product manager Tim Murphy told Adweek (eastern edition) that FootJoy had experienced an erosion in its market share among younger customers since Nike engaged Woods.
In 1998 FootJoy asked Arnold Worldwide to rebrand the company’s shoes for a younger audience. Arnold Worldwide’s senior vice president, Jamie Graham, worked on the project with Ron Harper, the agency’s senior art director. Graham explained to Shoot, ‘‘We were in the right place at the right time, because Nike was coming along, doing some very cool stuff with Tiger Woods. FootJoy was worried about being perceived as old-fashioned, so they gave us more [freedom] than they might otherwise have done.’’ The Sign Boy character was first conceived by Harper, who recalled a friend raving about serving as a standard-bearer at a tournament. Harper and Graham began strategizing FootJoy’s first humorous television commercial. For the casting call they titled their scripts after player nicknames such as ‘‘Philly Mick’’ for Phil Mickelson and ‘‘DL3’’ for Davis Love III. After screening 100 candidates Harper and Graham chose actorcomedian Matt Griesser, who not only picked up on the nickname references but also began lampooning different golfers during the cast selection. ‘‘He nailed David Duval’s swing in the audition room. We couldn’t get rid of him, in fact,’’ Graham said to the Palm Beach Post.

TARGET MARKET
The ‘‘Sign Boy’’ campaign targeted golfers and golf enthusiasts under 30 years old. It also hoped to retain FootJoy’s core golf customers while maintaining the brand’s rank as the golf-shoe industry leader. To reach this younger demographic, the campaign used humor, a quality not typically found in golf commercials before 1999. ‘‘A lot of golf commercials in the past were just Lee Trevino telling people to use Top-Flite,’’ Griesser told the Florida Times-Union. ‘‘FootJoy was trying to reach a younger audience and one way to do it is with humor.’’ In a spot with British Open champion David Duval, Sign Boy began testing wind speed for the golfer and then rambled on about what club he should use. The spot ended with Sign Boy heaping praise upon Duval’s choice of FootJoy shoes. Sign Boy also made appearances at tournaments. During Rhode Island Country Club’s CVS Classic, Griesser told driving-distance record holder John Daly that he needed to lengthen his already lengthy backswing if he was serious about driving the golf ball. Aware that its target market would grow tired of seeing the same three or four commercials played over and over, Arnold Worldwide filmed eight commercials total. Graham explained to Shoot, ‘‘People who watch golf watch it religiously, so the same people who watch golf this weekend will see all the golf advertising over and over again. They appreciate the fact that we give them more, rather than less, commercials. Sign Boy himself has a cult following on the tours. He makes appearances and goes to charity golf events.’’

COMPETITION
In 1998 Etonic Athletic Worldwide, one of America’s leading makers of golf shoes, ran television and prints advertising that claimed their new plastic-cleated shoes caused less damage to fairway turf than FootJoy shoes. The print, created by ad agency Greenberg Seronick O’Leary & Partners of Boston, ran in Golf Digest, Golfweek, and Golf Magazine. FootJoy immediately sued Etonic, stating that FootJoy had been making spikeless, fairway-friendly shoes since 1959. FootJoy demanded Etonic stop the campaign and pay damages. In August 1996, while donning a black Nike hat with the company’s ‘‘swoosh’’ emblem, Tiger Woods won his third U.S. Amateur Championship. After the tournament he announced that he would begin endorsing Nike, which analysts estimated would earn Woods $8 million per year. At the Greater Milwaukee Open that took place the following weekend, Woods dressed in more Nike apparel, which included Nike golf shoes. Bob Wood, president of Nike Golf, said to Brandweek, ‘‘Our philosophy at Nike Golf, as well as at Nike, is to start with the best players, make product that works for them, and establish ourselves that way.’’ Not only would Tiger Woods continue endorsing Nike shoes, but Nike also rolled out its own line of golf balls in 1999 and had introduced clubs by 2002. After Woods first announced the relationship with Nike, one retailer, Susan French, told the Portland Oregonian that she immediately sold out of her 3,000 Nike hats and ordered an additional 750 to keep up with demand. ‘‘They want the hat, they want a shirt, they want any sort of memento,’’ she said. Nike continued using Woods’s endorsements, each of which featured the tagline ‘‘It’s time to change.’’

MARKETING STRATEGY
The ‘‘Sign Boy’’ television spots first appeared on January 8, 1999, during the Mercedes Championship on ESPN, and later rotated across network channels NBC, CBS, and ABC and on the cable channel USA Network. Initial commercials ended with the FootJoy taglines ‘‘The No. 1 shoe in golf ’’ or ‘‘The No. 1 glove in golf.’’ The first eight spots were also filmed unscripted. Professional golfers featured in the spots, such as Davis Love III, Justin Leonard, Phil Mickelson, David Duval, and Jesper Parnevik, were asked to react with Sign Boy as they would any tournament volunteer. Sign Boy, played by Griesser, pestered, distracted, and admired the golfers with overzealousness as they attempted to golf. ‘‘We use him in a specific relationship with all the pros, mashing on them and telling them what superb footwear they have,’’ Graham explained to Shoot. ‘‘His particular obsession is that he knows every single style and brand of shoe inside out. We engage him in good-natured banter with the pro golfers.’’
The ‘‘Sign Boy’’ campaign took a hiatus in 2002 when FootJoy released its poorly received ‘‘Golf Gods’’ campaign, which featured animated golfers receiving superpowers from their FootJoy shoes. Graham told the Palm Beach Post, ‘‘[FootJoy] got hundreds of e-mails, hundreds and thousands of e-mails saying, ‘Hey, where’s Sign Boy? What have you people done? And by the way, we hate these Golf Gods.’’’ Andy Jones, FootJoy’s vice president for marketing, said to Shoot, ‘‘I think the best thing we can say about it is that it was a mistake. . . .We pushed the envelope with Sign Boy and we were trying to push the envelope again.’’ By 2003 the ‘‘Sign Boy’’ campaign had resumed with five new spots, including one that featured Incredible Technologies, Inc.’s videogolf game Golden Tee. By 2005 the campaign included Internet banner ads, and its budget had escalated from an estimated $5 million to $7 million.
As the campaign progressed Griesser increased his public appearances at tournaments. In 2005 Sign Boy stumbled into the audience at the CVS Charity Classic golf tournament. Craig Stadler, a well-built professional golfer with thick facial hair, sat beside his son and other golfers waiting for the father-son tournament to begin. According to the Providence Journal, the crowd exploded with laughter as Sign Boy pointed back and forth between both Stadlers and said, ‘‘Walrus. Little Walrus. Walrus. Little Walrus.’’ Next he teased Jay and Bill Haas by repeating, ‘‘Big Haas. Little Haas. Big Haas. Little Haas.’’
Each year the campaign released more commercials than most industry competitors. ‘‘We shoot them at breakneck speed,’’ Graham stated to Shoot. ‘‘I think the thing with humor is, the more you have—as long as it’s funny—the better. You don’t want to tell the same joke over and over again. So even though some of these spots don’t air nearly as much as a purist would say they should, it satisfies us because it never gets boring.’’

OUTCOME
The ‘‘Sign Boy’’ campaign earned a Silver EFFIE Award in 2001, increased FootJoy sales 10 percent with the under-30 market, and stoked FootJoy’s lead over the rest of the industry. The campaign also injected golf advertising with humor, something it had lacked before the campaign’s 1999 release. In 2001 Griesser said to the Portland Oregonian, ‘‘Now you can see more humor in golf ads all the time. I like to think that the ads I’ve been in also have served to reveal more of the golfers’ personalities.’’ The campaign reaped praise from cable station the Golf Channel and from sports publications such as Golf Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Golf Plus, Golfweek, and Golf World.
During the campaign’s first five months FootJoy sales increased 16 percent over the previous year-to-date figures. The campaign’s lighthearted humor, according to some analysts, simultaneously appealed to older and younger consumers. Graham told Brandweek, ‘‘Only FootJoy can talk about tour dominance, which they do via these ads in a way that appeals to young players without putting off the older guy.’’ Griesser’s personality as Sign Boy far exceeded the creatives’ expectations for the character, which originally called for ‘‘a doofy-looking guy who walks around in very long shorts.’’ Arnold Worldwide originally gave the campaign a life expectancy of three years, and was pleased to be proven wrong when it exceeded five years.

STORYTELLING CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
For 15 years Ford Motor Company, the number two automaker among Detroit’s big three, had advertised its vehicles with the slogan ‘‘Have you driven a Ford lately?’’ In 1998 the company launched a new campaign with the tag line ‘‘Ford Cars: Built to Last.’’ The campaign, developed by advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, used a storytelling approach and ran in print and broadcast media as well as on the Internet. It was based on the notion that people enjoyed hearing other people’s stories. The ‘‘Storytelling’’ campaign centered around everyday people who owned Ford vehicles, and the ads used humor and emotion to reach consumers. As its spokesperson Ford chose John Corbett, best known as the philosophical disc jockey on the television series Northern Exposure, a man with a pleasant, relatively low-key demeanor that fit well with the campaign. His role in the commercials closely resembled his work from the hit show, in which he had been something of a narrator. Corbett and country superstar Alan Jackson, another Ford spokesman, appeared together in an ad for National Ford Truck Season beginning in October 1998, and they were also featured on the company’s website.
The company launched the campaign during the Winter Olympics in February 1998 with six television spots. The campaign included ads for the Mustang, Taurus, Escort ZX2, and pickup truck models. Six months later, Ford decided to expand the campaign to all of its 1999 vehicles.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Ford Motor Company, founded in 1903, has experienced its share of highs and lows. Its founder, Henry Ford, was described by Ed Crews in an August 11, 1998, article in the Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch as ‘‘a mythic figure in American business history. He comes down to us as a contradictory mix of inspired tinkerer, backyard mechanic, captain of industry, eccentric and capitalist oppressor. Sometimes it is impossible to see where the myth ends and the man begins.’’ In 1908 Ford introduced the popular Model T. Also known as the ‘‘Tin Lizzie,’’ it was said to be the ‘‘universal car,’’ built to be rugged, reliable, and easy to operate. When Ford incorporated the assembly line into his company’s production process, he revolutionized not only the auto industry but also all industries. Increased efficiencies allowed Ford to keep prices down and expand into overseas markets. By 1915 Ford had produced its millionth car. In 1916 Ford made half of all the American cars built and accounted for 40 percent of the world’s auto production.
But success may have blinded Henry Ford to the need for change. By the 1920s competing automakers were producing models with more style, comfort, and power than the Tin Lizzie. Ford dragged his feet on producing a new model, and the company continued to make the Model T into the late 1920s. Only when it became absolutely clear that the car would not sell at any price did Ford throw in the towel. He shut down production for six months in order to retool the plants for a new model. The successor Model A enjoyed good sales, but by 1932 General Motors (GM) had taken the number one spot from Ford, and GM held it for decades. Over the years Ford introduced many successful models, including the Thunderbird, Escort, Taurus, and, perhaps most notably, Mustang. It also produced the Edsel, a spectacular flop, and from time to time the company suffered financial setbacks. Ford became known for its pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, including the F-Series truck and the Explorer. Despite its successes, however, for the most part Ford remained an also-ran to number one General Motors. In addition, Ford and other U.S. automakers eventually had to contend with inroads made by foreign auto manufacturers, primarily the Japanese.

TARGET MARKET
The ‘‘Storytelling’’ campaign was developed with both male and female consumers in mind. For instance, ‘‘Hands,’’ a commercial for the F-Series truck, showed close-ups of the hands of a hardworking but sensitive mechanic named Joe. Shots of Joe’s hands working with a blowtorch and gripping the wheel of his Ford truck were interspersed with shots of him holding a small child. Jan Klug, Ford Division’s marketing communications manager, said, ‘‘The ‘Hands’ story is the highest rated F-Series spot we have tested among men and women. It really touched a chord with consumers, who could relate to a guy and his truck balancing work and family.’’ Ford took care to ensure that the campaign would appeal to women even if it did not target them exclusively. Three of the six television spots used to launch the campaign featured women. One spot informed viewers of Ford’s support for Race for the Cure, a national breast cancer charity. In addition, because ‘‘Built Ford Tough,’’ the popular tag line used for trucks, tested poorly with women, Ford dropped the idea of also using it for its car ads. Instead, the tag line ‘‘Built to Last’’ tag was created for Ford cars.
Seven months after the campaign launch, Adweek reported that Ford intended to increase its spending on ads that targeted Hispanic and African American consumers and, for the first time, to make some of the advertising targeting African Americans part of the general market pool. Uniworld, New York, was hired to handle the African-American marketing, while Zubi Advertising of Miami handled the Hispanic advertising.

COMPETITION
Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler (which in November 1998 merged with Daimler-Benz AG to become DaimlerChrysler AG) made up Detroit’s big three automakers. For years GM had enjoyed the number one spot in U.S. auto manufacturing, followed by number two Ford and number three Chrysler. In November 1997, however, Ward’s Auto World reported that all three were losing market share in passenger cars to light trucks and sport utility vehicles. At the same time there was increasing pressure on the Detroit automakers to keep prices down. GM offered various financial incentives, including cut-rate financing programs and cash rebates on 1998 cars and light trucks. Ford and Chrysler offered similar incentives as well. The Wall Street Journal reported in November 1997 that, despite healthy sales and a robust economy, U.S.-based automakers were also facing increased price pressures from Japanese imports as a result of the weak yen and reduced production costs. During 1998 General Motors reportedly lost market share, and in August 1998 the Wall Street Journal noted that ‘‘GM’s total sales and market share fell below those of No. 2 automaker Ford Motor Company for the first time since a national strike against GM in 1970.’’ Ford’s market share for April 1999 was reported to have dropped by 0.9 percent from that of the previous three months, however.

MARKETING STRATEGY
The launch of a new advertising campaign in February 1998 was a major event for the company. According to Art Spinella, the automotive director for CNW Marketing Research, ‘‘Ford tends to hand on to its ad campaigns for a long time.’’ The new campaign featured a new tag line. The slogan that Ford had used for 15 years—‘‘Have you driven a Ford lately?’’—was replaced with ‘‘Ford Cars: Built to Last.’’ The tag line ‘‘Built Ford Tough’’ continued to be used in truck advertising. The television ads told stories of everyday people with humor and emotion in order to strike a chord with consumers. In choosing a spokesperson, Ford looked for someone who was not such a megastar that he or she would overshadow the product. Corbett, known from Northern Exposure, tested well. In fact, his role in the commercials closely resembled his role in the television series, in which he served as something of a narrator. In a written statement issued several months after the campaign had started, Ford described its approach as ‘‘down-to-earth’’ and ‘‘a real change in Ford’s approach to advertising.’’ According to Ford’s Klug, ‘‘When we launched the campaign in 1998, we discovered that everyone has a favorite story about a car or truck. This campaign is all about communicating on an emotional level—not just price and features.’’ According to Ford, the spots dealt with ‘‘the human spectrum of experience, from the humorous to very emotional themes.’’ Klug noted that the campaign ‘‘is all about building mindchanging communication, and to do that we need to make an emotional connection with our customers. One of the benefits of the campaign is the ability to tell stories that capture the personality of individual vehicles, but in a consistent, unified way that conveys the values that stand behind the Ford name.’’
Examples included an ad in which two friends—Charlie and Ray—made a wager over the capabilities of the F-Series truck. Charlie bet that Ray’s truck would not be able to tow an 8,000-ton ship, and, of course, he lost. Another example was an Escort ad in which two women in a ZX2 tried to elude a strange van that was chasing them. When the van passed them, they realized that it was Publishers Clearing House trying to give them a prize.
Ford reportedly earmarked $80 million for the campaign, double the amount spent the year before. Six 30-second television spots were introduced during the coverage of the Winter Olympics, with the models advertised including the Mustang, Taurus, Escort ZX2, and F-Series pickup truck. One of the ads focused on Ford history, and another emphasized Ford’s commitment toward Race for the Cure.

OUTCOME
After six months of running the ads, Ford decided to expand the campaign to all of its vehicles—cars and trucks—with the release of the 1999 models. Corbett was enlisted to appear in 13 new commercials, which included the ‘‘Hands’’ spot and another called ‘‘Charlie’s Parents,’’ in which two overprotective parents took comfort in knowing that a Taurus was helping keep their son Charlie from harm. Another humorous spot showed two women talking about their boyfriends’ Mustangs, only to realize that they might be talking about the same man. In addition to the 13 new spots, several old ones were carried over from the 1998 campaign. Ford also decided to change its 1999 marketing strategy to focus on its primary brands—Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Jaguar, and Mazda—rather than individual models. Jim Schroer, Ford’s executive director of marketing strategy and brand management, believed that past marketing efforts had tended to promote specific nameplates, such as Taurus and Explorer, too heavily and did not connect with or reinforce the primary brand. ‘‘The change is to make sure each nameplate strengthens the primary brand it is under,’’ he said.
Spinella of CNW Marketing Research predicted, ‘‘This new campaign looks like it has some legs under it and Ford should be able to use it for another 10 to 15 years.’’ Ford’s Klug thought that the storytelling approach was effective. ‘‘Storytelling is part of the human DNA,’’ she said. ‘‘People can really relate to it. You can tell stories that revolve around the personalities of our products.’’

LIFE IN DRIVE CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
In October 2005, Ford Motor Company introduced the new Ford Fusion. Inspired by the company’s futuristic Ford 427 concept car, the Fusion was a four-door sedan aimed at young, upwardly mobile drivers. It replaced the discontinued Taurus model. The Fusion was launched into a competitive segment that featured established vehicles such as the Nissan Altima, the Honda Accord, and the best-selling car in the U.S. market, the Toyota Camry. Ford hoped that the Fusion’s unique visual design, which included a distinctive three-bar front grille, would help the vehicle stand out.
The J. Walter Thompson agency, also based in Detroit, was responsible for developing a launch campaign for the Fusion. The resulting ‘‘Life in Drive’’ campaign kicked off in October 2005 and featured a mix of traditional and new-media advertising. Its centerpiece was a series of television commercials. There were several 15-second spots, along with two 30-second spots. The spots often ran back-to-back, with a 15-second commercial leading into one of the two longer spots. The 15-second spots all featured a contrast between ‘‘life’’—illustrated by images of people performing dull, frustrating tasks, such as trying to open a CD case—and ‘‘Life in Drive,’’ where the viewer saw the Fusion on a drive through a hip cityscape depicted via quick cuts. The campaign also featured an innovative online component, which included a ‘‘Photo Fusion’’ feature on the Ford website. Consumers could post pictures of themselves along with brief descriptions of what the photos contained. Posters were then given an opportunity to view other consumers’ pictures based on shared keywords in their descriptions. This interactive program was meant to attract young consumers who were comfortable with seeking information online.
The campaign met with solid success. Ford sold more than 23,000 units between the Fusion’s October 2005 debut and the end of the calendar year, with sales climbing every month. The vehicle sold so well that dealers reported having trouble keeping the new Fusion in stock, forcing Ford to increase production of the vehicle.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Ford Motor Company was founded by Henry Ford on June 16, 1903. Based in Detroit, Michigan, the company was responsible for one of the most important innovations in automobile manufacturing, the assembly line. This 1913 innovation helped make Ford the second-largest automaker in the world (after General Motors) for much of the twentieth century. By the beginning of the twenty-first century the Ford Motor Company was selling vehicles under eight different brands: Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Land Rover, Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, and Aston Martin.
Ford decided to create a new four-door family sedan to replace the Taurus, an older model that consumers no longer found exciting. After considering other names, the company called the new vehicle the Ford Fusion. The design of the vehicle was inspired in part by the Ford 427, a concept vehicle that had been met with general acclaim at a number of auto shows. The Fusion featured a spacious interior, a stiff chassis for better handling, and a distinctive exterior design. The car was meant to look sleek and speedy, in contrast to other, more staid midsize sedans, such as the Taurus. Most notable was the vehicle’s three-bar front grille and its unique triangular taillights.
Ford also created a racing version of the Fusion, which competed in National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) events. In fact, Ford’s racing division provided some input on the car’s design. Internal data showed that Ford’s market share was 6 percent higher among NASCAR fans than it was nationally. The Fusion would debut at the Ford Championship weekend at the Homestead-Miami Speedway, which featured the final race of the 2005 NASCAR Busch series. The event was planned for November 17 and 18, 2005.
In October 2005 Ford introduced the Fusion for model year 2006, with a base price of $17,795. Ford was already in the midst of a strong year, with sales up 12 percent from 2004 through September. It hoped to be able to establish the Fusion as a vehicle that could sell up to 160,000 units annually.

TARGET MARKET
The Fusion was designed to appeal to consumers between the ages of 25 and 35. These consumers were identified by the company as being strongly interested in music and technology. Ford wanted to connect with middle-income consumers who were both established in their careers and upwardly mobile. While some of these buyers gravitated toward sportier cars, such as the Ford Mustang, or toward large SUVs, internal data at the automaker led Ford to believe that drivers in this age group were becoming more interested in midsize sedans. In effect, the Fusion would serve as the next step for the young drivers who had previously driven smaller cars such as the Ford Focus. As a family sedan the Fusion was especially geared toward young families, people with younger children, or those considering starting a family soon.

COMPETITION
The Fusion competed most directly with other midsize vehicles. These included imports such as the Honda Accord, the Nissan Altima, and the Volkswagen Jetta and domestic models such as GM’s Chevrolet Malibu. The giant of the midsize field, however, was the Toyota Camry. First introduced in 1980, the Camry had been the biggest-selling car in the United States in seven out of the eight years between 1997 and 2004. In 2004 it sold an impressive 426,990 units. It usually sold for between $19,000 and $25,000. The Camry was not a flashy car; its popularity rested primarily on its reputation for quality. It was a safe, durable vehicle and held its resale value well.
Ford hoped that by pricing the Fusion between $17,995 and $21,000, it would distinguish itself from its competitors. Prices for the other major midsize cars on the market began around $18,400 and could climb as high as $25,000 for so-called luxury versions of the vehicles. Ford believed that its aggressive pricing might help offset the fact that many established brands had built-in customer bases.

MARKETING STRATEGY
Ford designated the Detroit-based ad agency J. Walter Thompson with developing a launch strategy for the new Fusion. The resulting campaign, released in October 2005, was named ‘‘Life in Drive,’’ and it mixed traditional television and print advertising with online efforts and live events. Print ads appeared in USA Today and in local newspapers. The campaign was preceded by a series of Fusion Flash Concerts, featuring bands such as alternative hip-hop stars the Roots, popular rapper Fat Joe, and rock bands Staind and Collective Soul. The Staind event was a particular success, drawing 12,000 people to a free concert in Boston. Organizers had only expected a showing of about 500.
The ‘‘Life in Drive’’ campaign began in earnest with a series of 15-second teaser spots directed by Grammy-winning director Joseph Kahn, who had previously directed music videos for rock band U2 and rapper Eminem, among others. One commercial, ‘‘Trash Day,’’ began with a half-dressed man taking out the garbage. He was too late and missed the garbage truck, and a voice-over declared, ‘‘This is life.’’ Suddenly, rock music blared, and a series of quick cuts showed a Fusion driving around a city. The voice-over returned to say, ‘‘This is life in drive.’’ Another 15-second spot, ‘‘Doggie,’’ showed a young woman cleaning up after her dog, leading to the same voice-over and quick cuts. The spot titled ‘‘CD’’ featured the same setup, only this time it began with someone having difficulty opening a CD case. Each commercial closed with the text tagline ‘‘Life in D,’’ which then gave way to the Ford Fusion logo. The ‘‘D’’ resembled the ‘‘D’’ (for ‘‘drive’’) that appeared on the Fusion’s gearshift.
Kahn also directed two 30-second spots for the campaign. These premiered on October 31, 2005. The most important, ‘‘Particle,’’ drew attention through its prominent use of the Apple iPod as a prop. A portable music player known for its distinctive white color and sleek design, the iPod was first introduced in 2001 and quickly became the most popular digital-music player on the market. It was particularly popular among drivers in the Fusion’s target demographic. Some critics felt that by trying to associate itself with a trendy new product, Ford risked allowing the Fusion to look stale and uncool by comparison. One critic noted that the Fusion did not even have an adapter that would allow the iPod to play in the vehicle.
‘‘Particle’’ began with a man on a subway listening to the device. As he listened, particles that looked like bubbles began to rise out of the iPod. These bubbles then drifted up from the subway car and onto a dance floor, where they circled a young woman. The bubbles continued to circulate, moving past rollerbladers and a flat-screen television. Finally they reached a traffic intersection, where they ‘‘fused’’ together to become a Ford Fusion vehicle. The other 30-second spot, ‘‘Ignition,’’ featured a similar theme. This time the Fusion itself generated the energy, which in turn revitalized a wornout urban neighborhood. Both commercials ended with a voice-over declaring, ‘‘a car shouldn’t just use energy, it should create it,’’ before concluding that the Fusion represented ‘‘more innovation from Ford.’’ Often Ford packaged one of the 15-second spots back-to-back with one of the longer commercials, creating a 45-second advertising block.
The campaign quickly branched out into new media. In November Ford began an effort at three major Web portals: Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN. The Fusion was represented via prominent ads and banners on all three sites. Ford also used an innovative ‘‘Photo Fusion’’ feature on its own website. The feature allowed customers to post personal pictures on the site. When they did so, consumers were also asked to describe their photos. Based on those descriptions, the Photo Fusion feature would then show other consumers’ pictures to the poster, based on similar keywords in both descriptions. This interactive system was meant to appeal to young consumers who were more interested in actively navigating the Web than in watching TV commercials. The company also posted selected ‘‘Life in Drive’’ television spots on the company’s website.

OUTCOME
The Fusion met with solid success. After its October 2005 introduction the vehicle saw sales increase every month. By November Ford had already sold 15,481 units (a number that included precampaign sales). In December the Fusion sold 7,568 units, its best monthly figures for 2005. According to internal studies, customers rated the Fusion’s unique design as the number one reason for purchasing the vehicle. The car managed this without the heavy incentives, such as cash rebates, that many automakers used to help sell new vehicles. The vehicle proved so popular that Ford dealers had a difficult time keeping it in stock. As 2006 began, Ford ramped up production to meet the ever-growing demand. In an effort to expand its appeal, the company also announced that it would develop a hybrid version of the Fusion for model year 2008.

GRANT HILL 4 CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
Between 1994 and 1996 Fila USA climbed from seventh place in the athletic-footwear category to an impressive third place. Although the company made shoes and attire for a variety of sports, basketball-shoe sales proved Fila’s biggest success. An endorsement deal with Detroit Pistons’ player Grant Hill played a clear role in this achievement. After introducing Hill’s signature shoe in 1995, Fila’s basketball shoe sales shot up 52 percent in one year, putting it right behind the industry leader Nike. Image problems, however, continued to nag Fila. In the United States athletic-shoe sales were driven by both technology and style. Fila was struggling to transform its image from that of fashionable shoes to functional shoes. By 1997 Fila had still not found a solid niche among young consumers, the lifeblood for athleticshoe sales. During the first half of the year retail orders were weaker than expected and sales were stalled, forcing Fila to do heavy discounting. Even Hill’s endorsement seemed less meaningful to teens than it had been a few years earlier. A young player in a New Jersey basketball league was asked by Bloomberg News about Fila shoes. He summed up the problem: ‘‘Look around—nobody’s wearing them.’’
Despite the waning effectiveness of Hill’s endorsement, Fila renewed his contract in 1997 and created a new advertising campaign to promote the Grant Hill 4 basketball shoe. It was reported that Hill’s new seven-year endorsement agreement with Fila was valued at $80 million. The campaign began in early November to tie in with the start of the National Basketball Association’s new season. Four initial television spots focused on Hill’s personality rather than the shoe’s new high-performance technology and featured the tagline ‘‘Change the game.’’ Subsequent print ads followed the same theme as the television spots.
The campaign failed to achieve its goal of driving sales. Based on 1997 sales, in 1998 Fila had dropped to number four in the U.S. market, behind competitors adidas, Nike, and Reebok. Further, in the first quarter of 1998 Fila’s U.S. sales plummeted 52 percent. Leo Burnett USA was hired as the agency of record for Fila in July 1998 and was charged with creating a new campaign to support the launch of the Grant Hill 5 shoe.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Fila was founded in Italy in 1926 as a knitwear company and introduced its first line of athletic sportswear in 1973. During the 1980s and early 1990s Fila’s U.S. footwear was produced by another company under a licensing agreement. In 1991 Fila made the strategic decision to regain direct control of its footwear line and bought back the license to make its own shoes. Over the years Fila had positioned itself as a source for fashionable athletic footwear and apparel. The fashion niche had helped distinguish Fila from its more technically oriented competitors, but it marred Fila’s image as a maker of functional shoes.
In 1993 Fila began remedying its lackluster sports image by signing a number of marquee athletes to endorse the shoes. In the basketball market the roster included players Jerry Stackhouse, Jamal Mashburn, and Hersey Hawkins. Bringing Detroit Pistons basketball player Grant Hill into the fold in 1994 helped the company climb from seventh place in the athletic-footwear category to third. Fila senior vice president of advertising and communications Howe Burch credited Hill’s alliance with taking the company to a new level. He told the Washington Post that Hill ‘‘bridged the two markets for us, urban and suburban.’’ Hill’s endorsement meant a lot to footwear buyers for sporting-good stores as well as to the kids who bought the shoes. A buyer for City Sports in North Reading, Massachusetts, told Footwear News that he considered Hill’s selling power second only to Chicago Bulls’ basketball great Michael Jordan.
The endorsement strategy worked well initially. In the athletic-shoe category Fila moved into the number three slot, behind Nike and Reebok. For basketball shoes the company’s sales were second only to Nike. The original Grant Hill basketball shoes, introduced in 1995, were unique and sold out quickly. But young consumers proved fickle about their athletic shoes. Many were unimpressed with the design of the second and third version of the Grant Hill shoes. Pairs were sitting on retailer’s shelves and being discounted. ‘‘Sellthrough’’ (the percentage of inventory sold by retailers per week) on the Grant Hill model introduced in October 1996 was just 10 to 15 percent. By contrast, the first version had sold through at as high as 70 percent. In 1997 Bloomberg News asked players on the New Jersey basketball league what they thought of Fila. One 17-year-old said, ‘‘They look ugly, with those big Fila words.’’
Part of the problem was that basketball shoes as a category were in a slump. Fila also acknowledged that releasing the shoes prior to the start of the basketball season might have been a mistake. Alan Sisson, owner of Slam Dunk, New York, told Footwear News in September 1997, ‘‘Fila was one of my best vendors a year ago. They’ve definitely slipped, but I feel they’ll come back.’’
Others were more critical of Fila for continuing to play up the style of its shoes rather than emphasizing technological innovation. Young consumers who had grown up in the age of technology expected to hear about a shoe’s technical features. Company president Bob Liewald justified Fila’s positioning in Sporting Goods Business, saying, ‘‘Our mission is to create a unique blend of creativity and function. We’re not ashamed of who we are. The name works against us and for us.’’

TARGET MARKET
Several years after Fila began producing its own athletic shoes, the company held a pivotal focus group with 12-to 18-year-olds that altered the direction of the company’s marketing efforts. The youths said that they could not relate to Fila at all. Fila shoes seemed more like fashion statements than something to wear for playing sports. According to American Demographics, most athletic shoes were actually worn in nonathletic situations where style was more important than performance. For most wearers, what mattered was looking cool in school. Nonetheless, even the least athletic kids were looking to inner-city basketball courts for cues to what shoes to wear, and they did not see Filas there.
Capturing young buyers’ interest was crucial for Fila and other athletic-sportswear companies. According to the Athletic Footwear Association, most athletic-footwear firms actively targeted consumers in the 12- to 24-yearold range. Not only did this group make up 28 percent of the total sales market, but they also tended to spend more per pair and stick with a brand as they grew older.

COMPETITION
Few retail categories had as formidable a leader as athletic footwear did in the mid-1900s. In 1996 Nike dominated the market with 44 percent of U.S. athletic-footwear sales. Reebok held 16 percent of the market, Fila 7 percent, adidas 5 percent, and New Balance 3 percent. By 1998 Nike was running its ‘‘I Can’’ campaign, a successor to the wildly successful ‘‘Just Do It’’ campaign. Nike’s new ads, however, had not resonated with the youth market as its previous ads had. Consumers were apparently growing tired of Nike’s win-or-else attitude and its glorification of athletes. In addition, by becoming the industry leader, the shoes had lost some of their trendiness. Evan Cameron, a partner and head of planning at Berlin, Cameron & Partners, which handled part of the Reebok account, said that teens in his focus groups referred to the Nike symbol as a ‘‘swooshstika.’’ During the 1990s Reebok followed in Nike’s footsteps, making heavy use of athlete endorsements to impart the message that it too was a performance brand. Although the strategy had paid off by earning the company the number two sales spot, Reebok was also facing poor sales in the late 1990s. In fact, athletic-shoe sales had cooled for the entire industry. Companies were realizing that imitating Nike would no longer earn them easy sales. ‘‘Nike created a vocabulary ten years ago, and everybody’s been using that same kind of imagery and vocabulary ever since,’’ Bill Heater of Heater Advertising, the lead agency for Reebok, told Advertising Age. ‘‘The same athletes, the same photographers. There’s a suffocating sameness in the category.’’
The athletic-footwear companies that showed any substantial growth in 1997 were those with offbeat approaches to marketing. Adidas’s advertising, for instance, relied less on athlete endorsements and more on regular Joes. One series of TV commercials for adidas that was successful in courting new customers actually portrayed a group of fat Yankee fans. The ‘‘brown shoe’’ phenomenon was another factor in declining sales of athletic shoes. Kids were taking off their basketball shoes and putting on hiking boots and lug-soled shoes made by smaller labels, such as Wolverine’s, Hush Puppies, and Caterpillar. To complicate the matter, they were also flocking to designer-label sneakers from such companies as DKNY and Tommy Hilfiger.

MARKETING STRATEGY
In September 1997 Fila renewed its contract with basketball star Grant Hill, signing him to an $80 million, seven-year endorsement deal. Analysts had speculated earlier that losing the endorsement would have been a crippling blow to Fila. There were other indications, however, that buyers did not necessarily want any more sports celebrity endorsements. In years past, a celebrity endorsement was a surefire way to sell athletic shoes, but many insiders believed that the trend had outlived its usefulness. Executive director Gregg Hartley of the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association told the Boston Globe, ‘‘There are only about four athletes in the whole world who can actually sell product.’’ According to Hartley, the athletes that were worth their fees included basketball star Michael Jordan and golfers Tiger Woods and Greg Norman. Other athletes did not necessarily earn ‘‘a bang for their marketing buck,’’ noted editor Sean Brenner of Team Marketing Report, an industry newsletter.
Fila was banking on Hill’s cachet to lend credibility to its footwear line. They had good reason to think it would; more than $100 million had already been generated from Hill’s signature shoes. But with the NBA season about to get under way, Fila still faced a considerable roadblock. ‘‘They don’t have the shoes that kids want to buy,’’ Peter Russ, an analyst with Shelby, Cullom Davis & Co., bluntly told Bloomberg News in mid-1997. Kids wanted shoes that blended the latest street looks with the hottest technology. Fila’s reputation as a company that sacrificed performance for fashion continued to hurt sales. The new Grant Hill 4 basketball shoe had the potential to overcome that image problem. It was built on the company’s proprietary 2A technology, which consisted of a matrix of high-performance, thermoplastic cylinders that provided cushioning and stability. Arnell Brand Consulting Group, New York, created the advertising campaign for the Grant Hill 4 shoe. The campaign’s debut tied into the beginning of the NBA season in November. For most marquee basketball shoes, footwear companies could count on a window of four to six weeks in which to sell their brands. ‘‘After a week,’’ says Mark Westerman, director of advertising at Fila, ‘‘you know if the campaign is working.’’ The four 30-second television commercials for the Grant Hill 4 shoe played up Hill’s personality and image, which Westerman described as ‘‘a champion, a winner, a good guy.’’ The spots, which employed the tagline ‘‘Change the game,’’ communicated what it took to win, using a more low-key, introspective style than past campaigns. For instance, ‘‘Anthem’’ interspersed images of Hill playing basketball with close-ups of him as he listened to the national anthem before a game. ‘‘4 on the Floor’’ used rap lyrics to draw attention to the Fila shoe. In both ‘‘Tunnel’’ and ‘‘Shower,’’ viewers saw Hill quietly getting himself psyched up for a game. Print ads that complemented the television spots appeared in Slam, Source, and Sports Illustrated, and a mural of Hill on a wall in downtown Detroit carried the theme as well.

OUTCOME
The campaign did not spark the sales that Fila needed. In 1998 Fila announced that its overall sales were worse than expected in the United States. ‘‘We had an exceptionally high level of close-out sales which killed the market,’’ Fila spokesman Andrea Nacmias told Footwear News. $480 million in 1997 U.S. sales gave the brand a share of about 6 percent, which meant that it trailed adidas as well as Nike and Reebok. Fila’s 1998 firstquarter U.S. footwear sales figures were also grim, dropping 52 percent to $78.8 million. ‘‘[Fila] essentially [has] no shelf space left. It can only go up from here, I suspect,’’ said Flavio Cereda, an analyst with the London office of ABN Amro. ‘‘They’ve got to do something about their presence in the U.S.’’ Fila did not need an industry analyst to state the obvious. By that time it had already hired companies to study branding and logistics and brought on board a new advertising agency to release the Grant Hill 5 shoe.
Fila was not alone in posting poor sales for basketball shoes. The Athletic Footwear Association reported that basketball shoes accounted for only 20.2 percent of total athletic-shoe sales in 1997, compared to 28 percent in 1998. Other styles, such as running shoes, were on the rise, perhaps in a backlash response to bulky basketball shoes. Even with rising sales in certain categories, however, the entire athletic-footwear industry—including Nike—suffered that year. Consumers seemed to be moving away from big brands and toward smaller, more individualistic labels. Many companies were reevaluating their marketing strategies, particularly their use of endorsements by athletes. Jim Andrews, editor of IEG Endorsement Insider, a newsletter that tracked endorsements, said he thought that shoe companies had ‘‘oversaturated the market. So many players had signature footwear, it was no longer unique.’’ Although Grant Hill’s endorsement had undeniably helped put Fila on the map, even Howe Burch acknowledged that ‘‘kids just aren’t as inspired by athletes because a) there are too many of them and b) because of their behavior. It’s contributed to the overall cynicism and distrust of sports personalities.’’ Reebok was a visible example of a company that chose not to renew its contract with its star athlete, basketball player Shaquille O’Neal. Sporting Goods Business reported that Fila was shifting its focus more toward performance sports. ‘‘We put the needs of the street ahead of the performance needs of the athletes,’’ said John Eberle, vice president of communications at Fila. ‘‘We’ll return to making innovative products.’’ Sources indicated to Advertising Age that the next brand push, released in 1999 by newly hired ad agency Leo Burnett, would position Fila around performance and technology and might also leverage the company’s Italian heritage. The first ads promoted the newest Grant Hill shoe, the Grant Hill 5, and they were followed by additional work to promote the Fila brand. And while Fila was committed to its contract with Hill through 2004, ankle injuries had the basketball star sidelined for much of the 2000–01 season. Frank Fudo, a partner at the sports-marketing firm 16W Marketing, told ESPN that Hill excelled on the basketball court, ‘‘but him not playing doesn’t help Fila too much.’’ In 2000 Fila began its first consolidated global campaign with BDDP/TBWA of Paris and Merkley Newman Harty of New York serving as the creatives. The new tagline that enhanced the various ad images, ‘‘Sport Life Fila,’’ was designed to send the message that there was more to life than sports. Television spots featured Hill, Chicago Cubs star Sammy Sosa, and U.S. women’s soccer team captain Carla Overbeck. The new campaign portrayed the athletes actively participating in their specific sports but also showed their human side outside of the sports arena.

THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
Federal Express Corporation (FedEx), founded in the 1970s, built its success on an innovative business model, offering the business world the first overnight shipping service. But savvy marketing also played a key role in the rise of the company. Just one year after becoming operational, FedEx released its first advertising campaign. Increased sales resulted, as did more advertising. In 1978 FedEx introduced the award-winning ‘‘Absolutely, Positively Overnight’’ campaign, which featured a fasttalking spokesman. It ran until 1983. Other memorable FedEx campaigns that followed were ‘‘It’s Not Just a Package, It’s Your Business,’’ which ran in 1987 and 1988; ‘‘Our Most Important Package is Yours,’’ which ran from 1991 to 1994; and ‘‘Absolutely, Positively Anything,’’ a 1995 campaign. Reliability and speed were at the heart of the message in these campaigns. Then, in 1996, FedEx released a campaign called ‘‘The Way the World Works’’ that emphasized the company’s position as a leader in global shipping.
‘‘The Way the World Works’’ was designed to communicate the idea that FedEx could help customers, particularly small businesses, cultivate contacts all over the globe. The company’s longtime advertising agency, BBDO Worldwide of New York, designed the advertisements, which showed customers in various countries using FedEx delivery and warehousing-inventory services to market their goods.
FedEx considered ‘‘The Way the World Works’’ to be one of its most successful marketing efforts. According to the company, it increased awareness levels of FedEx to new highs. Nevertheless, by autumn 1998 the company was ready for a change, and it returned to a more humorous approach with the ‘‘Be Absolutely Sure’’ campaign that followed.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
When it began operations with 14 small aircraft in 1973, Federal Express was the first company of its kind to offer overnight shipping. At the time it delivered to 25 cities from New York to Florida. The next year the company launched its first advertising campaign with a budget of $150,000 and the tagline ‘‘Federal Express—a whole new airline for packages only.’’ After the first commercial was broadcast, the company’s shipping volume shot up from 3,000 to 10,000 packages a night. By the end of 1997 the company had a fleet of more than 600 aircraft and some 40,000 other vehicles, and it was handling 3 million packages worldwide every day.
Because it was the first company to offer express delivery services, Federal Express created its own market. Demand grew quickly, and Federal Express became the first company in the United States to achieve revenues of $1 billion within 10 years. Revenues mushroomed to nearly $35 billion by 1996, and, according to the company’s 1997 annual report, they were expected to reach more than $250 billion worldwide before the year 2020. Over the years Federal Express became known for its humorous advertising campaigns, including pitchmen who spoke at a frenetic speed and an employer who pretended to be his secretary when he telephoned to check on a package. With ‘‘The Way the World Works’’ the company took a more serious approach, stressing brand image and the ability to help businesses compete in the global economy. The latest campaign also meshed with the general FedEx tagline, ‘‘The World On Time,’’ which had been introduced along with the company’s updated logo in 1994. It was not only the tone but also the message of the company’s advertising that changed. In the early 1990s the message was that consumers could rely on Federal Express to deliver packages quickly. The ads emphasized the company’s technological features, such as software for tracking shipments. The principal message of ‘‘The Way the World Works,’’ however, was that FedEx could deliver worldwide.

TARGET MARKET
According to Steve Pacheco, manager of advertising for FedEx, ‘‘The Way the World Works’’ campaign was targeted primarily at three groups of consumers: professional managers who were 25 to 54 years old and who earned at least $35,000 annually, small shippers and owners of small businesses who were 25 to 54 years old and who earned at least $50,000, and people who made decisions and influenced opinions in corporations, a largely male group 35 to 64 years old and with household incomes of at least $60,000. Although in the past, small businesses had not had much opportunity to buy and sell merchandise in other countries, this was becoming important to compete globally. ‘‘Federal Express is an enabler that allows them to do business all over the world,’’ Pacheco explained.
FedEx could not only ship goods quickly, but it could also track the precise location of a package, and it offered a money-back guarantee if the item did not arrive on time. A business could predict when merchandise would arrive or exactly when it needed to be shipped. This allowed businesses to lower their operating costs by maintaining smaller inventories. Because a large percentage of inventory was in transit at any given time, FedEx planes and trucks, in effect, became mobile warehouses for the company’s customers. The concept of shipping and receiving merchandise ‘‘just in time’’ became increasingly popular. The taglines ‘‘The World On Time’’ and ‘‘The Way the World Works’’ thus helped FedEx convey the message that it understood modern business practices and could be an important element in a company’s operating strategy.
Pacheco said that FedEx hoped that the ads would surprise people who were not familiar with everything the company had to offer. At the same time the campaign was intended to broaden the company’s appeal to its established customers and to encourage them to make better use of its services.

COMPETITION
FedEx was the largest express transportation company in the world. Thanks to its vast network of aircraft and trucks, it could deliver to more than 200 countries within 48 hours. It had the only routes in and out of China and exclusive rights to many other routes in Asia, where 7 of the 10 fastest-growing economies were located. By 1997, although FedEx still dominated express delivery with a market share of about 43 percent, it had lost ground to competitors. According to the Colography Group, United Parcel Service (UPS) had 27 percent of the market, Airborne Express 15 percent, and the U.S. Postal Service 5 percent, with all other services combined claiming 8 percent. Worldwide, the total revenues from express shipments for FedEx were 50 percent more than those of its nearest competitor.
In terms of all shipping, however, UPS had grown to be twice the size of FedEx. In 1995 UPS shipped 3 billion packages every day and had revenues of $21 billion. By contrast, in 1997 FedEx shipped about 3 million items daily, and it reported revenues of $10.2 billion in 1996 and $11.5 billion in 1997. To better compete with UPS, FedEx merged with Caliber System and thereby acquired the RPS trucking company, which was the second-largest ground carrier after UPS. FedEx also benefited from a 15-day strike of UPS workers in August 1997. UPS saw its share of the package delivery market drop from about 80 percent before the strike to an estimated 70 percent after. FedEx employees put in overtime to cope with the flood of extra packages during the strike, and the company reported that its earnings more than doubled for the quarter because of the additional volume. FedEx estimated that it retained 15 percent of the extra volume after the UPS strike had ended. During the strike FedEx ran a print ad thanking its employees for helping the company handle the additional workload, and it rewarded its workforce with a $20 million bonus. Among other things, the ad told the public that customer service was important to FedEx personnel. The U.S. Postal Service competed with both FedEx and UPS by advertising its Priority Mail service, priced beginning at $3, which was notably cheaper than its competitors’ charges of $6 to $12 for two-day delivery. FedEx sued the Postal Service for false advertising, because Priority Mail did not guarantee two-day delivery. Instead, it offered ‘‘two- or three-day’’ delivery and in 1996 delivered only 81 percent of its packages within two days. An advertising industry watchdog council said that the ads were acceptable, however, for the public understood the difference between what the Postal Service and its competitors were offering. The ads and the lawsuit continued, and the Postal Service maintained that, by promoting Priority Mail at an inexpensive price, it had pressured FedEx to lower its charges by a third.

MARKETING STRATEGY
‘‘TheWay theWorld Works’’ campaign was created at the request of Frederick Smith, founder and CEO of Federal Express, who had asked the senior management of the company to organize a campaign that would focus on the global economy. BBDO produced the commercials. BBDO, known for the use of emotion and human interest in its advertising, tapped into the idea that FedEx empowered individuals to realize their dreams. The dream might involve designing avant-garde furniture and selling it to someone on the other side of the world or shipping a dress from Italy to Japan so that a wedding would come off perfectly. FedEx wanted people who saw the commercials to perceive them as heartfelt messages. What was implied was that the company cared as much about every package as it cared about the wedding dress. FedEx’s Pacheco said that the campaign’s five key objectives were to ‘‘magnify the scope of Federal Express, show the global and international capabilities, add value to the FedEx brand, communicate all of our high-tech innovations, and position Federal Express as a leader.’’ Previous ads had touched on some of these points, but ‘‘The Way the World Works’’ took a new direction by calling attention to global delivery services. The word ‘‘world’’ in the tagline was significant, because it emphasized FedEx’s ability to deliver worldwide. In addition, it referred to the fact that the people who worked for FedEx were of all races and lived in many countries. ‘‘Early on, we identified the need to be as culturally diverse as we could. You’ll see people from all around the world in the campaign,’’ said Pacheco. Just as important was the word ‘‘works,’’ which conveyed the idea that FedEx helped its customers get their work done by helping them solve their delivery problems. The campaign featured six TV spots—five 30-second commercials and one 60-second commercial—that were introduced in late 1996. The spots ran mainly on highly rated television programs, including prime-time shows and sports and news broadcasts. In one spot a dressmaker in Italy shipped bridal gowns to customers in Japan. Another scenario showed pop-up books published in Wales being sent to classrooms in England and Thailand. The warm, distinctive voice of actress Linda Hunt asked, ‘‘How did such ordinary people come by such extraordinary powers? Believe it or not, all it took was the wave of a wand.’’ In a humorous spot called ‘‘Doug,’’ an employee had entrusted an important package to a delivery company other than FedEx. When the package failed to arrive on time, Doug’s manager locked him in a closet and berated him while the rest of the staff looked on. Each commercial ended with a picture of a revolving globe and the tagline ‘‘The Way the World Works.’’
The spots were translated into various languages for the 20 markets in which BBDO handled FedEx advertising. Although they were broadcast in various countries, the commercials were created primarily for the United States. In fact, the campaign was the first that FedEx had not customized to individual countries.

OUTCOME
It was generally felt that FedEx’s ‘‘The Way the World Works’’ campaign achieved its goals. For one thing the commercials improved the company’s image with the public. ‘‘The campaign spiked our awareness level up almost to all-time high levels,’’ Pacheco said. In a survey reported in USA Today, 28 percent of consumers said that the spots were very effective, while 15 percent said that they ‘‘liked the ads a lot.’’ A mere 4 percent said that they disliked the campaign. The spots were most popular with people 30 to 49 years old. Pacheco claimed that the commercials were actually more popular than the USA Today survey indicated. He noted that FedEx and BBDO had conducted their own awareness studies and had found that the campaign was one of the most effective the company had ever undertaken. For example, multiple telephone surveys conducted to judge the public’s perception of the FedEx brand over a period of time showed a strong, positive response to the commercials. Perhaps one of the most important indicators of the campaign’s success was the number of people who contacted FedEx directly after seeing the spots on television. One woman in New York City liked the wedding dress in the commercial so much that FedEx put her in touch with the dressmaker and gave her permission to use a copy of the gown for her own wedding. Another person used classical music from the campaign as a tribute at the funeral of a loved one. A third person obtained some 20 red chairs like those used in one of the spots. Pacheco noted, ‘‘I think FedEx, because of its closeness with its customers, probably gets more customer reaction like this.’’
‘‘The Way the World Works’’ came to a close in 1998, when FedEx elected to shift gears, as the company now faced competition from a number of upstart overnight shippers, such as DHL. The company returned to a more humorous approach with the ‘‘Be Absolutely Sure’’ campaign, which offered comical examples of what could occur when someone relied on a cut-rate shipper rather than FedEx.

RELAX, IT’S FEDEX CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
Witty and engaging ads, a hallmark of the Memphis based FedEx Corp. for more than two decades, had helped propel the success of the shipping and transportation company. In September 2003, however, in response to an economic downturn and highly competitive television advertising from rival United Parcel Service (UPS), FedEx sought to redefine itself to the public. That year the company launched ‘‘Relax, It’s FedEx,’’ its most ambitious ad campaign. Unlike past advertising, the ‘‘Relax, It’s FedEx’’ campaign placed more emphasis on ground delivery and international shipping. It also emphasized the appeal of FedEx’s integrated services in helping businesses solve their shipping problems. Created by ad agency BBDO New York, the campaign initially kicked off with a series of eight spots created for television, but it eventually included print, radio, and Internet components. Television, as expected, consumed between 65 and 70 percent of the campaign’s $90 million budget. Each of the humorous spots contained the campaign’s tagline, ‘‘Relax, It’s FedEx,’’ reinforcing the point that harried workers need not worry about shipping dilemmas. The eight spots in the initial phase of the campaign were titled ‘‘Call Center,’’ ‘‘Career Maker,’’ ‘‘Chinese Office,’’ ‘‘Crate,’’ ‘‘Drama,’’ ‘‘MBA,’’ ‘‘Problems,’’ and ‘‘RemindMe.’’ In ‘‘Drama,’’ for example, two workers melodramatically repeated that they were ‘‘doomed,’’ believing that they would not be able to get a shipment to Houston by the next day. Each repetition of the word ‘‘doomed’’ became more melodramatic than the previous one. But the final voice-over announced, ‘‘You can try, but we’ve taken all the drama out of shipping overnight.’’
The campaign was successful enough for FedEx to continue running it through 2005. It also won a number of awards. In 2004 the spot ‘‘Drama’’ garnered a Gold Addy Award, while ‘‘Chinese Office,’’ with the entire commercial spoken in Cantonese without English subtitles until the company name was mentioned at the end, won a Silver Addy Award. The campaign also won an Andy Head Award and an LIAA (London International Advertising Awards) Trophy in 2004. FedEx enjoyed an increase in sales, reporting revenues of $24.7 billion for fiscal 2004, up from $22.5 billion the previous year.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Since FedEx’s founding in 1973 as Federal Express, the company had concentrated on air shipping—on its first day of operation it shipped 186 packages—as the key to successful express delivery. Over the next three decades the company remained the leader in that sector of the delivery industry, and by May 2003 FedEx was making 2.7 million air shipments per day. Yet the number marked a decline of four-tenths of a percent over FedEx’s previous fiscal quarter. In fact FedEx’s air shipment numbers declined in 9 of the 10 fiscal quarters between 2001 and May 2003. Meanwhile, the company’s ground delivery service enjoyed double-digit growth for seven consecutive quarters.
FedEx Ground came into being in 1998 after the company purchased Roadway Package Service. Within five years its popularity with customers, based on its lower costs, was on the verge of altering the company’s original approach. The move by customers away from express delivery was attributed to the stalled economy, in which cost had taken preference over an item’s ‘‘absolutely positively’’ —an earlier FedEx tagline—arriving quickly, though FedEx took great pains in the ads to assure that it would. This reality was acknowledged by Laurie A. Tucker, a FedEx senior vice president, in a Wall Street Journal article by Suzanne Vranica and Rick Brooks that appeared the day the ‘‘Relax, It’s FedEx’’ campaign kicked off. ‘‘The [domestic] express industry took a big hit,’’ she admitted. Tipping off Wall Street Journal readers as to the content of the upcoming ad campaign, Tucker observed that the industry’s immediate future was in ground shipping and international express shipping.

TARGET MARKET
The wry tone of the new ad campaign was a return to the style of earlier FedEx campaigns. Since ‘‘Relax, It’s FedEx’’ was the company’s first campaign to focus on ground and international express delivery, however, the target market was therefore expanded from the core audience the company had previously sought to reach. Whereas ‘‘Chinese Office,’’ for example, emphasized the reliability of FedEx’s international delivery, ‘‘Call Center’’ took a different approach by humorously emphasizing the company’s prompt home delivery service. The latter commercial showed a man whose shower had been interrupted by a FedEx delivery calling the service department of a company he had done business with to complain that he had not expected his package so soon. While these ads highlighted the shift in FedEx thinking, the spots also appealed to the company’s important target market of middle management and small-business owners. The ads also highlighted FedEx’s Internet service. Spots such as ‘‘Drama,’’ ‘‘MBA,’’ and ‘‘Remind Me’’ were aimed at midlevel shippers or poked fun at the boss.

COMPETITION
A sluggish economy was not the only factor contributing to the shift in FedEx’s thinking. The company’s major rival and the leading ground shipper, UPS, launched its own successful ad campaign with the tagline ‘‘What Can Brown Do for You?’’ In the Wall Street Journal article by Vranica and Brooks, Alan Brew of Addison Branding & Communications in San Francisco declared, ‘‘Brown has put some pressure on FedEx.’’ The writers mentioned Brew’s observation that the UPS campaign employed an important branding strategy—personalization—which, inadvertently or not, had been emphasized by Brew himself in his use of the term ‘‘Brown’’ for UPS. Furthermore, UPS had been outspending FedEx in advertising. In 2002 UPS spent $163.8 million on advertising, while FedEx spent only $84.6 million. FedEx enjoyed a modest improvement in its share of the ground delivery market in 2003, though more than half of all ground deliveries in the United States were made by UPS. In 2004 UPS had revenue totaling $36.6 billion.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) ranked second in ground deliveries, but its 2004 revenue totaled $69 billion. As Douglas P. Shuit pointed out in Workforce Management, however, the revenue for those services that placed the USPS in competition with the privately owned companies—priority and overnight mail and package delivery—totaled approximately $7.4 billion per year. Also in 2003 another rival, the German-owned DHL International, sought to make inroads in the express delivery market. The purchase of Airborne Express was part of its $1.2 billion investment plan in the U.S. market.

MARKETING STRATEGY
The ‘‘Relax, It’s FedEx’’ campaign debuted with two 30-second spots on October 4, 2003, during a telecast of the first game of the National Football League season. The game, between the Washington Redskins and the New York Jets, was played on the Redskins’ home field, FedEx Field, thus reinforcing the company’s brand name. FedEx had also purchased naming rights to the arena that was home to the Memphis Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association, and the company was a sponsor of the Orange Bowl and of Professional Golfers Association events. In an article published in Traffic World soon after the first ads appeared, Angela Greiling Keane quoted Brian Philips, FedEx’s vice president of U.S. marketing, as saying, ‘‘We rely heavily on sports to reach the decision makers in our industry. We can track a return on investment for each and every sponsorship property we engage with.’’ But FedEx was not about to put all of its advertising eggs in one basket, and the company’s television spots showed up more and more on cable specialty programs. In addition, the ‘‘Relax, It’s FedEx’’ ads encompassed the full range of the media. As the campaign progressed through 2004, FedEx made further efforts to secure a larger portion of the ground delivery market. The preparation for this had been made in December 2003 when the company purchased Kinko’s, the Dallas-based photocopying chain, for more than $2 billion. Kinko’s was the largest such chain in the world, with more than 1,200 stores, located primarily in the United States. FedEx, which already had drop-off centers in Kinko’s stores, planned to expand the chain into Europe and Asia, thus facilitating electronic transfer and the delivery of scanned documents and PDF (Portable Document Format) files.
In December 2004 the company announced that it would extend the ‘‘Relax, It’s FedEx’’ campaign into 2005 with six new 30-second television spots, which previewed that month. BBDO New York once again produced the spots. Highlighting FedEx’s integrated services—express delivery, international delivery, ground delivery, FedEx.com, and FedEx Kinko’s—the ads turned on the same winning formula of wry humor. The six spots in the second series were titled ‘‘Bus,’’ ‘‘Job Counselor,’’ ‘‘Shower,’’ ‘‘Sweeps,’’ ‘‘Tom,’’ and ‘‘Wrong.’’ ‘‘Job Counselor,’’ in which a pirate was interviewed for a job in a company’s shipping department, highlighted FedEx.com. China was again the focus of one spot—‘‘Tom’’—promoting FedEx’s international delivery service. In the spot the world’s seemingly most inept worker was still able to ship to China by using FedEx. ‘‘Wrong,’’ a commercial for FedEx ground delivery, featured a befuddled worker whose coworkers were constantly pointing out his linguistic and other confusions: the leaning tower of pizza, French benefits, and actor James Dean and singer and sausage pitchman Jimmy Dean.
In keeping with its policy of advertising heavily on sports broadcasts, thus directing the spots primarily to males between the ages of 25 and 55, the second series of ads debuted throughout the Bowl Championship Series of college football during the first weekend of 2005. Another ad was shown during the Super Bowl in February of that year.

OUTCOME
The ads not only won awards in the advertising industry and recognition from the public, but they were accompanied by an upturn in FedEx business. As the United States emerged from the recession of the early years of the twenty-first century, FedEx market shares also improved. In fiscal 2004 FedEx Ground had revenues of $3.9 billion. Its share of the ground delivery market in 2004 ranged from 27 percent, according to Pittsburgh analysts SJ Consulting, to 31 percent, according to J.P. Morgan. Both figures showed that FedEx was making significant inroads into what was formerly seen as unassailable UPS territory.
In May 2005 the Atlanta consulting firm the Colography Group confirmed a trend that the ‘‘Relax, It’s FedEx’’ campaign not only capitalized on but also nurtured. The Colography Group estimated that the year would see FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight handle 50.1 percent, or more than half, of the company’s shipments. Without commenting directly on the shipping percentages for these two segments, FedEx officials gave tacit approval to this figure. As quoted by Jane Roberts in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the president of the Colography Group, Ted Scherck, noted, ‘‘This is a watershed because you have the carrier that defined the concept of air express now providing more shipments on the ground than in the air. . .The mode of transportation is increasingly irrelevant to shippers.’’ In 2004 the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded FedEx 12 additional flights to China, including the sole direct flight from the United States to the Pearl River Delta area, which was one of China’s major economic and manufacturing centers. In 2005 FedEx signed an agreement to use the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport as its Asian transfer hub beginning in 2008. In the first quarter of fiscal year 2006, which ended on August 31, 2005, FedEx reported that ‘‘total combined average daily package volume at FedEx Express and FedEx Ground grew 5 percent year over year for the quarter, due to continued growth in international express, U.S. domestic express and ground shipments.’’ The company further reported that its overall revenues were up 10 percent, to $7.71 billion as opposed to $6.98 billion the previous year. Net income rose 3 percent, from $330 million to $339 million. These increases were reflected in the various segments of FedEx services. FedEx Express revenue was up 11 percent over the previous year, to $5.12 billion, and FedEx Ground revenue increased 14 percent, to $1.22 billion. The daily package volume had increased 6 percent in comparison with the previous fiscal year. Revenue in the FedEx Freight segment increased 11 percent, to $882 million, while FedEx Kinko’s saw a 6 percent increase, to $517 million. This last increase was largely attributed to the growth of FedEx Ground and Express services in conjunction with the conversion of FedEx World Service centers to FedEx Kinko’s Ship Centers.

OUR OFFICE IS YOUR OFFICE CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
On February 12, 2004, the Memphis, Tennessee–based express shipping giant FedEx Corp. (founded in 1973 as Federal Express) expanded in a new direction when it purchased the Dallas, Texas–based Kinko’s photocopy center chain, which was founded in 1970 in Santa Barbara, California. The purchase was not a complete surprise to industry analysts—FedEx had already been using many Kinko’s copy centers as drop-off points for customers, and the purchase consolidated these services, among other things. After rebranding the company as FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Services and the outlets themselves as FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Centers, FedEx began to implement an ad campaign designed to attract small business owners as well as a more mobile customer, one who would find FedEx Kinko’s services convenient as an ‘‘office on the road.’’ The ad campaign was tagged ‘‘Our Office Is Your Office.’’ The campaign was created by BBDO New York, FedEx’s lead agency and creators of the award-winning 2003 campaign ‘‘Relax, It’s FedEx.’’ Using the offbeat humor that had become a hallmark of FedEx advertising, the $25 million rebranding campaign broke with four 30-second television spots. Other spots were added later. In addition to television the campaign used radio, the Internet, print, and direct mail. The campaign had the important task of reintroducing a known entity to the public with ads titled ‘‘First,’’ ‘‘Luggage,’’ ‘‘Welcome Aboard,’’ ‘‘Cloud Nine,’’ and ‘‘Plastic.’’ ‘‘Our Office Is Your Office’’ intended to cement FedEx Kinko’s new identity into customers’ psyches. Several of the spots earned accolades from the advertising industry. Sales at FedEx Kinko’s failed to soar as much as management had hoped, but for fiscal year 2005 the company still managed to report revenues of $2.1 billion, an increase over the previous year.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
At a glance the combination of FedEx and Kinko’s would seem an unlikely merger. The former was an established shipping company that practically reinvented the package delivery industry by concentrating on express delivery via jets. Kinko’s, on the other hand, was one of the leaders in the print and photocopy field. At the time of the buyout, Kinko’s was operating approximately 1,200 stores worldwide, serving 215 countries. The company estimated its annual revenue for calendar year 2003, which was just prior to the buyout, at nearly $2 billion. However, the relationship between FedEx and the privately owned Kinko’s, which stretched back to the 1980s, had been growing more intertwined over the years. In 1988 FedEx became Kinko’s exclusive shipper, and by the end of 2003 FedEx was conducting full-service retail business in 134 Kinko’s stores.
Kinko’s profitability aside, a further incentive for the buyout was a shift in corporate thinking at FedEx. Since its inception the company had been the leader in express delivery services, pioneering domestic and international air shipment. The financial downturn of the first years of the twenty-first century, however, was a major factor in the flattening out (and in some fiscal quarters a slight decline) in the company’s express shipment sector. During this same time FedEx Ground experienced seven consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. Clearly customers were choosing a lower price over the convenience of fast delivery. With the corporate shift toward focusing more effort on its ground delivery service and the already solid relationship between FedEx and Kinko’s, plus the high profitability of mobile customers who used the FedEx drop-off points in Kinko’s stores, the decision to expand into the print and copy industry seemed an almost foregone conclusion in the information age. The announcement of the buyout came in December 2003. At that time, as reported in Brandweek, FedEx chairman, president, and CEO Frederick Smith declared, ‘‘The FedEx and Kinko’s combination will substantially increase our retail presence worldwide and will enable both companies to take advantage of growth opportunities in the fast-moving digital economy. Our two companies share a similar background, culture and customer focus, and that common ground is extremely important as we prepare for future growth and success.’’ In February 2004 FedEx paid approximately $2.4 billion in cash to acquire the global operations of Kinko’s.

TARGET MARKET
Aimed at small business owners and casual and regular customers in need of the office and shipping services the new FedEx Kinko’s could provide, the ‘‘Our Office Is Your Office’’ campaign relied on offbeat humor—practically a FedEx trademark. The spots made several points, primarily that the busy mobile customer and small business owner, who might not be able to afford or have the inclination for permanent office space, let alone myriad office equipment, could find satisfaction at FedEx Kinko’s. The ad campaign targeted casual, more mobile customers because they, and to a lesser degree small business owners, were more likely to pay higher shipping rates in addition to making use of the full range of printing, copying, shipping, and electronic services—the latter dealing with electronic transfer and delivery of scanned and documents and PDF files. FedEx Kinko’s also intended to lure customers away from the UPS Store, the leading provider of shipping, postal, and business services in the world. The UPS Store not only offered identical services as FedEx Kinko’s, but it also provided mailbox rentals. To attract these UPS Store customers, ‘‘Our Office Is Your Office’’ focused on FedEx Kinko’s lower shipping rates.

COMPETITION
From the outset the main competition for FedEx Kinko’s was the UPS Store. Shipping rival United Parcel Service (UPS) had actually led the way in diversification with its 2001 purchase (for $191 million) of Mail Boxes Etc., which was rebranded the UPS Store in 2003. In 2004 UPS opened 525 additional outlets, which raised the total number of UPS Stores to 3,771. This was approximately three times the number of FedEx Kinko’s outlets. Regarding their retail pack-and-ship outlets, UPS had a strategy that differed from that of FedEx in three important ways. First, the UPS Stores were franchised as opposed to being a subsidiary company. The second difference was location. FedEx Kinko’s were concentrated in urban areas, while UPS Stores were located in suburban and rural areas, though by early 2005 UPS Stores were expanding into urban neighborhoods as well as college campuses, military bases, and convention centers. Third, while both were after the growing retail shipping market, FedEx Kinko’s offered more print and copy services than the UPS Store.
Dave Hirschman, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution soon after the ‘‘Our Office Is Your Office’’ ad campaign broke, noted that while FedEx Kinko’s lagged behind the UPS Store in terms of physical numbers, its urban stores took in ‘‘far more revenue on average than suburban UPS Stores.’’ Nevertheless, and despite its expansion elsewhere, UPS Stores remained wedded to the suburbs. On this subject Mark Davis, a senior analyst at FTN Midwest in Cleveland, as quoted by Sandra O’Loughlin in Brandweek, observed, ‘‘UPS is very focused on the next battleground, which they believe is out in the suburbs and rural areas. That’s where they feel the next opportunity exists for them to enhance their relationships with customers and provide an additional point of contact for them in their competition with both FedEx and DHL, but also the U.S. Postal Service.’’ In time as FedEx Kinko’s services evolved, the ‘‘Our Office Is Your Office’’ ad campaign would seem to foreshadow a whole new dimension. By 2005 FedEx Kinko’s was in competition not only with the UPS Store (as an extension of UPS itself) and DHL but with office suppliers Staples and Office Depot as well.

MARKETING STRATEGY
The ‘‘Our Office Is Your Office’’ campaign was the first for FedEx Kinko’s. The campaign debuted during the first week of July 2004 with nine television spots along with radio, print, direct-mail, and Web elements. The campaign’s goal was to immediately position FedEx Kinko’s as a less expensive, more convenient alternative to the UPS Store. The ‘‘Welcome Aboard’’ spot did this by specifically mentioning savings of up to 35 percent. As quoted in Business Wire at the time of the launch, Gary Kusin, president of FedEx Kinko’s, declared, ‘‘These ads reflect the value that FedEx Kinko’s offers to our customers. In addition to the industry’s broadest range of services—copying and printing, computer rental, Wi-Fi Internet access, videoconferencing, and FedEx shipping—we plan to launch a complete packand-ship capability before the peak holiday season.’’ And FedEx executive vice president T. Michael Glenn (quoted in the same article) noted, ‘‘FedEx Kinko’s powerfully redefines the future of the business services marketplace by offering customers a fully functional office on the road.’’ Many business journalists picked up on and advanced that theme.
From the outset the campaign strategy was to take on the UPS Store directly. When FedEx purchased Kinko’s it went full steam into waters it had previously only been testing. While the number of domestic UPS Stores was far greater than the number of FedEx Kinko’s, the latter relied on location—urban versus suburban—and its wider range of services to attract new customers. The spots ‘‘First’’ and ‘‘Welcome Aboard’’ both touted FedEx Kinko’s over its main rival, the UPS Store. ‘‘First’’ used sight and sound gags to show the availability of FedEx Kinko’s as opposed to the UPS Store and empathized with customer frustrations over not finding a UPS Store open. The spot depicted a man pointing out different company artifacts (the first dollar, which was framed, and the first letter from a satisfied customer) to a woman. The third artifact was a chair embedded in a wall, which signified the first tantrum. The man in the commercial, as quoted by Barry Janoff in Brandweek, went on to explain, ‘‘because we had to ship a package and the UPS Store was closed.’’ In ‘‘Welcome Aboard’’ a boss and an employee argued over whether the employee had been fired or quit. The spot ended with the worker being rehired after mentioning that by using FedEx Kinko’s instead of the UPS Store he had saved up to 35 percent. Thus the humor had a very competitive edge to it. In another spot, ‘‘Luggage,’’ the convenience of utilizing FedEx Kinko’s services was highlighted. Two would-be entrepreneurs struggled as they tried to unload office equipment from an airline carousel. One finally suggested that perhaps they ought to have gone to FedEx Kinko’s.

OUTCOME
In comparing FedEx Kinko’s with the UPS Store, Jack Aaronson, CEO of the Aaronson Group, an awardwinning strategy and design firm, noted in his online column ‘‘Customer Relations’’ in September 2004 (two and a half months after the ‘‘Our Office Is Your Office’’ campaign broke) that the FedEx Kinko’s ‘‘rebranding was a lot more successful in terms of user perception. Users know both brands [FedEx and Kinko’s] and the core competencies of each . . .No questions remain in consumers’ minds as to what these newly rebranded stores can do . . . FedEx Kinko’s commercials and online ads tell you everything you can expect from the stores. They reaffirm the consumer really does get the best of both worlds.’’ Despite Aaronson’s high marks for the rebranding effort and the ‘‘Our Office Is Your Office’’ ad campaign, the public was slower to make use of the wide range of services at FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Centers than had been hoped by company executives. Nevertheless in the first quarter of fiscal 2006, FedEx Kinko’s reported revenues of $517 million. This was a 6 percent increase over the first quarter of the previous fiscal year. Operating income, however, had declined 16 percent over the first quarter of fiscal 2005. The increase in revenue was attributed to the traditional FedEx services that were available at the Office and Print Centers: FedEx Ground and FedEx Express delivery. There was a decline in revenue in the copy product line.
Despite the decline in revenue for ‘‘traditional’’ office services at FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Centers, corporate officials felt that the ‘‘Our Office Is Your Office’’ ad campaign had successfully implanted the notion of integrated services in customers’ minds. The ad industry seemed to agree, as ‘‘Cloud Nine’’ was designated as one of Adweek magazine’s Best Spots of 2004, and ‘‘Plastic’’ won an international bronze Andy award in 2005.
By the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2006, FedEx Kinko’s claimed more than 1,450 employees with service in more than 11 countries. One year after the launch of the campaign, FedEx Kinko’s was making plans to triple its number of domestic stores. In August 2005 the parent company took the office notion one step further when it began selling office supplies and furniture online.