ATLANTA - Wanna win a national championship? Get UPS to air a TV ad featuring your team getting crushed as an example of excellent logistics. Just ask the University of Kentucky.
For the 2012 UK Wildcats men's basketball team, UPS did just that during early rounds of this year's March Madness NCAA tournament. The nationwide television commercial included a clip of Duke's Christian Laettner making a miraculous last-second shot in overtime to devastate Kentucky in the 1992 NCAA East Regional final. UPS saw logistics.
Kentuckians saw red. Immediately after the ad aired Kentucky Wildcats fans howled in protest and threatened to boycott UPS forever. Websites and social media exploded with UK fan outrage that UPS would so callously and maliciously rub salt into their gaping, still oozing 20-year-old wound.
But then Kentucky went on to win this year's NCAA men's basketball championship. And UPS leaped to take all the credit. Right after the final buzzer sounded UPS CEO Scott Davis logged into Twitter and boasted, "You're welcome Kentucky fans, and congratulations! Does UPS logistics deliver, or what! Just don't be such whiners next time."
Of course, the geniuses down at UPS headquarters now plan to milk that ad campaign's success for all it's worth.
UPS Boondoggle marketing spokesperson Greta Gipp today told Advertising Age that UPS has begun accepting offers from pathetic losing organizations worldwide who hope to similarly appear in future UPS logistics commercials. "Duke football, Creationists, global-warming deniers. Our phones haven't stopped ringing. Everyone wants UPS to humiliate 'em on national TV, just like Kentucky, so they'll win big next time. We'll make billions off losers the world over for our upcoming ads. Now that's the power of UPS logistics."
