Express to Nowhere

"Anyone else like to track things?" asks Fred Willard, who plays a smarmy, clueless TV host in a series of faux infomercials for Federal Express. It's the type of role he's perfected, having camped it up many times in Christopher Guest mockumentaries such as Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind and Best of Show. In the heavily layered FedEx work called "1-2-3 Succeed!"-- created by BBDO and posted at youtube/getinfotained -- the visual and verbal clichés of this world are nicely observed and represented as our host, a little grayer and clad in ridiculously busy sweaters, delivers a couple of funny lines to a fake studio audience with his characteristic, top-shelf, out-of-his-depth ineptness. (One line that hit the mark: "Is there anyone who does business for a living?")But what do those faux layers have to do with FedEx? The overnight shipper is known for running some of America's smartest, funniest, best-loved ads ever, including a 2006 Super Bowl spot starring a caveman. So, even as a joke, why connect FedEx's elevated brand image to this "But wait, there's more!" cheesy, bottom-feeding ad form?It's not like the idea is especially fresh to begin with. Willard himself recently did a similar thing for Bing in a Hulu fake telethon that also wasn't very funny.Let's face it-most young copywriters and art directors would jump at the chance of doing a series of Saturday Night Live-like skits. But putting so much talent and energy into all those layers of fakeness just seems like a waste. Plus, in the wake of Billy Mays death, which brought out a genuine outpouring of respect and affection for his "sultan of sales" skills, the timing seems unfortunate.Overall, I found the series incredibly awkward and painful to watch. Willard excels at playing impossibly dense announcer types, but, sadly, I found these (would-be viral) videos impossibly dense as well.There's no point in slagging every inch of the work. To me, what's really depressing is that it seems characteristic of a certain muddle-headed desperation that defines the agency-client relationship these days. Clients want to go the cheaper, nontraditional route with YouTube videos that go viral, but at the same time they want to wedge impossible amounts of service information into those messages. You can't have it both ways, and the attempt at humor here, which is so at odds with the sell-sell-sell, turns the series into the very thing it parodies.The points that are squished into the spots about mobile, international and office print online services are not particularly fun or riveting, and at three minutes each (and counting), they're way too long to become viral hits. Proof is in the numbers: After just under a week of being live on the Web, not one video had even broken the 5,000 viewer mark. I can't help but think that good ol' user-generated content would have gotten more buzz.Again, it's not that the writing or art direction are bad-the work is as ugly, random and cheap looking as the stuff it's meant to spoof. Plus, the director, Bob Odenkirk, who was a writer on Saturday Night Live and is probably best known as the co-creator and co-star of the HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show, has serious comedy chops, and some of the visual gags are quite subtle. But the result is such an uneasy hybrid that the spots probably won't attract comedy lovers and appear to be even further off track for the target demo, which is small business owners. FedEx is basically saying that these execs live in a Dilbert cartoon-or worse.Perhaps a Web utility would have better served the target audience's needs.Imagine if the agency had created a suite of tools to help business owners manage costs or customers or logistics. Isn't that closer to FedEx's business?Also disappointing is that the campaign, which will also include display and pre-roll ads on sites such as Yahoo, Hulu and YouTube, doesn't seem to be integrated into the corporate Web site at all. So, even if a viewer were to get excited about the mobile application Willard talks about in depth, there's no link.All in all, the work is not strategic or clear. Sadly, a company that was once the leader in the business is now playing catch-up to UPS. I'm all for humor, but this series of takeoffs is dead on arrival.

Brand Marketing

Express to Nowhere

Barbara Lippert

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Barbara Lippert