Reminding E-Commerce Customers Who Delivers

For a recent commercial, FedEx tried something unusual. It was not set in a bustling office. It did not feature one of its distinctive delivery trucks, or even a single package. Instead, there was a smiling Drew Brees, quarterback of the New Orleans Saints, ringing a doorbell and waving an app in the face of an unsuspecting homeowner. The message was simple. “It’s about letting the customer know they can have control over the destiny of their package,” Raj Subramaniam, FedEx’s chief marketing and communications officer, said. Increasingly, its customers are consumers themselves. And as the holiday shopping season approached, with online retail surging, the three giants of package delivery services — FedEx, United Parcel Service and the United States Postal Service — had to strategize on new ways to address people at home. That represents somewhat of a departure for the major parcel services, specifically FedEx and U.P.S., which have traditionally focused on their relationships with retailers and that business-to-business connection. The Postal Service has been the nation’s mail carrier since 1792, yet only more recently have packages become an area of emphasis. Read more at The New York Times.