The 2014 guerrilla marketing campaign by Jung von Matt shows what creativity is capable of and what a truly brilliant agency can achieve.
DHL is one of the world's largest logistics companies with over 380,000 employees and nearly 1.5 billion packages delivered annually. The company was founded in 1969 by Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, Robert Lynn, and the DHL brand name was born from the initials of the founders' names. Initially, the company only undertook the transportation of documents, and that too only in geographically limited areas. However, thanks to years of continuous development, it grew larger and larger until it reached its current form.
That's all for now about the company that inadvertently became the „hero” of the best guerrilla marketing campaign of 2014. The hero of our story is not DHL, but the agency that was ”commissioned" Jung von Matt (JvM), a Hamburg advertising agency. The JvM Group is one of Germany's largest independent marketing agency networks, founded in 1991 and now has 25 subsidiaries (agencies) worldwide. We have already mentioned one of JvM's previous campaigns on the marketing secrets blog).
They are the ones who built one of the most beautiful guerrilla marketing stunts of the decade with incredible creativity – all due to the competition among agencies.
But what exactly happened?
JvM invited DHL's competitors, specifically TNT, DPD, and UPS, to deliver a special package each. The story includes that they designated hard-to-reach locations as delivery addresses, which had high pedestrian traffic and could not be accessed by car. This doesn't seem like an impossible mission so far, but the details hide the challenge.
The truly cunning move lay in the oversized packages that had to be delivered by the competing couriers. JvM specifically manufactured boxes for this purpose, then covered them with a foil that changed color due to temperature fluctuations.
The packages had the following text visible: ”DHL IS FASTER." The color of the box matched DHL's yellowish color, and the inscription also reminded of DHL's usual style.
JvM knew that no good-hearted courier would accept a package advertising their competitor. Therefore, they cooled the boxes below -4°C, causing the covering foil to turn completely black, which hid the inscription.
Thus, the packages were accepted by the competition, which naturally regained their original colors and inscriptions during delivery.
Agency creativity
The Jung von Matt agency wanted to showcase its own creative abilities, which it successfully achieved. The video was viewed by nearly 600,000 people in the first 2 days alone. Following this, the media picked it up, and people shared it, talked about it, and discussed its authenticity. Consumers took sides, as some laughed at the couriers, while others empathized with them. Yet the entire video was made with a single purpose: to show what creativity is capable of, what marketing can achieve, and most importantly, what JvM is capable of.
In just a few months, over 6 million people watched the video. The video that the agency released without DHL's permission. DHL stated that they did not request the video to be made, but they consider it a creative and humorous idea.
This can be agreed upon. It was a brilliant piece of work from which it is worth learning.
