I don’t know whose idea it was to change the old song “That’s Amore” to “That’s Logistics”, but it seems like a silly idea to me. For one thing, the song is practically unrecognizable now with the new lyrics and orchestration anyway, so why use it? Plus, who even knows that song anymore? (I remember it from ads of “not available in stores” albums being sold on TV of Mario Lanza singing it, but otherwise, it’s pretty old.) And then there’s the fact that the word “logistics” doesn’t even come close to rhyming with “amore”. It would have been cheaper to have a new song written from scratch. Using the old song just means they have to pay royalties to use it, get a legal license to change it (as that’s covered in copyright protections), and then pay someone to write the new words and arrangement for it; and all that adds up to a lot of money in the end. And seeing as how it’s the whole big concept of their (relatively) new campaign, it probably costs them even more on top of it all. (Unless the song is in the public domain? I guess it could be, but I doubt it.)
So why do it? I think a new song/jingle would have been a better idea. But in any case, it’s certainly better than the old: “What can brown do for you?” ads. People used to say stuff like: “It can be the color of my crap!” whenever those ads came on. I guess that’s getting people to talk about it, but not in a way that I’d think would get UPS a lot of business (or respect). Some people say no publicity is bad publicity, but I’d say that’s incorrect. For proof of the idea that some publicity can hurt you, think back to that “I’m not a witch” ad for Christine O’Donnell: that definitely ended up hurting her, rather than helping her, even though it got a lot of people talking about her, because it made everyone say bad things about her. And that usually doesn’t help.
Maybe that annoying guy with the whiteboard wasn’t so bad after all? But if they’re going to do a cover of a popular song, and have it be about logistics, how about remaking Supertramp’s “The Logical Song” as “The Logistical Song”? It might even work.
Here’s an example of this UPS ad:
And here’s another:
