SNL parody keeps UPS's ad campaign in the spotlight.

UPS's successful "whiteboard" advertising campaign was working it's way out of the door... until Saturday Night Live stepped in. This campaign, created by Andy Azula (a creative director for The Martin Agency), has been running on television since 2007 and has captivated audiences with various "whiteboard marker" skills. SNL started running sketches at the end of 2009 that mocked the commercials in a fun, playful manner. In no way did SNL attempt to make fun of UPS (the company). My point is - was this necessarily a bad thing for UPS? It's almost as if the ad campaign caught a fresh wind. At the end of the day people are still talking about UPS! It's free advertising for them. Now of course the copy in the parody ads isn't anything like what is run in the real ones, but UPS's name is still being advertised... for free.

Here's an example of one of the real UPS ads:



Now, here is SNL's version (featuring Bill Hader):



It would be interesting to see how these parodies have affected sales. I would be extremely surprised to see a negative response. Personally, I enjoyed the whiteboard ads and I continue to enjoy them. As elementary as they are - they work. The visual aspect of the ad campaign was unprecedented. Since these ads have been running since 2007 UPS needed something to reenergize the campaign and SNL did that. Do you think that UPS should thank SNL for running these sketches? Did you find the ad campaign effective before you saw SNL's? Do you have the same opinion of UPS after seeing SNL's version? Let us know.

Did you find this post useful? Email kyle@gpaadvertising.com