Even though I’m religiously devoted to his linkblog, every once in a while, Andy Baio makes a casual remark that rubs me the wrong way. For example:
“Coke and FedEx seem desperate to kill grassroots love of their
product because it “doesn’t fit with the brand personality”
My rant in response:
In the Fedex example, I believe you reference the case of the man who
furnished his apartment with Fedex boxes. The Internet community was
outraged at the legal response from Fedex. While I believe the
response was inept, I don’t think most people appreciate the Fedex
side of the equation.
I was a package handler and courier with Fedex in Austin, Texas during
college from 1996-2001. During this time when I worked in the
warehouse, it was my responsibility to fill the supply orders from our
customers. This included requests (from anyone with a Fedex account
number) for boxes, padded paks, labels, various envelopes, etc. Every
week we shipped out tens of thousands of dollars in supplies direct to
our customers. It was one of our single largest expenses as a station
behind diesel fuel. This does not included any packaging stocked in
the trucks, or in the dropboxes, or in the Kinko’s centers.
If I recall, each actual Fedex box cost us $1.50 -2.00, and this was
back around 1998-1999, so I’m sure the cost is much higher now. The
envelopes and flexible paks are somewhat cheaper. That guy’s Fedex bed
is probably worth a few hundred dollars.
The last thing Fedex wants as a company is to create any notion that
these supplies are for anything other than shipping Fedex packages or
for anyone other than Fedex customers. We had a hard enough time
keeping paying customers stocked up. What happens when people start
emptying dropboxes and drop centers just to build furniture they’ll
toss within a few days? What happens when someone gets to a dropbox to
ship a package and every box has been removed? When I later became a
courier, you would often arrive at a dropbox to find an angry customer
who had been waiting because someone else stripped the dropbox so
they’d have extra supplies at home. We stocked the dropboxes every day
and a few times a week it would be picked clean. And, the person who
had to wait is going to make sure they stock up the next time and it
becomes a vicious cycle. In the end, most of the extras get thrown
away.
Make no mistake. This issue directly impacts the customer and the
bottom line. Fedex loses business and takes on tremendous additional
cost when there are problems like this. To encourage anything else
would be bad business. Doing so would mean stocking extra supplies
just for me-toos who want to build their own Fedex furniture. The
question I would ask is why not just use discarded cardboard to make
furniture?
There is always some loss when you give supplies away for free. You
will always have those people who use the Fedex boxes to send USPS or
UPS. The ones who cross out the logos or turn the boxes inside out.
However, it is another thing for a business to celebrate a costly
behavior as part of some guerrilla marketing campaign, which is what
you seem to be implying.