• by Karl Greenberg , September 14, 2011

UPS held a press conference on Wednesday in a nondescript space on 41st Street near Bryant Park in New York. The walls were plastered with yellow missed-delivery slips.

The press conference launched with a YouTube comedy video that looked like a high-tech thriller, in which a sophisticated operation spies on a person who leaves her home, and a guy in the woods (who turns out to be a UPS delivery person) sprints up to the door, leaves a package on the stoop, knocks three separate times quickly, representing the three official attempts, then grabs the package, leaves a yellow slip and sprints away. Mission accomplished. The consumer returns minutes later, chagrined.

The company is changing all of that, with a program it hopes will be something like the iPhone of package delivery, a game changer. The new program, called UPS MyChoice, is meant to literally mark the end of missed-delivery slips, as it lets people choose when and where packages will be delivered prior to the first attempt.

CMO Alan Gershenhorn was on hand to explain the service, as was the company's CEO, Scott Davis. The executives, who carried rubberized footballs (the reason for this was revealed toward the end of the event), explained that the new program reflected an inflection point in the business, and both an embodiment of the company's decision to focus as much on consumers receiving shipments as on those doing the shipping.

Gershenhorn said the move also acknowledges the fact that more people are shopping for merchandise online. "It's an innovation enabling e-commerce," he said. "It's transformational, and it's happening now. For several years, UPS and others have been describing commerce as no longer driven by mass production. Consumers pull what they want when they want it and from whomever they choose."

Adding that online shopping and residential deliveries are on the rise, Gershenhorn cited a 2010 comScore study saying online deliveries were up 12% over 2009 and that consumer e-spending is now exceeding $1 billion. The timing of the new program is meant to align with the fourth-quarter holiday season. "We are providing home delivery on your schedule," said Gershenhorn. "We are making missed-delivery notice extinct."

The program is two-tiered. For $40 per year, one can sign up for a premium service that offers more delivery perks. The big surprise was held till end of the event when NFL great Joe Montana came up on stage to announce he will be the spokesperson for the new program. "I'm like most people," Montana said. "I come home from traveling and hate seeing that slip as much as everyone else."

Thematically, the presence of Montana, not to mention rubber footballs, and the stadium-themed lunch to which reporters were treated, reflects UPS' focus on the receiving side of the business, and it lends itself to football. Montana, who joked that the spokesperson role is a switch since, as quarterback, he was on the delivery side, will appear in a series of web videos promoting the new program.

Other marketing efforts, which Gershenhorn said will be primarily digital, include a sweepstakes designed to get consumers to pre-register at ups.com/mychoice/pr by Oct. 3, when the platform goes live. "We have a massive digital media plan a well as search marketing effort," he said, adding that the company will do direct-marketing efforts via on-package communications to the five million or so doors to which the company delivers every day.

Montana will appear in the sweepstakes promotion that dangles a range of sports packages, such as tickets to the NCAA Final Four, the PGA Tour, NCAA Big Twelve, and the company is also offering four tickets to any Live Nation concert in the U.S. The company will also be using an animated origami dinosaur made of missed-delivery slips as a mascot in web videos. "You will see lots of our friend on the UPS MyChoice microsite," said Gershenhorn.