Launching UPS's anniversary mobile tour, spanning the course of 10 months, took considerable planning. Indeed, while Lori Lemmon, the director of the logistics giant’s centennial program, says actual details have been in the works for two years, company spokesperson Dan McMackin remembers ideas being floated in the late ’90s. “People really anticipated this thing,” he says.
“This thing” ended up as the Centennial Global Tour, a traveling exhibit targeting UPS customers and employees—the first event of its kind for the company. “Our main goal was to achieve employee pride and build customer relationships,” Lemmon says.Multifaceted and locally driven, the tour kicked off in January and will run through October, with the exhibit stopping in eight countries. “We decided we wanted to go to every district UPS has in the United States, and we wanted to reach every region in the world,” Lemmon says.
UPS hired St. Louis experiential marketing firm the Spark Agency to man the operation. Spark senior creative director Dan Reus began by dividing the tour into the three regions: East Coast, West Coast, and international. The East and West Coast regions are each headed by teams of six trained staffers who oversee and train local UPS employee volunteers in each market. (Spark’s St. Louis headquarters serve as an intelligence hub for the teams.) The number of local volunteers varies per city (depending on the number of RSVPs), and their positions within the company range from drivers and clerks to vice presidents. The international leg of the tour is a scaled-down version of the exhibit with a staff of four, due to lower attendance levels abroad. Shipping the pieces of the exhibit from one overseas city to another, of course, isn’t a problem. “Fortunately, UPS is a huge logistics company with access to hundreds of airplanes,” Reus says.
The exhibit folds out from two 53-foot trailers, creating an indoor-outdoor footprint of about 35,000 square feet that includes vehicle displays and kiddie activity booths. Typically held in the parking lot of a major UPS facility, the Centennial Global Tour lands in each city for two days—Friday is an intimate day for customers; Saturday is a larger event for employees, retirees, and their families. As of mid-May, the tour had hosted 28 events in 26 cities, including international stops in Mexico City and Neuss, Germany, reaching close to 54,000 Saturday visitors and 815 Friday guests. “While our employee base is the large reason behind this celebration, this is also an opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to our customers,” Lemmon says. “It may not affect our bottom line tomorrow, but it will deepen our relationship with our customers in the long run.”
Lemmon and Reus start working with each city six weeks in advance to go over the site-map logistics and local details. In San Francisco and New York, for example, the tour had to be held on top of parking decks—it “was a challenge for the tractor-trailers to get up a ramp,” Lemmon says. Each local team brings in a caterer, sends out invitations (from a template Spark created), and often coordinates its own entertainment—the St. Augustine High School marching band performed in New Orleans, a police department color guard took part in Los Angeles, and the Texas State University Ocean of Sound performed in Houston. In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom even declared April 21 to be “UPS Day” in the city.
What has been the tour’s biggest surprise so far? “With most mobile tours, you’re lucky to get people to stay for 30 minutes,” Reus says, “and we’re lucky because they’re usually staying for three hours.” Adds Lemmon, “It’s turning out better than we anticipated. We’ve had adverse conditions in 11 cities so far, and people are still coming out and participating.”
Maybe it’s the bathrooms. According to McMackin, when he, C.E.O. Mike Eskew, and several other senior managers attended the kickoff event in New Orleans on January 26, they were all shocked by the polished Kohler bathroom trailers. “We’ve gotten high marks in cleanliness and organizational layout,” says Lemmon, who asks employees to fill out post-event surveys on the company’s internal server.
The end of the UPS exhibit features an astronaut costume labeled with the UPS logo and the slogan “To the moon by noon. Wherever the future is going, we’re going too.” Says Lemmon, “This tour is a way for us to say, ‘Hey, we’ve achieved a significant milestone, and we are on our way to our second hundred years in business.’”
“This thing” ended up as the Centennial Global Tour, a traveling exhibit targeting UPS customers and employees—the first event of its kind for the company. “Our main goal was to achieve employee pride and build customer relationships,” Lemmon says.Multifaceted and locally driven, the tour kicked off in January and will run through October, with the exhibit stopping in eight countries. “We decided we wanted to go to every district UPS has in the United States, and we wanted to reach every region in the world,” Lemmon says.
UPS hired St. Louis experiential marketing firm the Spark Agency to man the operation. Spark senior creative director Dan Reus began by dividing the tour into the three regions: East Coast, West Coast, and international. The East and West Coast regions are each headed by teams of six trained staffers who oversee and train local UPS employee volunteers in each market. (Spark’s St. Louis headquarters serve as an intelligence hub for the teams.) The number of local volunteers varies per city (depending on the number of RSVPs), and their positions within the company range from drivers and clerks to vice presidents. The international leg of the tour is a scaled-down version of the exhibit with a staff of four, due to lower attendance levels abroad. Shipping the pieces of the exhibit from one overseas city to another, of course, isn’t a problem. “Fortunately, UPS is a huge logistics company with access to hundreds of airplanes,” Reus says.
The exhibit folds out from two 53-foot trailers, creating an indoor-outdoor footprint of about 35,000 square feet that includes vehicle displays and kiddie activity booths. Typically held in the parking lot of a major UPS facility, the Centennial Global Tour lands in each city for two days—Friday is an intimate day for customers; Saturday is a larger event for employees, retirees, and their families. As of mid-May, the tour had hosted 28 events in 26 cities, including international stops in Mexico City and Neuss, Germany, reaching close to 54,000 Saturday visitors and 815 Friday guests. “While our employee base is the large reason behind this celebration, this is also an opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to our customers,” Lemmon says. “It may not affect our bottom line tomorrow, but it will deepen our relationship with our customers in the long run.”
Lemmon and Reus start working with each city six weeks in advance to go over the site-map logistics and local details. In San Francisco and New York, for example, the tour had to be held on top of parking decks—it “was a challenge for the tractor-trailers to get up a ramp,” Lemmon says. Each local team brings in a caterer, sends out invitations (from a template Spark created), and often coordinates its own entertainment—the St. Augustine High School marching band performed in New Orleans, a police department color guard took part in Los Angeles, and the Texas State University Ocean of Sound performed in Houston. In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom even declared April 21 to be “UPS Day” in the city.
What has been the tour’s biggest surprise so far? “With most mobile tours, you’re lucky to get people to stay for 30 minutes,” Reus says, “and we’re lucky because they’re usually staying for three hours.” Adds Lemmon, “It’s turning out better than we anticipated. We’ve had adverse conditions in 11 cities so far, and people are still coming out and participating.”
Maybe it’s the bathrooms. According to McMackin, when he, C.E.O. Mike Eskew, and several other senior managers attended the kickoff event in New Orleans on January 26, they were all shocked by the polished Kohler bathroom trailers. “We’ve gotten high marks in cleanliness and organizational layout,” says Lemmon, who asks employees to fill out post-event surveys on the company’s internal server.
The end of the UPS exhibit features an astronaut costume labeled with the UPS logo and the slogan “To the moon by noon. Wherever the future is going, we’re going too.” Says Lemmon, “This tour is a way for us to say, ‘Hey, we’ve achieved a significant milestone, and we are on our way to our second hundred years in business.’”
Two 53-foot trailers travel to each U.S. city hosting the UPS Centennial Tour.
Photo: Courtesy of the Spark Agency
A custom-made 14-foot globe stands at the entrance to the UPS Centennial Tour.
Photo: Courtesy of the Spark Agency
The two 53-foot trailers, which will travel to each U.S. city hosting the exhibit, create a fold-out 35,000-square-foot site map.
Photo: Courtesy of the Spark Agency
The iWall is an interactive map that explores UPS’s history.
Photo: Courtesy of the Spark Agency
A touch-screen wall highlights notable achievements and contributions made by UPS employees from around the world.
Photo: Courtesy of the Spark Agency
Kids can race mini UPS trucks on a 30-foot ramp.
Photo: Courtesy of UPS
As it did in Mexico City, UPS translates all exhibit materials for events in non-English speaking countries.
Photo: Courtesy of the Spark Agency
At the Manhattan stop, the exhibit took place on a second-floor parking deck alongside the Hudson River.
Photo: Courtesy of the Spark Agency
A restored package car depicts the company’s past.
Photo: Courtesy of the Spark Agency
The luncheons take place on Fridays and areintimate setting for customers—typically major shippers doing a significantamount of business with UPS—to get more acquainted with the brand.
Photo: Courtesy of the Spark Agency
A space suit with the UPS logo, positioned at the end of the exhibit, is a suggestion of things to come.
Photo: Courtesy of the Spark Agency
