Takes Off in Shanghai

In front of 30 Chinese and regional media, FedEx officially announced the first global deployment of its new fuel-efficient Boeing 777 Freighter (777F) in Shanghai in January.

The announcement required some careful planning. While the arrival of the aircraft was much anticipated, it had been previously announced. A further constraint was an inability to gain access to the aircraft for media purposes.

To differentiate this from previous announcements and to keep the story fresh, news angles were tailored to focus on the customer service benefits the aircraft’s arrival brought for China. The venue for the press conference was also carefully selected to maximize the media draw and the newly opened Park Hyatt Shanghai in the World Finance Centre successfully piqued media interest.

The results were solid. With over 80 media reports generated, 75% carried the principle service enhancement message and, having optimized the branding of the conference staging, 64% of the media reports contained at least one branded photo.

FedEx Panda Express

Brings Two New Arrivals to Chengdu

In February FedEx was commissioned with a special task – offering two American-born pandas a world-class flying experience from the US to Chengdu, China.

The delivery was part of FedEx’s long history of transporting precious cargoes. With such a high profile story, a global communications plan was developed to ensure that all media opportunities were maximized to gain exposure for FedEx. In the Asia Pacific region, a two-phased media outreach approach was used. First, a press release was issued in time with the panda’s pre-shipment preparations announcing FedEx’s support to the mission. The second phase was timed to coincide with the shipment of the pandas from Washington to Chengdu.

The pandas took off from the US in a blaze of publicity and arrived to a similar media blitz in China. So far, 244 pieces of media coverage have been monitored across the Asia Pacific region, over 92% of which mentioned FedEx.

Corporate social responsibility has become a more and more important part of corporate commitment in many multinational corporations. With this visually and emotionally engaging story, effective coordination and consistent message delivery were definitely the key to success.