Parcelforce Worldwide launches GBP1 million business ad campaign
Parcelforce Worldwide is launching its first above the line advertising campaign for six years following a major restructure of the business that has firmly positioned it as one of the UK’s leading express delivery companies.
The four week £1 million campaign, which launches on 17 March, focuses on national press and national and regional radio stations. The creative theme developed by Soup – ‘There when you need us’ – demonstrates that Parcelforce Worldwide understands and identifies closely with the needs of the modern business customer.
Over the past nine months Parcelforce Worldwide has reinvented itself as a time-guaranteed, express only delivery company and ended its role in the non-guaranteed three to five day delivery market.
Its association with slower delivery services had previously made it difficult to build its reputation and image as a high quality express parcel company.
The restructuring programme – the biggest single project in the business’s history – has been a success and has enabled Parcelforce Worldwide to drive up its performance with quality of service at its highest level for a decade.
Parcelforce Worldwide’s Sales and Marketing Director, Tim Brown, said: “This is an exciting time for Parcelforce Worldwide and it is important that we embark on an above the line campaign to drive home the message to businesses that we provide high quality express services and end any perceptions of us as a carrier in the lower quality end of the marketplace.”
Parcelforce Worldwide announced the radical restructure last spring following a decade of losses – partly caused by the drain on resources by its unprofitable non-guaranteed parcel operation.
As well as exiting the non-guaranteed market, Parcelforce Worldwide has reduced the capacity of its express network, cut the number of depots across the UK and almost halved its workforce, without making compulsory redundancies, while recruiting self-employed owner-drivers as part of a more flexible resourcing strategy.
“The programme has gone extremely well and the quality of service we are offering our customers, around 98 per cent, is one of the best, if not the best, in the express parcels market and we are on the path to profitability,” said Mr Brown.
“We have reduced our overhead costs and ended contracts which were either loss making or had extremely narrow profit margins. This has meant that our average per parcel revenue has increased but our customers are seeing the benefits of this through an excellent quality of service.”
