High Off One Grand Entrance, DHL Vanishes into Horizon

We were hanging out at Advertising Week after this session when we came across Marc Lucas, the one-time ECD at Ogilvy, Manila.

It's not often ECDs want to talk without attacking us with blunt objects first, so we hung out for awhile and chatted. Eventually he started talking about DHL, one of the brands he worked with.

We don't know too much about DHL aside from that the trucks are yellow and it's got a huge client base in Third World countries. But apparently it tried holding its own against the States' Big Two for awhile.

Here's an ad where FedEx and UPS give each other a snarky head-nod while sitting across from one another at a railway stop. (Very BMW vs. Jaguar, but less sexy.) As they wait, absolutely dripping in self-importance, a train carrying cartloads of DHL trucks comes rushing by.

It's one of the better fuck-you's we've seen in the transport world lately, second only to this.

But hey, that DHL ad is from a year ago or more. Was that train helping transport messages, or helping the brand out of town?! Bring back the magic, DHL! We're sick of UPS and really have no complaints about FedEx but it would be nice to see some competition.