DHL Pranks Competing Delivery Services Having Them Ship Boxes Emblazoned With 'DHL is Faster'

Here's an interesting prank. Claiming it has more vehicles, more employees and more locations "in most countries," the brand (or so it seems...we have reached out for clarification) decided to have it's competitors advertise for it.

Boxes were coated with a temperature sensitive paint that originally appeared black but upon warming up during delivery would reveal the message, "DHL is Faster."

The entire prank was, of course, filmed and placed on YouTube where it is so new, it's still displaying 301+ views. Time will tell if it catches on and garners the kind of publicity the brand was looking to so cheaply achieve.

And yes, it is suspicious the video is not on the brand's official YouTube channel. It is, however, on German agency Jung von Matt Neckar's site.

UPDATE: As we suspected, this is not a brand-approved effort. Well, sort of. DHL confirmed to The Consumerist:

"This was not something that was initiated by DHL. The video was created by an external agency for their own internal competition. We were aware in advance of the intention to use it for this purpose. We were not aware of any plans to share it externally."

Of course this denial could just be part of the ruse.