FedEx-Kinkos Commercial is Hilarious in its… Irony?

When I was studying graphic design in college, the only torture worse than a project’s final critique in front of an angry and critical professor was the night before, inevitably spent at Kinko’s. People would sigh and groan when it was time to go… almost like a “see you in hell” type of moment. And we spent so much money there: it was easy to hit $50 on 3 high quality color print outs, sometimes over $100 when it involved a multi-page document. What busted our budgets the most (and, as I understand, continues to do so) was the damned computer time, which was charged at something like 40c per minute.

I’m sorry Kinko’s, but let’s be honest: This isn’t the old times when people would come in and need to pay to “utilize a computer terminal” because they lacked one at home. Nowdays, your customers have a computer at their work office, store-room, and conference room, as well as one in their home office, living room, and kids’ room. They come in and sit at your computers so that they can purchase your service, which is printing (right?).

When you charge someone 40c a minute in order to purchase printed versions of their files you are practicing horrible customer service. That is like McDonalds charging customers to sit at the tables. When I (and many others) was a customer at your business I found myself racing against the clock (and my budget) to try and purchase your service before it was too late. Now, think about that: someone racing and sweating and stressing about the time as they sit in your business, because they are worried about how much money they are flushing down the toilet. How is that a positive customer experience? What added to the frustration is that, in 5 years of steady patronage, maybe 1 time was there someone waiting in line for me to finish.

Hmmm, where did all the above frustration come from? These bitter old memories were dredged up tonight when I saw the new FedEx Kinkos commercial (not the first time I’ve seen it, but it just now registered). A customer comes up to the desk, and asks for color copies of a report. “But these are black and white,” the worker says. Regardless, the customer wants them printed in color. The patient employee tries to explain that there is no point printing in color when the originals are black and white. The two go back and forth until the customer asks the man in line beside him, “Is it her or is it me?” to which the other man responds, “It’s you.”

I was completely floored by how perfect this commercial was in reflecting the “Kinkos Attitude.” The commercial seems to serve no purpose except to show the customer as an idiot, and the FedEx Kinkos worker as a longsuffering hero. This is a commercial for a company whose customer service has a reputation as being perhaps the worst in the world, short of the airline industry. The employees, almost always college students or art history and fine art graduates, are often short-tempered and exhausted by the burden of their great intelligence, which often far exceeds that of the customer. Instead of trying to fix this problem, they create a commercial which seems to stem from backroom guffaws amongst the base employees about how stupid the customers are: “This idiot came in with black and whites and asked for color copies! Muhahaha!”

Edit: In fairness, I should say that FedEx-Kinko’s “Like A Lawnchair” commercial was one of the best of 2007. Keep going in this direction… Ad magic is definitely happening here.

FedEx, you’re cool… though a bit overpriced. Kinko’s, the general rule of thumb in business is this: if there is ever a question as to whether the problem comes from the customer or the business, the answer is, “It’s You.”