What’s better than doing your own advertising? Hiring your competition to do it for you. I came across this story on Design Taxi and couldn’t help but share. Unfortunately, I also came across this announcement on Mashable the next day about how this moment of advertising genius was in fact a stunt, presented as an internal concept by an agency not working with DHL. Either way, I think it’s still worth a look.

Supposing it were real: DHL recently used some clever guerrilla marketing tactics by hiring unsuspecting competitors like UPS and TNT to deliver very large boxes coated in temperature sensitive paint. The packages where shipped to hard-to-find locations in densely populated areas, leaving the delivery men to fumble with the oversized boxes as the cleverly disguised message of  “DHL is faster” slowly revealed itself.

The video has been watched nearly 5 million times with over half of those views occurring after the truth was revealed. While I can sympathize with the individual delivery men and the embarrassment this stunt caused, all in all this proved to be a powerful and memorable way to deliver the brand’s message.