FedEx Corp.'s marketing outreach is high-profile and well-known. Its sports partnerships include NASCAR, the National Football League and the Professional Golfers' Association of America. Its commercials have promoted the company as a “proud partner” not only of these sports organizations, but of businesses as well.

To underscore that approach, the company's “We understand” marketing theme has been replaced with the new “FedEx: Solutions that matter” tagline, created by BBDO New York.

“It's designed to highlight the breadth of our solutions and to showcase that FedEx offers much more than just shipping for our customers,” said Laurie Tucker, senior VP-corporate marketing. “The work will appeal not only to our customer base—small- and medium-sized businesses, larger companies and industries such as healthcare and automotive—but it is humorous and has broad consumer appeal as well.”

The new theme debuted last month during the NFL's season-opening game on NBC, with other components running in cinemas in Boston; Chicago; Memphis, Tenn.; New York; San Francisco; and Washington, D.C. Web videos feature the company's work with the healthcare and automotive verticals, as well as with small businesses.

Tucker has ramped up the company's social media strategy this year and expanded its presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. FedEx is using splashy designs on these platforms and expects great growth in social.

For the coming year, Tucker said, the company will enhance its search engine marketing and search engine optimization efforts, and it will implement more work focused on mobile.

“A great example of this in 2011 was our mobile execution of a golf club shipping campaign, which simulated an incoming call from your golf clubs,” Tucker said. “Mobile is growing rapidly, with 300 million smartphones shipped globally in 2010 and more than one billion Internet connections projected in 2012. We want to be where our customers are, and mobile is an excellent place to connect.” —C.H.