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A NEW SPIN
ON BILLBOARDS
Beverage Industry
January, 2001
"..use other people's trucks and put your advertising on their
trucks, and they can travel where you want them to go."
One way that many companies - beverage and otherwise - have
beefed up their marketing efforts and are putting trucks to
work as billboards. Fleet branding has been around since the
early days of trucking, but recently, the ways and means of
decorating vehicles has been given a boost from printing and
material technology.
Trucks have become ubiquitous billboards. In some instances,
the truck billboard you may pass on a highway or city street
may just be that, a billboard. Or the well-designed truck panel
may have no relation to the product being transport inside
the truck.
Noam Shemel, Vice-President of Mobile Ad Group, New York, encourages
customer to look beyond beverage trucks to any local deliver
truck. "A distributor's truck may be where you want to
advertise, but they only have one or two trucks, says Shemel. "We
say, use other people's trucks and put your advertising on
their trucks, and they can travel where you want them to go.
People will think those trucks are delivering your products." If
a distributor's trucks are not wrapped with a brand, we fill
in the holes", says Shemel.
But the company can also take a fleet of trucks in a certain
area and put them to work for a marketer.
Popular among large
soft drink companies has been pressure-sensitive vinyl. These
images, with an adhesive back, are heat-sealed on to the truck.
Images are usually printed in 4 pieces per side and it's about
a 2-hour process to get the vinyl to adhere to the truck. In
the end, the vinyl image looks like part of the truck, rivets
and all. Some industry suppliers prefer framing systems, with
printed, flexible vinyl display panels that can be easily slipped
in and out of the frames, providing a greater array of marketing
options. Framed vinyl displays have a number of advantages
over pressure-sensitive vinyl, says Mobile Ad Group's Shemel,
including ease of use, ease of replacement and ease on capital
expenses.
Framing systems can be used on both sides, tops and backs of
the truck, and come in one piece for each side. They also look
like they are part of the truck and there are no ties or chords
to hold them on, just a framing system that holds them in place.
Better yet, he says, the truck doesn't have to be in the pristine
condition necessary for pressure-sensitive vinyl, as the frame
stands nearly one eigth-inch off the surface of the truck.
One
advantage to framed vinyl may be the resolution of the printed
material. With pressure-sensitive vinyl, resolution may be
nearly 500 dpi. With flex-face vinyl, it's closer to 400 dpi,
although Shemel says that visibility has never been an issue. "With
any type of truck, you are going to see the (image) from a distance." He
says.
Pricing, says Shemel, is usually more of factor for customers.
For flex-face, the framing will cost roughly $2,800 per truck
printing will run $800, with companies able to handle their own
installations. For pressure-sensitive materials, the cost will
be about $2,800, but with installation and removal, the cost
can leap to $4,500.
Trucks have become so much like rolling billboards that they
are rated the same way in terms of impressions made, generally
in terms of 25, 50 and 100 showings, which equate to 25, 50 and
100 percent of the population in a given area viewing an advertisement
during a day.
In Los Angeles, for example, a 10 x 20 billboard, similar in
size to a truck panel, would require 120 billboards to attain
a 25 showing, or be seen by 25 percent of the population. The
rate would run an average of $900 per billboard, according to
Shemel, or $108,000 per month and $324,000 for 3 months.
A truck
viewed by 56,000 people in Los Angeles, which would provide the
25 showing, would require 32 trucks. Charged at 3-month increments
of $1,995 per truck come to a grand total of $181,920 for the
same campaign on truck sides.
According to Shemel, that averages down to $1.50 per thousand
impressions, the lowest in the industry.
Shemel says 30 Sheet
boards are an even tougher proposition simply because a majority
of the board space won't be visible to most of the population. "You'd
be hard pressed to find the 120 boards and then you can't make
the impressions you were promised."
"The fleet is a
new form of advertising", says Shemel "It's street
level-in-your-face presence and it's recurring. People will believe
that the products being delivered are your products. It is as
simple as that. No company with only five employees has 40 trucks
on the road. People don't know it's advertising. They think it
is a big beverage company.' It must be good if I am seeing it
delivered everywhere.
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