Pyramid Visuals Blog

June 2010  –  Pyramid Visuals were approached by a TV production company who required three lorries to be branded for the shooting of the new Crunchy Nut advertisement.  Having carried out a site visit of the vehicles, we provided our expertise as to the logistics involved in delivering the job on time and in budget, the correct choice of material to use – a substrate that could be easily applied / removed given the tight turnaround of 3 days from start to finish of the job, colour matching the vinyl in line with the product branding, how the vehicles would be branded by our professional in-house fitters and providing CG visuals by our in-house studio of how the vehicles would look when branded.  Each vehicle was initially sprayed with a base cleanser to ensure the vinyl would successfully bond to the bodywork and then wrapped on all sides using a specifically colour-matched Avery vinyl.  Once complete, Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut branded cut vinyl decals were applied over the top of the base vinyl in accordance with the artwork and the Crunchy Nut branding.  The three vehicles were completely wrapped, branded and ready for filming in 3 working days.  After filming, the three vehicles were subsequently returned to Pyramid Visuals to be stripped of all branding and returned to their original condition and colour – a process that took 2 working days to complete.

If you haven’t seen it yet, below is the advert that aired on TV

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBoLauicqfw

Take a quick behind the scenes look at the prepping and wrapping of the vehicles, watch this video

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyllFBTBopA

Here’s the Audi Ad featuring the hotrods that were wrapped by Pyramid Visuals.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c9GmwTiuGk

Justin Murray

Pyramid Visuals Ltd

Marketing budgets have been slashed in recent years, but vehicle wrapping practically sells itself to larger companies that are interested in reaching potentially hundreds of thousands of viewers over the short-term. Striking a deal with a big brand name can drive significant revenues for your shop.

But let’s face it. Most of your prospects are probably neighborhood businesses. So, how do you seal the deal with those business owners who are still trying to decide whether or not an investment in vehicle wrapping will pay off for them? After all, we’re not talking about a few dollars for vehicle graphics here. Total vehicle wraps can be a major capital expenditure for smaller companies, like hair salons, restaurants and the like.

Lucky for you, leading auto wrapping shops, industry trade associations and research firms have been collecting case studies and viewer data that make your job as salesman much easier.

Benefits of Outdoor Media

You can start the sales process by explaining to your customer the general benefits of outdoor media. Outdoor media play a vital role in the media mix, according to a study by Arbitron, Inc., an international media and marketing research firm serving outdoor media, radio broadcasters, cable companies, advertisers and advertising agencies in the United States and Europe, because it reaches consumers missed by other media and enhances exposure of other media. Outdoor media reach consumers not exposed or only lightly exposed to newspaper and local television, for example, and are complimentary to radio campaigns.

Outdoor media also reaches the entire socioeconomic spectrum of Americans, according to the study. People with heavy vehicle mileage and long commutes are more difficult to reach with both the newspaper — almost one out of three Americans do not read a daily newspaper anyway — and local TV news broadcasts. On the contrary, the study showed that virtually every American (96 percent) travels in a vehicle each week as either a driver or a passenger.

So by nature, commuters are an exceptional advertising target in terms of both income and consumption habits. Thirty-five percent of heavy commuters come from households earning $75,000+, compared to only 23 percent for the U.S. average income profile. This group is likely to be aged between 25 and 54.

Moreover, the Arbitron study concludes consumers that are reached repeatedly with a message show higher advertiser awareness, brand recall and purchase behavior. Vehicle wrapping, then, offers advertisers an excellent opportunity to reach commuters on the highways and city streets.

“Wrapped vehicles not only place messages in front of target consumers, they also provide the opportunity for direct customer contact through coupon distribution, sampling and other promotional tactics,” notes Stephen Freitas, spokesperson for the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA).

Vehicles by the Numbers

Beyond communicating the traditional benefits of outdoor advertising, you can also cite numbers that will pique the interest of even your most frugal prospects.

“The cost of advertising over the life of the vehicle is a miniscule amount,” says Peter Bearth, director of Spectrum Media Group in Dallas, a division of J Perez Associates.

How does he know? New non-public transportation campaigns are being measured and the results will help you gauge the number of vehicles your client needs to wrap or the number of hours the vehicle must be driven in order to reach the desired audience levels in their markets. According to the Transportation Advertising Council, a division of the OAAA, vehicle advertising generates between 30,000-70,000 daily vehicular impressions.

“The vehicles are often equipped with Global Positioning Satellite tracking systems, which can provide detailed vehicle tracking information and, in some cases, audited reports necessary for monitoring the effectiveness of an advertising campaign,” says Freitas.

Driving Revenues, a vehicle-advertising firm in Washington, broke those numbers down even further and compared vehicle wrapping head-on against other forms of advertising. Here is what they found a $20,000 investment buys:

· Vehicle signage garners about 8.4 million impressions in a 12-month period.

· Radio attracts 900,000 listeners in six weeks with 10 to 12 30-second spots.

· Value Pak offers a reach of 600,000 with 100,000 addresses per drop and your client is just one of many advertisers included in the packet.

· Direct mail reaches 20,000 names with one post card mailer.

· Seven city buses get 600,000 impressions in two months.

· Billboards get 700,000 impressions in one month.

Case Studies Prove the Point

Autowraps, Inc., a mobile sampling company in New York City, charges between $2,000 and $4,000 for a vehicle wrap that lasts for three years. In this scenario, the return on the investment could be even greater than the figures listed above. Autowraps owner Daniel Shifrin insists that there is no other form of advertising for which small businesses can opt that comes even close to the cost per impression of vehicle wrapping.

“An advertisement in the yellow pages costs up to $15,000 for one year for a display ad,” says Shifrin. “And your competitors are right there with you and you have to wait for someone to decide to pick up the yellow pages.”

Let’s look at some real-life examples that prove the point.

Autowraps initially wrapped 10 VW Bugs for Dreyer’s Ice Cream. The cars featured Dreyer’s Dreamery logo, an American flag and some landscaping. VW owners were selected from Autowraps’ database based on their demographic driving patterns and personal demographics. Owner/drivers were paid a monthly fee for two months to drive their wrapped vehicles around pre-determined routes. The selected routes were based on traffic and population flows during peak hours and weekend exposure in specific locations. Each vehicle accumulated at least 500,000 impressions per month.

“From the day we wrapped our first Bug we have been inundated by people who have seen the Bugs and want to wrap their cars,” says David Ritterbush, vice president of marketing for Dreyers Ice Cream.

By the second week of the launch, Dryers had received such an overwhelming response that they added another 11 vehicles to the campaign. The “Sweet Fleet” was also driven through grocery store and convenience store parking lots where the drivers would get out of their vehicles and hand out coupons. Other successful events included drivers going to baseball games and other venues where the Sweet Fleet cars would be seen by thousands of people at one time.

JetBlue Airways contracted Autowraps to wrap nine VW Bugs for a four-week program in which drivers drove the cars eight hour a day, six days a week to generate awareness for the airline’s new route from Long Beach to JFK. The cars featured the JetBlue logo and colors with information about the new route and were driven through targeted high traffic areas. The vehicles were driven in groups of two or three to attract even more attention. The result was more than 6.75 million impressions in the month-long period.

While these are examples of large companies, Shifrin says vehicle wrapping is just as effective for smaller businesses that wrap one vehicle and drive it along normal routes as they do every day business. “We are wrapping cars for real estate agents and bars and restaurants and sun tanning places every kind of business you can imagine,” he says. “It’s cost-effective and it works well.”

Indeed, as Shifrin notes, wrapped vehicles are one of the only mediums that people make an effort to view. Could vehicle advertisers like Nike, Reebok, Proctor & Gamble, Lycos Sports, Kraft Foods and Coca-Cola be wrong?

Justin Murray
Pyramid Visuals Ltd

After researching the many different companies on the internet that provide this service it has become more apparent that the demand for this alternative form of promotional advertising has increased considerably over the last 2 years. Small businesses, large corporations, media outlets and others that want to attract attention are turning to vehicle advertising as a means to that end. There is no doubt that there is lots of value to be made in wrapping vehicles. Vehicle wrapping is fast becoming one of the hottest forms of outdoor advertising. Digitally generated graphics printed on to vinyl and ‘wrapped’ on to vehicles

The competitive market is expanding considerably in this field and most companies that provide vehicle livery service and signage, promote heavily, their vehicle wrapping capabilities, on their websites with a impressive array of their completed work.

Because of the flexibility of the materials used, customers are allowed to be more creative in design and can be more easily accommodated to achieve the desired end result.

Vehicle wrapping and vinyl car wrap

Regardless of the brand name, experts stress the use of cast over calendared vinyl for vehicle wrapping. While calendared vinyl starts out as a solid and is melted and formed into a sheet, cast vinyl starts out as liquid. The end result is that calendared vinyl has a memory of being something else and cast vinyl does not. In application, if you use calendared vinyl over a rivet, then it will tent because calendared vinyl tends to shrink a bit. Cast vinyl doesn\’t shrink so it allows installers to go over rivets, corrugation and complex curves that run both horizontally and vertically with greater ease and longer-lasting performance.

Most large companies that want to advertise on their vehicles don’t have to be sold on vehicle wraps. But the high cost compared to traditional vehicle graphics will cause some individual operators and small business owners to cringe. This is because when customers look at the initial costs they think it’s a lot compared to normal vehicle graphics and do not think of it as their best marketing opportunity.
Maybe one avenue to be explored to overcome this train of thought would be to work with vehicle financing companies to work the price of the wrap in to the lease.

Getting the customer to stretch their imagination and visualise the greater impact that this would generate, rather than normal vehicle graphics, is the key.

The first virtue of vehicle wraps is visibility. They will always get attention. Vehicle wraps make great “brochures”, as long as viewers have sufficient time to review an offering’s benefits. Their effectiveness as an ad medium can suffer. Vehicle wraps may suffer from too much “background noise.” Effective design is achieved through simplicity, clarity, crispness, balance and punch. How many wraps have you noticed that failed to convey a simple, clear message? Does the wrap convey value to viewers or does it just shout, “Notice me!” like a commercial that entertains without leaving a meaningful product message?

A few examples of the business advantages are..

They can provide exposure in urban places and motorways
Allow advertising where no billboard space exists giving geographic and demographic flexibility.

A less intrusive and annoying form of advertising or promotion
Vehicles can be stripped of wrapping with no damage paintwork. Great for companies that lease vehicles.
Cars, Vans, Trucks, Lorries, Buses, Trains, Boats, Yachts, Bicycles, Farm Vehicles maybe Aircraft ? Just a few examples of vehicles that wrapping could be applied. Maybe in the future even the general public will turn to a vehicle wrap instead of a new ‘paint job’ for their beloved mode of transport. Certainly it would be a cheaper alternative for a ‘colour change’ whilst keeping the original paint work just incase they got bored!

What is Vehicle wrapping ?

Outdoor media has become a vital element in advertising and the media mix. It plays a complementary role to several advertising tools and can also stand-alone.

Outdoor has become a multi-billion pound industry that includes roadsides, above and below ground ads – and most recently, moving vehicles.

When we hear about outdoor advertising our thoughts automatically gravitate toward billboards and storefront signs. One medium within the outdoor arena that is sometimes overlooked is vehicle wrapping. Vehicle wrap offers an advertising tool that doesn’t wait to be seen but goes out and proactively markets itself. This approach is quickly becoming an outdoor standard as a cost-effective complement to billboards.

Long commutes are becoming more acceptable as the population moves farther out into the suburbs. These longer commutes also make it harder to reach potential customers. Those are prime demographics for most advertisers. And what better way to reach them than by sitting next to them for a couple of minutes at a traffic light? The vehicle wrap can be thought of as a rolling billboard that’s in constant movement and covers vast areas (including the places all the other media can’t reach). Wherever consumers travel in the course of a day a vehicle wrap is sure to be there, driving your message home.

Vehicle wrapping is the new mobile outdoor advertising medium and seems to be popping up in every major city in the UK and abroad. Wrapping vehicles is about placing large detailed decals. Applying them to vehicles is a very sophisticated process involving being able to print on the vinyl films and perfectly cover the vehicle with that advertisement. A good wrap must be able to cover the windows but not impede visibility and its vinyl materials must be weather resistant to heat, UV, cold and wind. Adherence to the vehicle shell is important, as the wrap must stay on without it peeling off, before purposely being pulled off. Lastly, the vinyl must be easily removed without damaging the vehicle surface with an adhesive residue or even worse, stripping the exterior paint off the vehicle.
car & van vinyl wrapping