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Marketing Marvel: Trucks Add Fuel to American Advertising
Story By Daniel Sage
Let's face it, as far as advertising goes, sometimes bigger
is better. And in the ad space business, a semi-trailer
is about as big as it gets.
For the past few years
the U.S. trucking industry has involved in a movement to make advertising more
effective and affordable for the businesses whose products they carry. Now,
after much study and testing, many are starting to realize, this
marketing-in-motion tool is not only cheaper but also more powerful than most other
traditional advertising media.
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Fleet trucks are no longer simply delivering products - they're
delivering advertising messages as well. Some of the biggest
names in the transportation industry have signed on to
offer ad space including Roadway, Swift, Yellow, Supervalue,
Trailways and Greyhound.
Some
see it as the 9th form of advertising - fluid and mobile
to capture the attention of a consumer constantly in motion.
It’s common sense advertising that's not yet very
common. - the ultimate form of Guerilla
Marketing. Mobile ad companies are springing up across
the country and banking on the visual impact, constant
motion and the sheer size of this medium to put American
businesses and brands back into the ad game.
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The question for
advertisers is, what would it do for your business if you could reach over half
of American on any given business day and get your advertising noticed over 90%
of the time? Wherein out door media now reaches 96% of Americans, mobile media
is rapidly becoming one of the best tools for advertisers to communicate their
messages.
Right now, mobile
(truckside) advertising may be the most direct way to reach the nearly 150
million people that commute every business day. With outdoor advertising space
at a premium, Truckside Ads serve as readily available, highly affordable
advertising space and studies show that the impact ratings of mobile media
trucks scored higher than all other outdoor media – combined. (Thibodeaux Research Inc.)
Studies and campaigns conducted over the past 5 years show
truckside advertising can deliver between 30,000 and 70,000
impressions per day, depending if it is a regional or
national operator. Depending in the market, metro truckside
ads are seen by 10 -14 million pares of eyes a year. An
astounding 18 million Number of annual impressions can
be generated by a truck in a DMA market of more than 5,000,000
people. Some mobile billboard campaigns have produced
over 150,000 impressions in a single hour in Las Vegas,
NV.
This form of mobile marketing can saturate any size U.S.
market, where you routinely have trucks and trailers that travel hundreds of
miles a day or around a city block. A mobile campaign can run as many weeks or
months as you wish, exposing an audience to a graphic ad showcase with many repeat
viewings for up to 10 hours a day.
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Our Mobile Society
We Americans are very
much a mobile society. Some 150 million of us commute every business day,
travel some 300 miles on average a week and over 15,000 miles per year.
(Collectively, over 3 trillion miles a year) We spend on average 15 hours a
week in our cars driving on some 4 million miles of U.S. roads. For many
people, possibly most, the time spent in the car when they could see
advertising is several times the amount of time they have to devote to
traditional in-home media. (Arbitron Study)
People are commuting greater distances, and as congestion
grows worse, the traffic is moving more slowly and as Airlines become more
crowded with security concerns and longer delays people are returning to their
cars for cross-country travel. Many people would not even consider air travel
for trips less than 500 miles. Heavy vehicle mileage and long commutes are
becoming the norm. An estimated 90% of the population uses the highways
regularly (PUH: People Using Highways). Highway travelers are probably the very
best audience and the mobile-billboard ad is welcome entertainment, and there
is little competition for this audience's attention as there is so little ad
clutter.
The increase in travel is making it harder for advertisers
to reach their target with conventional advertising methods. With more
Americans commuting, more vehicles on the road and longer commute
times/distances, reaching them effectively between 7 am and 7 pm has become a
challenge for traditional media. There is clearly tremendous growth
potential for out-of-home, in-car advertising, as this is where the audience
has gone. The findings of a recent Arbitron Outdoor Media Study
seem to suggest truckside advertising is the perfect answer to reaching today’s
consumer:
According to the recent Arbitron Outdoor Media Study “media
that targets vehicle drivers/passengers reach 96% of Americans weekly and
outdoor media that targets pedestrian traffic reach 79 percent weekly.” Another
important finding of the study is that over one-third of Americans shop near
work. Among those who work full-time, 62 percent say they shop closer to home
and 35 percent indicate they shop equally near home/work or shop most at work.
"This indicates that advertisers cannot just target consumers who live
near their retail locations; they must also consider the sizable group of
consumers who shop near work when constructing their media plans," says
Jacqueline Noel, director, sales and marketing, Arbitron Outdoor. "By
examining the results of the study, marketers can identify out-of-home media
that have the ability reach the working crowd, as well as gain important
insight into outdoor advertising's role in the overall media mix."
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More significant findings: Late night TV news is not seen by
56% of all consumers. 54% of all consumers do not watch morning TV. 25% do not
watch evening news. In fact, today, 29% of consumers do not read a newspaper.
(Source: OAAA 4/2001) Now we’re talking about Arbitron (radio ratings) and the guys
at Nielson (TV ratings). These are the companies that provide the accepted
price quotients for broadcast advertising. They have seen growth in truckside
(advertising) while others mediums have stagnated, and they’re doing something
about it.
The Big Out-of-Doors Audience
According to OAAA chief marketing officer Stephen Freitas,
"Outdoor advertising is experiencing unprecedented
growth in resources and revenue, and truckside advertising
plays a key role in fueling this growth by providing advertisers
an important new planning option." "For the
past few years, TruckSide advertising has been promoted
based on cost effectiveness and ability to enter markets
where conventional out-of-home advertising methods are
limited or unavailable, "Now there's conclusive proof
of TruckSide's value as a powerful marketing tool that
impacts awareness, attitudes and opinions. “Over
the past few years, the outdoor advertising industry has
evolved into a rejuvenated media force… that’s
poised to compete aggressively in the 21st century media
fray.”
Out-of-door media is typically available even in towns that
are too small to have a radio station or a local newspaper. The system of using
vending truck billboards can provide advertising opportunities right down to
the neighborhood level, which may be useful if your campaign is concentrating
on inner city residents. Truckside advertising has the ability to target all
segments of our society. The versatility and sheer impact of truckside
advertising allows advertisers to capture the attention of business decision
makers and consumers during part of their daily routines.
To quote a recent TIME
Magazine article entitled “Getting on Board - An Old Advertising Medium is
being Reinvented” TIME says “Thanks to the Web, cell phones and applications
like Bluetooth and text messaging, one of the oldest ad media is suddenly one
of the industry's most fashionable. U.S. marketers spent $6.3 billion last year
on out-of-home campaigns, as billboard advertising is called--an 8% increase
from the year before, making outdoor the second fastest-growing ad medium after
the Internet. And at a time when consumers have become increasingly mobile and
increasingly overloaded with information, the outdoor ad industry is touting
the billboard, the updated version as well as the old standby, as the last
powerful way to reach a mass audience efficiently"
Stationary billboards work well if you can secure a great location. The problem
is, the best billboard space has a waiting list and low cost billboard space
won't be visible to most of the population. Truckside Ads routinely cover an
area filled with hundreds of billboards in a single day. This is really the
last major untapped ad medium, there's nothing else left.
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Mobile Might
Mobile marketing campaigns offers better targeting and more
frequency. For instance, a zip code analysis as the truck passes
through a particular zip code, where you will pull up census data linked to
those zip codes, such as the age of people in that area, their income, family
structure, etc…It's a street level-in-your-face presence and it's
recurring. People will believe that the products being delivered are your
products. Truckside Ads deliver a major
branding effect and that is a wonderful benefit.
In short, one truckside ad with a great graphic can generate
millions of impressions per year. Imagine the results with a photographic image
larger than life getting your company noticed, day in and day out - for 1/30th
the rate of a prime time TV Ad. The monthly cost of an ad trailer is around the
national average cost of a static billboard. Trucks have become so much like
rolling billboards that they are rated the same way in terms of impressions
made, wherein all advertising media is measured in terms of cost per thousand
(CPM) - truckside advertising is around $1.50 - currently the lowest in the
industry.
Does truckside and mobile billboard advertising really work?
Many of Americas top Brands and Fortune 500 companies are already taking
advantage of it. McDonald’s, Procter and Gamble, IBM, American Express,
AT&T, Bank of America, GM, Delta Air Lines, Kraft Foods, Saab, NBC, Burger
King, Toyota, Cadbury Shweppes, Bic Pens, XM Radio,…have all successfully
implemented truckside-advertising and mobile-billboard campaigns to reach their
target audiences where they work, play and congregate.
A
surprising statistic shows that again, while outdoor media reaches over 96
percent of all U.S. consumers, most advertising media budgets only allocate it
one-three percent. Wherein all advertising media is measured in terms of cost
per thousand (CPM); truck-side advertising is around $1.50 - the lowest in the
industry.
This is an interesting point considering the fact that it is
the one medium that does not require the consumer to purchase
anything or subscribe to something to view it. (TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine,
Internet, Direct Mail & Yellow
Pages all rely on ads to exist…)
Today’s’ marketing must engage the consumer or it will not register - at all. When the average American
is exposed to over 600,000 media messages a year - any medium that
actually breaks through the advertising clutter and white noise is indeed
impressive - and most of the experts are in agreement - that’s just what this
one does.
This
Article supplied by: www.MobileAdMarketing.com (MAM offers the Largest Inventory of Mobile Advertising Media in America - Over
300,000 Ad Trucks and Trailers in 300 U.S. Markets)
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NOTE: We launched our first PR Campaign on Friday and landed
in Forbes, Hoovers and Merrill Lynch in 3 days. (Links to these PR articles are
on our site) We want to present this Industry and its Value to the Advertising
World - we believe it will help everyone (Agencies and Brands) trying to find
new avenues of promotion. We have over 300,000 Ad Trucks and Trailers in 300
U.S. Markets.
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