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MOTORWAY MARKETING
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Trailer advertising is becoming big business — and for the haulier ifs lucrative and increasingly convenient. Jennifer Ball looks at how it's maturing.
Two years ago truck advertising was still a relatively new phenomenon but since then a number of companies have sprung up offering operators the chance to boost their profits by hiring out their trailer sides to advertising agencies.
It's been said before, not least by Commercial Motor, that trucks arc the ideal travelling billboard for advertisers.A 13.6m trailer is equivalent to a 48-sheet poster site — and it's not stuck in one place either.
Jonathan Bramley, MD of In Your Space, has no background in road haulage; he simply saw a gap in market when he finished his degree. Since its launch five years ago the firm has signed up 2,000 trucks and expects to double its turnover this year to Om.
Its biggest money spinner to date was the Department for Transport's Tiredness Kills, take a Break campaign.The advert ran on 170 trucks travelling a total of 21 million miles.
Research after seven weeks found that nearly half of all long-distance car drivers remembered seeing the ad; among truck drivers that figure rose to 62%.
Bramley believes truck advertising has a bright future: 'As more and more advertisers include the medium on their communication schedules the potential is enormous and we have yet to even scratch the surface. So long as the contractors continue to drive the medium through accountability and professionalism the sector will see double-digit growth for at least the next 10 years" RoadAds, one of the first truck advertising companies to be featured in CM, estimated that an operator could make almost £250,000 from a 12month campaign involving 100 trucks (04 9 May 2002). MD Nigel Petty admits that it has been hard to get the market up and running because the advertising sector as a whole was depressed and advertisers stuck to traditional methods of advertising such as TV and billboards.
But he reports that demand is beginning to soar: "Advertisers have begun to recognise that this has great potential. A static poster advert will lose its value within 10 days as the same people see it every day on their way to work or carrying out the school run.An advert on a truck will have a larger target audience as it travels to different places at different times on different days so it can run for much longer successfully — therefore the actual physical production of the advert has more value."
One of its most recent campaigns was the launch of Bruce Springsteen's Essentials album release. Over 20 trucks targeted key cities outside London.including Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The trucks were chosen to reach a city centre audience during the day as well as fellow motorway users— they were fitted with speakers that played the chorus from Born in the USA as the truck drove around city centres.
Multi-media
Matt Fuller, planning director for Sony Music, says the campaign was a great success: "Sony is one of the leading music industry brands and we have developed our artists' popularity by innovative and tactical advertising. To launch the Springsteen album we used trucks that fitted the audience profile perfectly.
"Not only did we produce dynamic creative to wrap the truck but we also placed audio on the trucks to assault the second sense of hearing to reinforce album awareriess.This campaign was core to our advertising strategy and was born out by our excellent launch position in the charts.As such, we and SONY intend to use this medium again in the future."
Isle of Sheppey-based Keymark Services, which runs 11 HGVs, shows that smaller fleets can benefit from advertising deals too. Last year eight of its trucks were used in a threemonth advertising campaign for Abbey National. Keymark's Lorraine March was so pleased with its success that she has just signed up the fleet to anew campaign for Sloggi underwear: "We do a lot of work in south-east England and we also do Continental work. Abbey National wanted to target the M25, and most of our trucks run in this area.
Pure profit "In fact figures showed that there were around 70 million sightings of the adverts on the trucks as they trundled around the country. We made around £8000 from the Abbey adverts which is great as there is no initial outlay so the money goes straight to the bottom line. Anything extra that helps to cover the rising cost of fuel or the cost of truck maintenance has got to be welcomed."
One concern that many operators have with truck advertising is the downtime while the advert is put on their vehicles.Agripa, one of the newest vehicle advertising companies on the market.says it has solved this problem with the patented Fleet Media system.This enables operators to change the message on their trucks within minutes.
The promotional message is digitally printed onto mesh panels that slide into a lightweight PVC frame fitted to the vehicle sides.The system incorporates retro-reflective contour markings around the perimeter of the vehicle: these have been granted European approval by the Vehicle Certification Agency By the end of this year Agripa expects to sign up its 2,000th truck (it was launched 18 months ago) and operations director David Lutton, expects to reach 4,000 vehicles by the end of 2005.
"While some companies use vinyl to cover the truck ours is made of PVC mesh so takes only 20 minutes it change so there is little down time for the trucks. It is also light and aerodynamic so will not impact on fuel consumption." he says.
"We tend to have larger fleets such as supermarkets using our system because they have more accountability about where they are going and will have certain trucks on predefined routes between their depots and their stores. We have 100 litters across the UK that are trained to fit the system."
Every little helps
One of Agripa's biggest clients is Tesco, which is using truck advertising to promote brands that it sells such as Warburton and Paramount Films.The Tesco fleet has since carried a dozen national and regional campaigns generating more than £2.5m in booking for the new medium.
Bill Pennell,Tesco's head of revenue generation, says: The use of Agripa's system on our fleet has proved to be an effective way to raise the profile of our brands it represents a huge broadcast media opportunity, which we are keen to exploit."
Some operators may not been keen to hand over the whole of their truck to third-party advertising because they still want to display their own livery. This is something which Adtruck hopes to address.The recently launched firm distinguishes itself from other companies by allowing advertisers to buy a 900x1,000rnm advert on the rear of a truck.
Adtruck director Chris Owen says: 'Most companies are put off national campaign as the magazines and newspapers are too costly. But truck advertising is an effective low-cost format with national coverage.This is ideal for smaller companies that are looking for a national presence on a low budget who currently advertise only on the weLt:' Having just signed up its first haulier — Derek Linch of Romney Marsh, Kent —the firm is looking for similar operators with white space on the back of their vehicles for other campaigns The pioneers in this sector offer different formats for advertising but they all agree on one thing: this is a growth market, and one that any operator running a smart fleet can benefit from. III