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Oil NG ESSAGE
Page 42
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Trucks and trailers have always been used as moving billboards by hauliers; now some operators are beginning to hire out this space to ad agencies. Is this an easy way to boost your profits? Jez Abbott reports.
Amarriage between a building society and a haulier is expected to prove lucrative for both parties. Keymark, based on the Isle of Sheppey, hopes to turn heads and a tidy profit by carrying adverts on its trucks for Abbey National. The moving billboards target hauliers, and eight of Keyrnark's 4oft attic trailers carry a bold livery that carries more than an echo of Eddie Stobart's colours. The message follows the theme of Abbey National's TV adverts: "Hauliers have enough to worry about because life's complicated enough."
Lorraine March, finance administrator at Keymark, has been looking at lorry ads for two years in a bid to offset rising fuel and fixed costs. What's held her firm back in the past is the low potential return.
Static hoarding
"The average refrigerated trailer costs us £45,000 to buy, and we take off our livery to put the customer's advert further and wider than static hoarding could," she explains. "Sadly the ad pioneers expected to get away with paying us Liao a month."
That all changed when Keymark struck a deal with the bank and outdoor-media corn
pany RoadAds. They pay the haulier £250 per month per truck. That's still modest, but if the trial works 25 trucks will roll and Keymark Services will aim to bump up its rate.
RoaciAds MD Nigel Petty says: "We do not ask hauliers to err from their normal routes but we want the trucks kept clean. The bank aims to reach small businesses, which are among the biggest road users, and therefore advertisers increasingly look to trucks. ABC social groups drive more miles than D E Fs and are a key target audience."
Retailers have caught on and are following US trend setters, he says. Two major British companies, believed to be an airline and a food producer, are starting trials in the next two months.
Each self-adhesive vinyl sheet carried by Keymark's curtainsiders costs around LI,200 to produce. Petty says it is one of the toughest vinyls on the market but is easy to remove. For good measure he offers a warranty to cover damage to trailers when taking off the fabric.
However, not everyone in the advertising industry shares Petty's enthusiasm for trailer adverts. A spokes woman for the UK's biggest outdoor agency, Clear Channel, says: "Trucks ai vans tend to stray all over the place, inclu ing motorways. The beauty of advertising' taxis, for example, is that they stay in c centres with mass target audiences."
A typical two-week billboard campaign 1,000 or more hoardings costs several the sands of pounds, and John Attwood, MD J8I.M Attwood near Heathrow, believ hauliers are not being paid enough to repla their own advertising message with someo else's. "It is cheap advertising and that's w we won't do it," he says. "We invest little advertising and leave it to our 35 vans ai artics. Even an annual ad fee of Lio,00c truck—under L2oo a week—would be chez "The most I've ever been offered is .tr,oe which does not compare with the money billboards. Advertising on trucks is untapp but it needs the right marketing and costini If Stobart's 500 trailers notched up Poop( each he's on km."
Newcastle's Simpson Bros also refuses turn its 200 trailers into roving billboarc except as part of a deal with establish haulage clients. "We've been approach
ee times in a decade but the !a always fizzles out," says nsport manager Brian isley. "Curtainsiders and artrk cost up to £3,000. How do know vinyls and inks won't ve marks? Is it cost-effective anging panels every four mths? And who changes !m, given trailers are often ated all over the place?"
Viedia group Coltas says it ently launched Spedian to -Aver some of those questions. frame-mounted vinyl avoids ,stly and time-consuming wall?ering methods"; panels can changed in under an hour by ined installers. The metal me is stuck to the truck with novable adhesives and the ad leis are mounted on mushgn-headed clips.
:oltas chief executive Lawrence Craig says: iccess depends on applying and changing aels easily. Vinyls can take off paint and ew-in frames make holes in the lorry."
oard changes
edian costs about £10,000 for four board inges, says Craig: "Billboard advertising is average iso,000 for two changes." other key factor is truck routes, he adds— of the biggest worries for advertising firms ack of control: a lorry parked in a depot for eral days is out of sight and out of mind. -lowever Pole Star Space Applications has med up with Articulate Communications gauge ad coverage with satellite tracking tems. NavTrak also has a system, used ide Keymark's trucks to record journeys. ta is combined with historical information traffic flows, speeds and congestion to estite the number of chances to see the truck.
Systems like these could help lorry adverts take off, says RoadAds' Petty, who predicts massive motoring campaigns such as drink-driving will go on curtainsiders before long. Ford is already using its own trailers for the Missing Person's Helpline: a recent picture campaign concentrated on teenager Millie Dowler who was later found murdered.
Jim Mc Lay hopes messages on curtainsiders will help save his life. The managing director of Fife's Glenhire Express needs a blood-stem transplant and helped start a campaign with the Anthony Nolan Trust at this year's Truckfest. The fL000 PVC
image on a Transrent trailer includes the charity logo and the message: "Where leukaemia meets its match."
Matching donor
He has yet to find a matching donor but around roe hauliers alone have registered to give blood and the artwork has not been slashed by vandals. "These people must have some heart after all," says McLay. Allan Johnston, an area appeals manager for the charity, adds: "The trailer has done 115,000lcrn up and down the country so far and 5oo people a week are registering. This way of raising awareness is a huge step forward."