We’ve all seen them – vehicles wrapped in eye-catching graphics, with a great slogan. Maybe they’ve been in front of you in a traffic jam, or parked outside the supermarket. Perhaps you’ve seen one as you drop the kids off at school, or maybe there’s one parked in your road.
Car wrap advertising is on the rise, and no wonder. With costs per impression as low as 30p per thousand impressions, it’s a cost-effective form of advertising with enormous reach – far more than a static billboard. Yet vinyl wrapped vehicles are still regarded as an unusual form of advertising – and that makes them your secret weapon.
Eye-catching and attention-grabbing
In a stream of vehicles, you can’t help noticing the one with the car wrap – and that’s the point. Car graphics, when executed well, make your car stand out from all the other traffic on the road, and your brand becomes associated with that cool and creative vehicle. Who doesn’t want their brand to be associated with a form of advertising perceived as creative and innovative?
Better yet, wherever your vehicles are, they’re creating impressions without you having to do anything at all. That kind of passive advertising works because you’re not pushing your message at the audience, but allowing them to discover it for themselves. Your potential customers may not pay attention to your standard vehicle, but wrap it in a well designed car wrap graphic and their eyes will naturally gravitate towards it. By being in your face without being ‘in your face’, you won’t breed any negativity towards your brand.
Advertising by stealth
It’s this stealth advertising that makes car vinyl wrapping such a cost effective and adaptable way to get your message out there. According to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), a vinyl wrapped car can generate between 30,000 and 70,000 impressions daily on the US roads, and in the UK, a vinyl wrap on a long-haul vehicle can generate 10 million impressions a year. It’s that impressive reach that makes vinyl wrap advertising so cost-effective.
Wrapping your vehicle in a well-designed vinyl wrap will help it stand out from the general visual noise, to create a real impact without you having to do hours of painstaking market research. This is a form of advertising that attracts interest across the demographic spectrum, penetrating markets from millennials to baby boomers. Advertising research has shown that that level of penetration is directly linked to an uptick in sales.
Agile marketing
Agile has been a buzzword for a while now, and agile marketing is designed to be nimble and responsive to market conditions and customer feedback. Agile marketing is experimental and it’s about knowing how to fail smart – and that’s where vinyl wrap is your friend.
An agile marketing plan is about running a series of low cost campaigns and seeing what works, and using the small scale failures as a unique learning opportunity. The great thing about car wrap advertising is that your campaigns can be totally flexible – start with the standard CTA then customise the message and the graphics to suit different campaigns. If you fail, it’s easy to craft another message, and if you want to be responsive to seasonal events you can add snowflakes or a jack o’ lantern.
Because vinyl wraps can be full or partial, and combined with cut letters and vinyl graphics they give you unparalleled freedom to try different combinations and see what works best for you. It’s the ultimate low cost way to experiment and fail smart, or to create a campaign that can be taken from temporary to permanent without a huge extra outlay. However you choose to organise your vehicle wrapping, it’s there until you decide to remove it.
Unexpected bonus
Using car graphics in Bognor Regis, or across the south coast, may be a brilliant way to get your message across, but it’s also an excellent way to protect your investment in company vehicles. Whether you have one company car or a fleet of vans, by wrapping them in vinyl that is car wash resistant and UV repellent, you’ll be protecting the original bodywork from deterioration caused by sunlight and wear and tear.
Vinyl wrap was first used in Germany in the 1990s, when it was used to convert domestic cars into standard beige taxis. After-service vehicles were usually sold at a heavily discounted price or had to be completely resprayed to make them marketable, but the Germans soon discovered that the vinyl wrap protected the bodywork, making reconversion both straightforward and profitable. The beauty of vinyl wrap is that, alongside all its other advertising benefits, it will protect your car bodywork for the amount of time it remains in place. That can make a difference when you come to sell on or upgrade your fleet.
Ask the experts
If you’re interested in boosting your advertising with the power and stealth of car vinyl wrapping, then you need a company that can take your ideas from conception through to design and installation. Only a company with the expertise to offer truly integrated services will fully unlock the potential of car wrap graphics for your vehicles. At the Sussex Sign Company, we have the expertise and the skill to turn your vehicles into mobile billboards that create hundreds of thousands of impressions, without you having to lift a finger. Contact us today via phone or email and our design, manufacture and installation teams will be happy to help you exploit the power of vinyl wrap for your next campaign.