When making that mundane drive to the office I often find myself pulling myself out of daydreams and struggling to deter my eyes from the tarmac in front of me. It is so refreshing when you are visually stricken by something innovative and fresh….yes, in the form of bus and lorry advertising!
You may not be too inspired by the thought of blog about buses and trucks…why do you think we gave it an intriguing title? The truth is that it can be more interesting than you think. When done properly and creatively, even the most boring of subjects becomes interesting.
Last week I was making my usual trip up the M6 and was enlightened by a hilarious outtake of a Rustlers lorry advertisement. This is a classic adaptation of the cheeky slurs you find written on dirty vehicles. The lorry read ‘my missus loves a big one’, and only when I overtook the lorry did I see this was branded for Rustlers burgers. This certainly caught my eye. The lorry had been designed in such a way that it looked defaced, though as soon as the realisation hit the design seemed amazingly brilliant!
With a decline in the power of traditional media, and the cry for businesses to do more to get noticed, this seems a natural move. Imagine the impact of the ad on such a big scale. Imagine the impact of the ad on the UK’s busiest roads. Imagine the impact of the ad on your brand image, when it looks like your business owns a vast fleet. The audience is captive, the advertising is hard to ignore. Exactly the reasons why advertising is such a popular media.
Here are some other examples of lorries and trucks taking advantage of this marketing.
This treatment applies well to buses too. Recently buses have advanced from small advertisements to full bus wraps. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Corona bus travelling through Manchester. This is a fully branded bus that promotes Corona, a light, fizzy beer, on the relevant streets of Cities around the UK. This is an effective way of getting the brand message and personality across in a fresh, fun way. Corona for example promote the beer by driving round City centres handing out giveaways and generally making people happy.
The bright yellow bus sits well in customer’s minds and helps increase recall. This aids brand awareness and works ideally in relation to other forms of media for an integrated campaign.
Bus advertising is the most seen outdoor advertising medium with 61% of people saying they had seen bus ads in the last seven days (TGI, 2005). Research also shows that people are more aware and more receptive to advertising that is on the move rather than at home. More so, highly mobile people are more likely to spend more and buy impulsively.
In a survey of 560 adults (CBS, 2003) 59% said they saw bus adverts every day, 49% saying they were impossible to ignore (rising to 61% of 18-34s), 40% of adults had looked into something they had seen advertised on a bus and 37% had tried, bought or visited something as a result of a bus ad.
It isn’t often you see something fresh on the roads, and unusually my two recent experiences sparked some thinking that I hope you appreciate me sharing with you.
Emma Dobson is a branding expert and Touch Point guru at Happy Creative, a full service marketing agency based in Blackpool, Lancashire. To learn more or contact us please go to www.happy-creative.co.uk
