Dolling up a vehicle

Wrapping a car or bus entirely with the creative is gaining traction, and is cost effective too.

Have you seen a car which is fully wrapped in Levis jeans’ graphics? Or, Volvo buses that have the entire Idea or Flipkart advertisement printed all over them? A new trend – fleet advertising – is fast gaining acceptance among marketers.

First, there were stationary billboards. Then, came mobile ones, in which a billboard was mounted on a truck and driven around the city. Now, vehicles – cars, taxis, buses or trains – are being wrapped partially or entirely with brands’ creatives.

These are different from bus banners as the creative is designed keeping in mind the size and shape of the car and not just mounted on it. Though small, at present, industry players say that it is a growing market. Of the total Rs 3,500 crore market size of out-of-home (OOH) advertising, vehicle wraps, more commonly referred to as fleet graphics amount to a measly Rs 50 - 100 crore.

Puneet Chadha of HP, director - graphic solutions, that looks after the signage business (providing printing support for billboards and fleet graphics) corroborates this by comparing the contribution of either medium to HP’s business in India vis-a-vis internationally. “Seventy five per cent of our business in India still comes from billboards, whereas in developed countries only 10 - 15 per cent business usually comes from this space and the rest is through fleet graphics,” says Chadha.

This could be because internationally the presence of commercial vehicle fleets, the primary medium used for vehicle wraps, plying across long distances is quite large and the condition of the vehicles is also better. The OOH space itself being in a nascent stage is another reason for vehicle wraps not picking up feels Aravind Rao, co-founder, ADing Value, an OOH media firm. “Companies set aside hardly 5 - 10 per cent of their total advertising spends for OOH,” says Rao.

Vehicle wraps score over billboards or bus shelters as they can help brands connect with their concerned demographic and target audience, if used effectively. For instance, one of ADing Value’s clients, Flipkart did full wraps on Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation’s Volvo buses. They wanted to reach out to the information technology (IT) professionals in the city and hence chose bus routes that moved between the city centre and IT parks in the city.

Apart from the commercial fleets, several car advertising companies like Cashurdrive, Carpaisa and Adometre have private car owners signing up their cars for vehicle wraps by brands. Car owners get paid as per their daily car run. And brands pick cars based on the routes / areas they cover - a win-win situation for both. Here, demographic information is important as brand managers link the target audience age group with that of the driver.

Vehicle wraps also score on cost effectiveness. So one may have to shell out around Rs 2 lakh for a complete bus wrap for a month. The costing can be negotiated based on the number of vehicles chosen or the period for which the campaign is running. The longer the period, lesser would be the cost. Comparatively, one billboard in a prime locality would cost around Rs 1 - 1.5 lakh for the same period. Though cheaper, here your visibility will be restricted.

Not all brand managers are so enthusiastic about this medium though. Levis using the vehicle wrap was more of a one-off activity say advertising sources. “The graphics are not maintained very well by vehicle owners. The display space is also quite limited and can’t tell the brand’s story entirely,” says the marketing manager of the apparel brand. This is why vehicle wraps are used only to grab eyeballs and push the brand’s recall value; not as a serious brand building initiative.