Businesses use vehicles as advertising billboards
Drive around town these days and you’re likely to get an eyeful of mobile messages.
Recently sighted at Brighton Collision, near 12 Corners, was a pickup covered with a photo of a life-size man installing a replacement windshield.
Across the street, a brilliantly colored Scion let passers-by know that Pontillo’s Pizzeria’s new neighbor is an ink and toner delivery service.
A van decorated with a 5-foot-tall bouquet of flowers made out of fruit was parked at the Monroe Avenue curb near Clover Street.
And shoppers couldn’t enter the Pittsford Wegmans parking lot without seeing the riot of giant flowers splashed all over a van hawking Wegmans’ new floral delivery service. A growing number of businesses are turning their cars and vans into eye-catching mobile advertising media, and parking them in strategic locations to use them as stationary signs.
Gaining popularity
At a cost of $2,400 to $3,500 for a “wrap,” many businesses are finding that using these mobile billboards are more economical and permanent than renting a traditional billboard, said Guy Laesser, owner of Unitech Applications in LeRoy, Genesee County. His company installs these vinyl wraps on cars, trucks, buses, tractor-trailers, trains, buildings and even football stadiums. While he and his staff have covered Rochester’s buses and splashed giant murals of writers on the walls of Barnes & Noble stores, he says the Rochester area is lagging behind Buffalo and larger cities in the use of car wraps.
“It’s just really starting to take hold in this area,” Laesser said.
In the business of applying decals for more than 30 years and now managing wrap applications across the country and into Canada, Laesser said advances in digital graphics and the vinyl products made by companies such as 3M have made it possible to wrap attention-grabbing photos and graphics on just about anything.
“Everyone from age of 2 to 90 sees these things; it’s not centralized to any one market,” Laesser said.
And the message gets in your face a bit more than some other media, said Colleen Bogart, media director at Martino Flynn, a local ad agency.
“You can’t change the channel on it if you’re following it on the expressway,” Bogart said.
Generating buzz
Wegmans launched its wrapped van at the Pittsford store when it introduced its floral delivery service last fall.
Spokeswoman Jeanne Colleluori said the company hoped the van would help people think of Wegmans as more than just a grocery store.
“It is generating some buzz,” she said. Customers are coming to the floral department, saying, “‘I just noticed the truck outside. I didn’t know you delivered flowers.’”
Edible Arrangements moved into the area 4½ years ago, advertising its arrival with its colorful refrigerated vans. Owner Pat Lauria said it was hard to find a location in Pittsford, and she ended up in a nearly hidden space at the back of Pittsford’s Springhouse Commons.
“The landlord said, though, we could park our van out front there,” she said.
And the trick has worked.
“We’ve had hundreds of people say, ‘I saw your van. I go past it every day,’” Lauria said.
Lauria also has stores in Webster and Greece, and a fleet of four wrap-covered vans, which were required by the corporation that started the fruit flower arrangement concept.
“The payment on a van is very reasonable. It’s like $500 a month.” Lauria said.
Bogart said these businesses need company vehicles anyway, so the additional cost of having them wrapped is minimal compared to other forms of mobile advertising, such as bus wraps.
But the wrap-covered cars also allow businesses a different form of stationary signage.
An alternative
Nick Pearl, owner of the Salvatore’s Old Fashioned Pizzeria in the Rochester Sports Garden on East Henrietta Road, couldn’t put a traditional sign outside because of zoning codes. He would have to pay for special permits for banners.
“Most people don’t know where I am inside of the Sports Garden,” he said.
So following what other Salvatore’s franchisees had done with wrapped Volkswagen Beetles, Pearl decided to wrap his boxy Toyota FJ Cruiser with the company’s logo and flaming slices of pepperoni.
“I drive down the road and people are screaming, ‘Salvatore’s!’” Pearl said.
Anne Coller, owner of the Rapid Refill franchise that opened at 1822 Monroe Ave. in February, said new customers jot down the phone number or Web address when they see her wrapped Scion in traffic.
“I purposely park it out front because I use it when people are trying to find us.” Coller said.
One drawback of having a wrapped vehicle, though, is the extra attention doesn’t stop when owners use them in their off hours. Coller said her daughter, an eighth-grader, often asks her mother, “‘Can you pick me up in Dad’s car?’”
Lauria’s 14-year-old son has a similar aversion to his mother’s fruity van.
“There are times when my car is in the shop or I’m out doing delivery in the van and I’ve got to go pick him up. He says, ‘Don’t bother.’”
