Fleet Graphics
The Ultimate Sales Vehicle
Fleet graphics are dynamic. They advertise on city streets and rural highways. People see them at the grocery store or at the gym. Even parked on the street by the salon, they demand attention.
“They work—there’s no question about it,” says Gary Margol of Grip Marketing Group in Atlanta. “Auto wraps are some of the biggest bangs for the buck that you can possibly get. Dollar for dollar, fleet graphics deliver the most-effective cost per gross impression compared to any other form of advertising. You can pay as low as 18 cents per thousand impressions— and there’s no other form of advertising that even comes close.”
“Make sure the company name is very prominent and easy to read,” says Brad Salley, president of Supertan, Inc. in Lubbock, Texas. "The biggest mistake most people make is either going too small with the name or getting too graphical or artsy so the message loses the split-second appeal that creates that rubberneck effect from other drivers. You don’t want them passing you at 50 mph and wondering what that car said.”
Most wraps run between $2,000 and $5,000 for the entire vehicle. Some salon owners choose to cut costs by wrapping only certain parts of the vehicle, such as the driver-side and passenger-side doors, or leaving the roof unwrapped.
However, “if you’re in a city with mid-rise or high-rise buildings of any kind, you want to wrap the roof, because people looking out the window are going to see the roof of the car,” Margol says. “Plus, they’ll see it when you go through an underpass or by hills.”
Also, a number of manufacturers offer co-op money to help salon owners offset the costs of vehicle wraps.
The Basic Elements
In the early days of fleet graphics, vehicles were custom-painted. They couldn’t be sent through the car wash, and changing or removing the advertisement meant the inconvenience and expense of a new paint job. Also, in the event of damage to the vehicle, the artist had to be called back to repaint any panels that were replaced to match the rest of wrap. Even then, it never looked quite right due to fading of the original graphic.
All that changed with the advent of vinyl. Now, the wrapping process involves three steps: design, printing and installation.
First, a template is created for each panel of each vehicle that can be wrapped. (Even certain windows can be wrapped with special film—but plastic panels can’t be wrapped.) Fleet-graphics companies purchase the templates for each model and design the graphics on computers.
When it comes to design, salon owners must understand that these are not four-color fliers—they’re full-size vehicles that may have 200 to 500 square feet of canvas for graphics. And since the images must be of the highest resolution—1,200 dpi versus 72 dpi used for most Web-site images—they cause even the most powerful computers to work at a snail’s pace. This turns fleet-graphics design into a time-consuming project.
For these reasons, Margol recommends against shopping for the lowest bidder. Any company charging significantly less than about $1,000 for the design aspect doesn’t understand the costs involved and may indicate the company can’t deliver quality results or won’t be around very long.
Once the fleet graphics are finished on the computer, the designs are printed on vinyl sheets to the exact specifications of the panel. Most companies that design graphics will print them as well.
While calendered vinyl is less expensive and used primarily for indoor applications, cast vinyl is more durable and designed for outdoor exposure. 3M and Avery are the two most popular manufacturers of film, Margol says.
It really doesn’t matter whether the vinyl color matches the car’s color, because the color of the vinyl becomes the new color of the car.
“Any of the negative-space areas—an area without an image, a photo or words, in short what just appears to be the solid color of the vehicle—is not the color of the vehicle,” he says. “It’s the color of the vinyl, and it can be any color you choose. You could have a red vehicle, and after you’ve wrapped it, it could look black.”
Printed vinyl sheets are shipped to a local installation company that places the vinyl graphics on each panel. An experienced professional is crucial at this step. A rep from the design company may be present for the install to make sure the job is finished satisfactorily.
A quality installer will have experience wrapping shapely vehicles such as pickups, cars and SUVs, and will know to maintain a line from the front bumper to the rear in order to keep the vinyl straight on the vehicle.
“This is a 3-D project where one of the panels has to match another panel,” Margol says. “Across the hood, you’ve got a right quarter panel, the hood, bumper and left quarter panel. That may all be one scene—could be a beach scene. You’ve got to transition the artwork from the hood into the quarter panels on either side. The design has to be set up that way, and it’s got to be printed that way so it can end up seamlessly as one scene that covers all of those panels.”
Get Moving
The most popular vehicles to wrap are those with large panels and therefore lots of “billboard space”: Chrysler PT Cruisers, Volkswagen Beetles, Nissan Xterras, Honda CR-Vs and Hummers, as well as pickups.
“The bigger the vehicle, the better your chances are that it’s going to be seen,” Margol says.
The salon owner may choose to wrap his or her personal vehicle or lease a vehicle specifically for wrapping. Either option could have tax benefits.
“It is the easiest way to take any vehicle and turn it into something special or different,” says Salley, who has two vehicles wrapped for his salon. “You are driving the vehicle somewhere every day anyway, so why not get promotional benefits and create brand awareness for your company in the process?”
Owners also may buy an older-model car and allow the store manager to use it, or wrap an employee’s vehicle and pay him or her a stipend for the opportunity.
“You can also take a dead vehicle, wrap it and park it in the parking lot,” Margol says. “You will have to move the vehicle from time to time, lest one of your competitors or the landlord complains that it’s just a sign. As long as it will crank up and move to the other side of the lot, it’s not a problem.”
When it’s time to change the vehicle graphic, or the salon owner wishes to turn in one leased car for another, it will become necessary to take off the wrap. In a matter of minutes a professional can remove the vinyl panels, exposing the preserved paint underneath. While the vinyl endured the wear and tear of the elements, the car’s paint was protected.
Fleet graphics are rolling billboards with most of the benefits of other advertising methods with few of the drawbacks. Coupled with promotional activities, vehicle wraps graphics can have a lasting impact.
“With the right vehicle and message, they can be very, very effective,” Salley says. “The key is to get involved in your community and make the vehicle available for any event from prom night to fund-raisers or whatever you can imagine, and always keep plenty of giveaway items on board. If you have done a good job, years from now people will still remember your car.”
