"On the Road Again"

Digital Graphics
August 2002

If a pie chart or statistical graph were developed for every aspect of business, from sales at Junior's corner Kool-Aid stand to Lee Iacocca's success in the auto industry, it would surely show dips and arches.

Reports from industry insiders regarding the future of outdoor advertising have been conflicting. Specifically, truckside and mobile billboards are said to be either climbing the charts or stagnating.

It seems a defining difference in the growth of truckside advertising is whether the ad is on the side of an over-the-road rig, or an urban box truck making daily deliveries.

From supplying the prints, to selling the ad, to providing the trailer or box truck, many entities come together to make up the business.

For instance, Jack Berry, co-founder of PrintCom Inc. in Raleigh, NC, says that as a large-format print provider, his firm wants to be the turnkey solution for mobile advertising, but reports the state of the industry has given him reason to use his million-dollar printers for more profitable applications-at least for now.

On the other side of the coin, Michael Pavone of RoadShows in Camp Hill, PA, saw enough business to turn from ad agency to truckside advertising firm.

Three years ago, Pavone says that while driving, he was ogling a billboard-critiquing the ad-when he almost found himself sandwiched under a tractor trailer. It wasn't quite like getting chocolate in one's peanut butter, or peanut butter on one's chocolate, but Pavone said that was the moment he decided it was possible to combine the two industries.

He explains that more recently, however, finding advertisers for over-the-road trailers hasn't been easy. Most ad agencies and advertisers believe it's difficult to market a product on a vehicle that is traveling across country.

PrintCom's Berry says the truckside ad industry needs high profile, national accounts to embrace it and others will follow suit. Some questions also need to be worked out.

"Will it be third party? Will it be owned and operated fleets with their own branding? Will it be retail merchandisers co-opping with their various product manufacturers? Or will it be a mix of all those things?"

So far, Berry reports that PrintCom has had more success selling a manufacturer an ad campaign to brand its own fleet of trucks than with third-party advertising.

Selling third party-putting an ad for AT&T on a Yellow Freight truck, for example-is a relatively new idea according to Berry, and "a new idea usually takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears," he says.

The problem with over the road (OTR) truckside advertising, reports David Ludington of TransMedia Group (TMG) in Chicago, is that OTR trucks are typically not market- or route-specific.

"In the top-five media markets like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A. and Boston, you can achieve geographic target accuracy or reach down to a Zip code or two which is unprecedented in mobile or non place-based advertising,"he says.

This means that the truck, usually a box truck, travels from delivery to delivery through a heavily populated urban area on a regular route schedule.

Ludington reports that TMG is seeing increased demand from ad agencies and advertisers alike over this time last year, but targeting the market is key for each advertiser. "There is a place for OTR ads in certain markets, but we feel we can generate a higher degree of target accuracy than any other non-billboard media," he says.

Consider the large advertisement on the side of a tractor-trailer as it travels across the country at 55 miles an hour. Ludington points out that 80 percent of the travelers that see it are driving in the opposite direction. "Multiply that speed by two," he says and it's a matter of a split-second in which the driver may see the message.

MobileAd Group's Sam Kaplan agrees. A brokerage firm in New York, MobileAd prefers to supply inner-city trucks with advertising rather than to any long-haul truck.

"It's a big country," he says, "and when you load up a truck in Kansas City to take beef from Chicago to Las Vegas, about the only thing that truck is going to pass are billboards that say, World's Largest Prairie Dog: 10 Miles!"

Kaplan and Ludington agree that route-specific delivery vans that are toting ads for Starbucks Coffee, for instance, are giving the illusion that Starbucks owns its own fleet of trucks, which Ludington refers to as a virtual fleet.

George Gearner, CEO of Fleet Advertising Media Group (FAMG), and chairman of the Transportation Advertising Council of America (TACA) explains that getting involved in the business of truckside advertising requires a degree of patience, a few already-established clients, and enough capital to hold the company steady until it begins to see a profit.

A number of businesses, he says, have "gone to the boards in one fashion or another. They weren't prepared to subsidize themselves for a period of time. Many operated at a loss until they had to quit the business."

FAMG has been in business for eight years and it took some time, he says, for them to become profitable. Part of the investment in truckside ads is the membership fees of certain auditing bureaus and lobbying organizations that assist outdoor advertisers, which according to Gearner, can cost thousands. The result is that "Companies can go almost $30,000 in debt before they even open their doors," Gearner says.

It's not a requirement to join such organizations, but Gearner says it's impossible to give audit information to clients without being a member. "You'd have to tell your client, 'We think you did well' which doesn't sell too well."

Still, some clients don't feel it's necessary to be a member because they're comfortable with where their truckside ads are traveling.

When an advertiser has an ad campaign on a number of trucks circulating through, say, the streets of New York City on a daily basis, he knows it's being seen by a specific target audience.

Gearner says he's got OTR trucks ready to carry a campaign, but one of the difficult problems for the industry is that advertisers, agencies and clients already have a market in mind, and in some cases they only want to be in part of the market.

"We have a program running in Manhattan now, and this particular advertiser isn't interested in being seen in any other borough," he says.

At the OAAA, Chief Marketing Officer Steven Freitas says there has been a significant drop in all advertising since 9/11, not just in mobile advertising.

But he quickly adds that 2000 was an incredible year - what he referred to as "false prosperity." It was a difficult year to trend because everything was going well.

"Removing 2000 from the equation, 1998 and '99 were more comparable with profits in 2001," Freitas says. A major reason behind the success of truckside advertising in 2000, he says, was due to the high influx of dot-com companies.

New outdoor companies were developed, and truckside advertising was used to get the word out for every new dot-com that came along. And almost as fast as they sprung up, the dot-coms died, and so did their advertising campaigns.

This year, however, things are picking up in the third and fourth quarter, Freitas reports. Truckside advertising is considered cutting edge and everyone is looking for something new and different.