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To some people, a car is just a set of wheels. But to an increasing number of Americans - especially those pinched by high petrol prices - it's also a mobile billboard, an opportunity to rake in advertising dollars by touting the virtues of Coca-Cola or Nestle or Citibank.
Car-wrapping, as the concept is known, has been around for the past five or six years. But with petrol now selling for well north of US$3 a gallon ($1.12 a litre) in many parts of the United States, and many vehicles remaining obstinately inefficient in their fuel use, it has grown into a full-blown trend.
In cities like Los Angeles or New York, it's not uncommon now to see the latest drama serial from HBO, the cable television station responsible for The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, being advertised on people's private cars. Quite what gets advertised on which vehicles depends on the habits of the individual driver and the demographic the advertiser is trying to reach. A pioneer of car-wrapping, LA firm FreeCar Media, interviews each would-be car-wrap volunteer to discern his or her habits. A suburban "soccer mom" who ferries her children to school and sports games might be induced to advertise laundry detergent, say.
Sometimes FreeCar Media will install a special GPS tracking device on the advertiser's car. Occasionally they will supply the vehicle for the advertising campaign (a hearse for Six Feet Under, say). More often, though, they will fork over several hundred dollars a month in exchange for the bodywork-rental rights.
The client - who could be anybody from a national brand name to a local business - pays for the concept, the advertising exposure and also the car-wrapping itself, a process that used to take days but can now be completed in just a few hours, thanks to cutting-edge vinyl wrapping technology developed by 3M.
FreeCar Media says it has a database of about a million would-be car-wrap volunteers. It estimates around 150,000 vehicles across the US now carry advertising - of which it is responsible for about 7000. Some of those vehicles, of course, are city buses or commercial vehicles, both of which have long carried advertising.
FreeCar Media, though, has been instrumental in expanding the concept of niche advertising on vehicles since the company was founded in 1999.
Its managers specialise in "out of the box concepts" that have included using cement mixer trucks to advertise Coca-Cola's Full Throttle drink, putting advertisements on port-a-loos, and helping companies recruit their own clients to carry their logos. The drivers are known as "brand ambassadors".
The concept has now spread to many more companies. A job recruitment firm in Phoenix, Arizona, called Jobing.com, offers its own employees bonuses if they agree to carry the company logo on their private vehicles. One of the company's employees caught speeding had his car unwrapped before it could cause any unwelcome publicity.
Ordinary citizens who advertise a phone company, say, can find themselves bombarded by questions about rates and calling plans. "It can be a little intrusive sometimes, but that's nothing in the grand scheme of things," Manhattan resident Brian Katz told the New York Times. He earns more than US$500 a month from the ads on his Ford Expedition.
- Independent
