A semi-trailer and the wide open road add up to a powerful strategy for advertising your company and brand to millions of motorists.
The considerable available square footage on both sides of a 50-foot trailer offers powerful potential to reach out to an ever-changing market. Every mile your trailer travels down the road with blank sides, on the other hand, is a missed marketing opportunity.
Your Message In Motion
Advertising on a billboard is stationary in more ways than one: the number of impressions generated will never exceed the traffic volume in that single, static location. In addition, the impact of the ad declines over time as the billboard basically fades into the landscape for daily drivers who travel the same route over and over. Trailer advertising, conversely, takes your message anywhere and everywhere your truck goes, constantly reaching new eyeballs. The Outdoor Advertising Association estimates that individual vehicle ads create up to 70,000 discrete impressions during an average workday on the road. Statistics for impressions generated by big-rigs running coast to coast exceed seven figures per month. Yet, the cost-per-impression of a semi-trailer ad can be as little as one-fourth the expense of renting space on a freeway billboard.
Filling In The Blank on Hard-side Trailers
The oldest form of truck advertising is simply the hand-painted trailer. It’s a time-consuming, expensive process and whatever design theme you choose can’t be changed without incurring those costs all over again. Paint eventually fades and degrades, showing road wear and tear as the miles mount and scratches and chips take their toll. While it can be touched-up at intervals, any substantial alterations to the ad or a new theme generally require re-painting the entire trailer.
Wrapping A Trailer
Pressure-sensitive, stick-on vinyl “wraps” are available in format sized for vehicles. Wraps can create bold, eye-catching advertising. However, they are most often seen on cars and smaller delivery vans with slick, smooth surfaces ideal for application and bonding the vinyl. The sides of many 50-foot box vans, conversely, may be ribbed and studded with rivet heads. This corrugated surface doesn’t provide a good base for the application or longevity of a wrap without special surface preparation. Those same techniques, however, also complicate removal of the wrap in the future.
Permanent Mounts
Framed banners present another option for applying ads to the large surface of a van trailer box. The system requires permanent installation of a metal frame around the perimeter of the trailer wall. This is usually bolted or glued in place to serve as a mounting frame that secures a vinyl banner to the outside of the trailer, rather than actually adhering it to the skin like a wrap.
Curtainside Creativity
A curtainside trailer presents the perfect palette for a rolling billboard. The retractable curtain provides over 450 square feet of space on each side that can be utilized for elevating public awareness of your company brand, and/or for advertising specific products and services. PVC-coated, polyester curtains are printed on large-format high-resolution printers for picture-perfect display of your custom design, provided on a standard computer graphics file. UV protectants and anti-graffiti coatings are applied to the curtain material to preserve color fidelity and printing sharpness during years of heavy daily use. Spot repairs, when necessary, are DIY-friendly. When its time for a new advertising approach, soft-side curtains are quickly replaceable without a complicated removal process and may be readily re-used later, alternating advertisements to meet your needs.
To read about additional benefits of curtainsides, take a look at our white paper:
