Travel on our mind. We passed this groovy bus on the commute home tonight, and it spurred a thought -- there's a disconnect between some of the best outdoor ad media and where many profitable customers live. Clear Channel, for example, offers taxi media in 28 urban markets, and really cool bus wraps, and those funky signs at bus shelters ... but wait. Do some of your affluent customers live in the suburbs?
Out of home media is missing a story here. More than 90 percent of U.S. travel occurs on highways, there are 3.9 million miles of highways far from urban centers, and 75 percent of all domestic goods are shipped by road. That's a lot of big trucks rolling around consumers.
Put 2 and 2 together, and you'll see a media market potential: Rolling billboards on 18 wheelers. Would take some careful logistics to build impressions, but imagine buying the media on 100 huge trucks 3M-wrapped with your outdoor promotion, rolling through rush hour traffic in routes that coincide with your market footprint, reaching business men and women as they drive into or out of the 'burbs each day. Consumers might like looking at something other than grit on the back of those trucks. An innovative impression might break through. Cities and states might find new revenue streams to fix all those potholes and ailing bridges.
Sound loco? We know of companies that get 1 out of 7 of their leads off truck logos, and those are typically one-off impressions. That's the problem with current truck ads -- usually it's a single blip, promoting the product within. If someone could buy into a network of trucks, all rolling over high-traffic routes in a target geo, the reach and frequency would ... accelerate.
With that, tomorrow we're hitting the road.
