Vehicle branding continues to be an increasingly effective method for a business to create a brand identity through its fleet of bikes, cars, vans, buses and trucks. There is a range of key factors to consider to ensure a business achieves the maximum branding impact on its vehicles.

What Sort Of Impact Do Vehicle Graphics Make?

Vehicle branding isn’t a new practice, and has existed in one form or another for over a century. It’s practical, effective and simply common sense for a company to double the use of their vehicles as moving advertisements for their business. The innovative nature of modern wraps and graphics has ensured that vehicle branding is not just beneficial but, for many brands, the benefits are vital.

A white paper shared by the ATA (American Trucking Association) Vehicle Branding: Is there Hidden Value in Your Fleet?  discovered that 75% of people developed a first impression about a company and its products from truck advertising. Furthermore, an impressive 91% of people stated that they not only noticed adverts on the side of trucks, but could also remember them days later. Most importantly, however, the survey revealed that almost a third of people would base a buying decision on the impression they got from vehicle advertisements.

Standing Out

As in so many aspects of branding and advertising: less is more. Too often have vehicles been seen with their flanks covered in every last detail about a business, and, as the look a consumer gets at vehicle graphics can often be fleeting, a short, effective and memorable design needs to be utilized. By relying too heavily on text, potential customers will not be able to focus on the one thing that makes a brand stand out.

Be it an effective use of striking and engaging colour, an innovative use of powerful imagery, or a memorable slogan that includes important information further than the brand name, such as contact information or website, making the right choice is about defining the identity of a brand. With this in mind, it is hugely important for organisations to maintain a level of consistency across its entire fleet.

Consistent Identity

Advertising on vehicle graphics is no different in principle to any other form of advertising. Once a strong brand identity has been determined, it must remain consistent and reliable to the consumer. Often the excitement of vehicular advertising leads companies to design each vehicle in a striking and visually stunning way, but with a complete lack of consistency across their fleet. If no two vehicles are the same in their use of graphics, or color scheme, then consumers will not consistently identify the brand.

This doesn’t mean that each vehicle has to have identical graphics, although Eddie Stobart trucks became hugely popular in doing so, but can use a variety of graphics, as long as the brand identity remains present and consistent.

An example of this came with Sky’s use of different television programmes in their vehicle graphics, with some vans having Bart Simpson smiling from their side, and others having a grim looking Tony Soprano. The two images are wildly different, but remain consistent in promoting the brand of Sky. Exactly duplicating the visual representation of your company doesn’t always work, so innovation, creativity and a look at what has worked consistently in the past is the only way to ensure an organization makes the most from its vehicle advertising.

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