{"id":12163278,"date":"2007-08-28T13:29:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-28T13:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/2007\/08\/28\/Ads-to-go-US-drivers-ease-fuel-costs-with-car-wraps-Independent-Online-E\/"},"modified":"2007-11-25T23:56:36","modified_gmt":"2007-11-25T23:56:36","slug":"Ads-to-go-US-drivers-ease-fuel-costs-with-car-wraps-Independent-Online-E","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/?p=12163278","title":{"rendered":"Ads to go: US drivers ease fuel costs with car-wraps &#8211; Independent Online E"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='sustuff'>Stumbleupon <a href='http:\/\/bunty.stumbleupon.com\/review\/12163278\/'>Review<\/a> of :<br \/>\n\t<a href='http:\/\/news.independent.co.uk\/world\/americas\/article2901024.ece'>http:\/\/news.independent.co.uk\/world\/americas\/article2901024.ece<\/a><a href='http:\/\/www.stumbleupon.com\/url\/news.independent.co.uk\/world\/americas\/article2901024.ece'><img src='http:\/\/bunty.tv\/images\/smallstumble.png'><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img src=\"http:\/\/img505.imageshack.us\/img505\/1722\/0000139vj3.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<ul style=\"width : 500px; margin : 20px auto; color : mistyrose;\">\nTo some people a car is just a set of wheels, but to an increasing number of Americans &#8211; especially those pinched by high petrol prices &#8211; it&#8217;s also a mobile billboard, an opportunity to rake in advertising dollars by touting the virtues of Coca-Cola, Nestl\u00e9 or Citibank.<\/p>\n<p>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 $3 (\u00a31.50)a gallon 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.<\/p>\n<p>In cities like Los Angeles or New York, it&#8217;s not uncommon now to see the latest drama serial from HBO, the prestigious cable television station responsible for The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, being advertised on people&#8217;s private cars. Quite what gets advertised on which vehicles depends on the habit of the individual driver and the demographic the advertiser is trying to reach.<\/p>\n<p>The leading pioneer of car-wrapping, an LA-based firm called FreeCar Media, interviews each would-be car-wrap volunteer. A suburban &#8220;soccer mom&#8221; who ferries her children to school and sports games might be induced to advertise laundry detergent, say.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes FreeCar Media will install a GPS tracking device on the advertiser&#8217;s car. Occasionally it will supply the vehicle for the advertising campaign (a hearse for Six Feet Under, say). More often it will fork out several hundred dollars a month in exchange for the bodywork-rental rights.<\/p>\n<p>The client &#8211; who could be anybody from a national brand name to a local business &#8211; pays for the concept, the advertising exposure and the car-wrapping itself.<\/p>\n<p>FreeCar Media says it has a database of about a million would-be car-wrap volunteers. It estimates around 150,000 vehicles across the United States now carry advertising &#8211; of which it is responsible for about 7,000.<\/p>\n<p>Some of those vehicles, of course, are city buses or commercial vehicles, both of which have been carrying advertising for more than a decade. FreeCar Media, though, has been instrumental in expanding the concept of niche advertising on vehicles since it was founded in 1999.<\/p>\n<p>Its managers specialise in &#8220;out of the box concepts&#8221; that have included, down the years, using cement mixer trucks to advertise Coca-Cola&#8217;s Full Throttle drink, putting advertisements on port-a-potties, and helping companies recruit their own clients to carry their logos. The drivers are known as &#8220;brand ambassadors&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>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. The company has a strict policy of good driving behaviour. One employee caught speeding had his car unwrapped before it could cause any unwelcome publicity.<\/p>\n<p>Drew Livingston, the head of FreeCar Media, predicted this would be the wave of the future. &#8220;Employees want to make more money,&#8221; he told an advertising trade paper.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"seagreen\">Sweet festering baby jeebus: &#8220;brand ambassadors&#8221;?!  Dignity whores, more like.  It&#8217;s one thing to embrace the emasculation of your individuality and your intellectual slavery; it&#8217;s entirely another to be <i>garish<\/i> about it.  Ick.<\/font><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stumbleupon Review of : http:\/\/news.independent.co.uk\/world\/americas\/article2901024.ece To some people a car is just a set of wheels, but to an increasing number of Americans &#8211; especially those pinched by high petrol prices &#8211; it&#8217;s also a mobile billboard, an opportunity to &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/?p=12163278\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":""},"categories":[10991],"tags":[448],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12163278"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12163278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12163278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12163278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12163278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12163278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}