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Truck media is one of the most unique and impactful forms of outdoor advertising, and PressOn are proud to print and install the liveries for In Your Space, pioneering providers of world class truck media campaigns. In Your Space offer an outstanding service that truly is the ‘gold standard’ in truck media advertising.
We spoke to In Your Space’s CEO and founder, Jonathan Bramley, about In Your Space, truck media more broadly, and what it can mean for brands…
For those who don’t know, what exactly is truck media advertising?
Truck media gives brands an opportunity to use third-party fleets of vehicles as an outdoor advertising platform; it’s an extension of other forms of vehicle advertising such as taxi liveries, but anyone can advertise on a fleet – they don’t have to have access to their own vehicles.
Truck media follows basically the same business model as bus advertising, with the same principles applying when you set up and organise a campaign.
Can you tell us a little about In Your Space? How you founded the company, what inspired you to work in this field etc?
I founded In Your Space as soon as I graduated from university in 1992. I had a small loan of £1000 from my nan, and the same from my mum, and I started the company from my bedroom in my parents’ house.
‘When I first started, I didn’t really understand the media industry at all. I didn’t know how it worked, and I didn’t know the rules – what I did see, however, was that trucks were an untapped opportunity.
I spotted that fleets could generate revenue for their fleet owners through advertising – and I also saw that there was a massive motoring network which provided a huge opportunity, with no mobile advertising capitalising on it. At the time, it was extremely hard to reach that audience.
Things started slowly, as with many small businesses, but after four years In Your Space was running pan-European campaigns for BP, Castro, and TomTom. One of the TomTom campaigns was probably our greatest achievement to date: we successfully launched it across 9 different countries in Europe – over a single weekend.
From that day things evolved rapidly and we proceeded to execute campaigns across 13 European markets and we also opened an office in Sydney.
When did you first start working with PressOn, and how did that come about?
I first started working with PressOn about 8 years ago. I was introduced to Andy through a personal recommendation, and I’d been told that PressOn were always contactable and extremely responsive, which is something that really appealed to me as production is an element of the job that is extremely important to get right.
Why have you continued to work together?
Over the last few years clients are making decisions later than they used to. This has dramatically reduced campaign leadtimes and you now need to be able to deliver at the drop of a hat. Most traditional print suppliers can’t work under such time constraints. Their timelines are just too long.
But it was never like that with PressOn. This is a very fast moving world, and PressOn understand that; they just get it, and they work in the same way we do. With Nigel, Andy and the team, a turnaround of 3-4 days from first speaking with them to installation is standard.
I once even sent some artwork to Andy that I needed urgently, and a mere 2 hours later he sent me a video he’d taken of the graphics already being printed.
We just share an ethos – In Your Space are confident and experienced in working on campaigns that are extremely time sensitive, and PressOn respond to these demands in the same way we do.
What makes truck advertising stand out from other forms of outdoor advertising? What makes it more effective than other kinds of OOH?
JB: There are 20 million weekly users of the motorway network in the UK alone. When you’re on the road -particularly if you’re driving on a motorway – your potential distraction or attention time is much higher: you aren’t using your mobile phone, and something like an outdoor advertisement will hold your attention for longer. Plus, this is effectively a captive audience.
There are terms we use in the out-of-home industry for some of these kind of audience members, such as ‘briefcase traveller’, which describe a very specific type of persona. They use the motoring network every day, they don’t usually listen to commercial radio due to the changing frequencies, and they’re traditionally very hard to reach – for this type of consumer, as well as everyone else using the road network, truck advertising really stands out as one of the best available marketing options.
Also, from an advertising perspective, it’s a very uncluttered environment. In the early days there was no legal way of advertising on the motorway network (there were trailers in farmers’ field but these weren’t strictly legal). Truck Media helped respectable brands reach this valuable audience whilst remaining within the law. Nowadays there are a lot of digital posters on the motorway network which gives advertisers more options to target the major road network users. But truck media can deliver some benefits that digital posters cannot and will never be able to – more on that later.
Has truck media always been a popular and successful form of advertising?
As with many industries, things have changed a lot in the last couple of decades. When I launched In Your Space, in the pre-digital era up until the financial crash in 2008, truck advertising was a popular form of media – we had an enviable client base including Renault, Nissan, Shell, The AA, BP, Green Flag, Mitsubishi and many other brands.
Of course the credit crunch changed the game for everyone, with ad revenues and spending dropping across the board, but in recent years there’s been a very noticeable and exciting resurgence.
This is likely down to advertisers realising that truck media is hugely cost-effective. It offers exposure for a brand 365 days a year, for a low monthly investment. What this means for medium-sized brands with slightly more restricted budgets is they can afford to run campaigns and have their media out there for an entire calendar year or more. Most brands would actually like advertising support all year round. It is financial restrictions that make that impossible using more traditional advertising format – it simply isn’t affordable. That isn’t the case with truck media. It really is affordable.
It’s this longevity of messaging for an affordable price that has led to the constant growth in truck media’s popularity. People may try and argue that brands don’t want the same message 365 days a year. This isn’t really true as the format is mobile as is the audience. As such, the campaign delivers its reach and frequency differently to more traditional forms of outdoor – there isn’t the message fatigue as people are not seeing the message all the time. The medium is always finding a new audience – research clearly supports this.
What kind of businesses can most benefit from truck media?
For ‘everyday’ brands, such as online clothes retailers, growing industries (such as e-cigarettes), online estate agencies, and financial services, truck media offers something unique. It gives them the ability to get their message out in a nationwide campaign, and for the kind of products and services people use on a regular basis, that’s a really brilliant solution.
Online retailers are currently dominating the retail environment, but they need to build their brands – traditionally, “big billboards build brands”. That’s what they’ll tell you. That, and tv advertising – all the traditional channels are great at brand building (digital is great but research shows its strength isn’t in building brands)
But truck advertising offers something that those channels can’t. By having your branding on a truck, the consumer associates your business with success. It creates the impression that the truck is full of your products, and belongs to your business.
It lets smaller brands look bigger and it makes online-only brands look tangible. It can make a new product launch look instantly successful and popular, and if you consider the advertising theory of the ‘concept of social proof’, it’s invaluable. The more something appears to be popular, the more popular it becomes.
This kind of ‘instant popularity’ can be a game changer for the right brand. I’m not exaggerating when I say no other advertising medium can offer that, to the same audience, in the same way. That’s why truck advertising is unique. No other format can deliver this benefit. If you want to look like you are popular then truck media is a highly affordable tool for doing just that.
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We’ll be publishing the second part of our interview very soon, so be sure to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, and subscribe to our blog for updates!
