Vehicle Wrap - An Investment With Clear ROI or Just a Write Off?

How do you increase the ROI on a vehicle wrap? As in the design of any other communication, using sensible marketing basics can make a car wrap more effective with no additional expenditures. How can that be? Read on.

The motivated owner of a national insurance franchise, we'll call him Steve, agreed to purchase a vehicle wrap from one of his customers. The decision made sense for several reasons. First, Steve markets heavily in the local area, including attending many networking events. Having a wrap could increase awareness and build his brand with that audience. Second, the vehicle wrap vendor was the source of several profitable leads to Steve, helping justify the purchase.

For the design of the wrap, the vendor talked to Steve, found a design that Steve liked, and proceeded to put in several hours finalizing the design of the wrap. As happens too often, the design was created based on the best guess of the designer and the preferences of the business owner. No real thought was given to the best messaging for the target market, and no input was solicited from them.

Steve ran the design by me to see what I thought of it.

My first question was, who is the target audience? Does it include a relatively conservative baby boomer like me, or are you targeting a 20-28 year old Gen Y audience with a penchant for high risk?

When it became clear that I wasn't the target audience, I suggested that Steve show the design to some of his best customers in his target to get input. Not only would he get valuable insight into the effectiveness of the design, it is safe to assume that Steve’s customers would appreciate being asked for their opinion, further build up their relationship with Steve.

Steve was initially concerned that if he showed it to others, he might have to change it, racking up a few additional hours of design time. Yet by neglecting the input of the target audience, Steve was risking wasting his whole investment, or worse. It is possible that the image of the wrap would go counter to the desired brand he wanted to convey, alienating customers and prospects instead of attracting them.

So will Steve now invest in a few more hours of design time to insure that the wrap resonates with his target? Or will he scrimp and risk having his vehicle wrap be an expensive paint job and a tax write-off?

Stay tuned.