The Compounding Effect - Part 3 of 3

Part 3 of 3 - How Fleet Visibility Builds Market Recognition Over Time

By Jason Scott | Fleet Intelligencer

There is a point in the growth of a company when people begin saying something every business owner likes hearing:

“I see your trucks everywhere.”

That sentence means more than it may appear to.

The company probably does not literally have a truck everywhere. What has happened is that the branding has become familiar enough, and the vehicles are visible often enough, that the public has begun to perceive the company as having a strong presence in the market.

That is one of the most valuable long-term effects of a consistently branded fleet.

Most advertising has a fairly obvious beginning and end. A digital campaign runs until the budget is exhausted. A radio schedule ends when the media buy expires. A direct-mail campaign is largely finished once the mail has been delivered.

Fleet graphics behave differently.

Once the graphics are installed, the branded vehicle can continue generating exposure every time it does its normal job. Monday’s service call creates impressions. Tuesday’s delivery creates impressions. Wednesday’s drive through Bellevue creates impressions. Thursday’s trip down I-5 creates impressions. Friday’s truck parked in front of a customer’s home does the same thing.

Then the following week it starts over.

That is why the long-term value of fleet branding is not simply about the number of people who see one vehicle on one day. It is about repeated exposure over months and years.

Industry research cited by 3M has estimated that vehicle advertising can generate roughly 30,000 to 70,000 impressions per vehicle per day depending on geography and operating conditions. Those numbers become even more interesting when you stop thinking about one vehicle and start thinking about a fleet of ten, twenty or fifty vehicles operating in the same region year after year.

At that point, the fleet begins to function like a distributed advertising network.

The vehicles are on highways, in neighborhoods, at commercial sites, parked at restaurants, sitting in traffic and traveling between jobs. They are being seen by commuters, homeowners, property managers, business owners, pedestrians and other drivers.

The company is already paying for those vehicles to be there.

Branding simply gives those miles another purpose.

Where I think the effect becomes especially important is familiarity.

People often do not remember every advertisement they have seen, and they certainly do not remember every commercial vehicle they pass. What they do remember is the feeling that they have seen a company before.

A homeowner may see a roofing truck several times over the course of a year. They have no immediate need for a roofer, so they do not think much about it. Then a winter storm causes damage and they begin searching for someone to call.

If that roofing company appears in the search results, the name may already feel familiar.

That does not guarantee the sale, of course.

But familiarity can influence trust, and trust can influence which company gets considered.

This is one of the reasons fleet advertising is particularly well suited to local and regional service businesses.

A Puget Sound HVAC company does not necessarily need brand recognition in Florida or Texas. It needs recognition in the communities where its technicians are already working. A plumbing company needs people in its service territory to recognize the name. A restoration company needs visibility in the area where it responds to losses. A security company needs recognition among the businesses and property owners it serves.

Fleet branding naturally concentrates exposure in those same areas.

That is an advantage many forms of advertising have to work much harder to achieve.

Consistency across the fleet makes the effect substantially stronger.

If one truck has the current branding, another has an older logo and a third looks completely different, some of the cumulative value gets lost. The public has to mentally connect those vehicles.

A well-managed fleet removes that problem.

The colors are consistent. The logo is consistent. The typography and visual personality feel related. The layout may change because a box truck and a cargo van are completely different shapes, but the brand remains unmistakable.

The vehicles reinforce one another.

That is what creates the compounding effect.

Fleet graphics can also reinforce other forms of marketing.

A customer may first encounter the company on a truck, then see a social media advertisement, then notice the name on a sponsored post, then finally search for the service several months later. At that point, the company is no longer completely unfamiliar.

3M has cited research suggesting that out-of-home advertising can improve the performance of other media, including search. I think the underlying reason is fairly intuitive: the more often people encounter a brand in the real world, the more likely they are to recognize it when they see it somewhere else.

That is why I do not think fleet advertising should be evaluated in isolation.

It is part of the larger brand ecosystem.

Over time, a consistently branded fleet can even become part of the visual landscape of a market. People see the company working. They see trucks arriving at homes and businesses. They see crews in the community. They begin to associate the brand with real activity.

That physical presence can communicate something that digital advertising sometimes struggles to communicate on its own:

This company actually operates here.

For a regional service business, that can be very valuable.

It is also why I think fleet branding should be measured in years, not weeks.

Imagine fifteen consistently branded vehicles operating throughout the same market for three years. Think about the number of times residents, business owners, property managers and contractors may encounter them during that period.

The real value is not always one dramatic advertising moment.

It is the accumulation of ordinary ones.

There is one additional part of this discussion that is particularly relevant here in the Pacific Northwest.

A significant portion of our fall and winter operating day happens after dark.

The vehicles do not suddenly stop working because the sun goes down. Service companies are still making calls. Delivery vehicles are still on the road. Security fleets are often just beginning their busiest hours. Traffic remains heavy.

The problem is that conventional graphics become much less visible.

That opens up another opportunity.

Reflective materials can be integrated into commercial fleet graphics so selected portions of the design become much more visible when illuminated by headlights. The entire wrap does not have to be reflective. Sometimes a logo, stripe, pattern, website or other brand element is enough to create a second visual experience after dark.

At WrapJax and FLEETWRAPS.ai, we refer to that approach as Vizilight.

3M has cited research indicating that reflective fleet graphics can generate up to 40 percent more impressions than traditional graphics in certain applications, which makes the idea particularly interesting in a region where winter daylight is limited.

We will cover that subject separately because it deserves more than a few paragraphs.

For now, the larger point is this: a fleet should not be thought of simply as a collection of vehicles with logos on them.

A well-managed fleet is part of the physical infrastructure of the brand.

The vehicles are already going to work.

The branding should be working with them.

And when that happens consistently, over enough time and across enough vehicles, the effect begins to compound.

That is when people start saying:

“I see your trucks everywhere.”

And that is usually a very good sign.