You know, when you sit at home and the phone don't ring, ya gotta get off ya ass and hit the pavement. I have had great success this week alone and went to a home buyers show and hitup all the contractors that were there. Much success!
I have also landed a nice gig with a new start up bus company. They will be running local routes etc. I am doing 5 buses for them and they are also buying 5 more to go over the road in the near future. They are letting me have all the ad work that goes on the buses as well. (design, customer relations, application, etc). I will be thier art dept. I am also doing a small sign for them too.
I've seen some of the info they have on what other bus lines charge as far as ad rates etc, and the production costs to actually put the ad on.
I am doing some research on the types of media to use to actually produce these ads for the exterior as well as the interior ad that are just mini backlit signs so to speak.
The inside ads could be printed on paper I would imagine, but the outside would be digital. But these aren't going to be on the bus for long periods of time,and digital can be REAL expensive so I'm trying to find the most economical route to go about this to keep my profit up, while not turning away potential ad buyers with outrageous production costs. Don't get me wrong, the production costs listed on one website is 10 to 12k to wrap a entire bus. I really dont see this happening in our town, but they are getting hooked up with a national ad company. (that I will deal with directly)
Any advice welcomed.
-------------------- Tony Broussard Graphic Details Digital Media Loreauville, LA Posts: 395 | From: Loreauville, LA | Registered: Jul 1999
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I don't have any experience making bus ads but I have watched the local city owned bus fleet advertising program with interest for many years. Burlington has between 30 and 40 buses and their yard is just down the street from our shop. They sub the advertising sales out to a "advertising" agencey on a two to three year contract. The sucessful bidder is always the company that gives the bus system the biggest slice of the advertising revenue. I believe the winning bidder has changed every time the contract came up for the past 10 years. This system leaves little for the adverting agency and even less for the poor sod that has to make and install the images.
Different agencies have taken different approaches to selling the space and the type of panels they have produced. The current wisdom is to sell to local business and put fancy digital images on the sides and rear of the bus. Their are a few bus that still have the old standard and supersized frames on the sides. I think their are a couple with frames on the rear. The el primo space seems to be to cover the entire rear of the bus. Another popular approach is to cover about 25% of the side of the bus including having the graphic come up onto the window with that see through window film.
I find the bus advertisng very hit or miss for the advertiser and the viewer. First of all the process colour digital images are either very good or close to unreadable. Many advertisers try to put far to many words in the add and you do not get a chance to read any more than the headline as you pass the bus. I also find the ads get very dirty and thereby give a greasy image to the advertiser. Our salt laden slush in the winter time can make the rear image impossible to read. I don't think the buses/ads get washed very often (budget cutbacks at work). That beautiul suntanned vacationer in a swimsuit looks pretty anemic when covered with a rich mixture of salt spray and diesel exhaust.
Just a few things for you to think about when you adventure into the world of advertising on wheels.
-------------------- Chuck Churchill, It's A Good Sign Inc. 3245 Harvester Rd, U-12 Burlington, Ont. Phone: 905-681-8775 Fax: 905-681-8945 Posts: 633 | From: Burlington, Ontario, Canada | Registered: Nov 1998
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The most important thing I learned from dealing with bus ads?
Get the money when you deliver the product and make sure you have purchase order numbers for everything. You will be the last item in the "food chain".As soon as you establish raport with the "person in charge" 3 things will happen.
1- They will shop your product looking for some one cheaper.
2- Any mistakes inccurred will be laid at your feet (even if it was their mistake) so get eveything in writing.
3- Just about the time you think everything is going swell, the "person in charge" will disapear and you'll have to start all over again, presnting your program...bidding it out...negotiating and then the cycle starts all over again.
Oh then just to make things seem even more ludicrous you will pull up to the Mcdonalds drive thru one day and there will be the "person in charge" smiling that fake smile they all have and saying something like "Are you still doing those bus ads"?
Well I hope you have better luck than I had, unfortunately I was dealing with a federally funded local bus service retained by a university grant. I finally had to give it up the numbers were there but the results never materialized.Now that I look back on it, there was a really poor management staff comprised of people that spent more time traveling on busses than running them.
By the way...this was NOT meant to be a negative post,I merely wanted to point out some of the pitfalls that are potentially there.
Good luck! Let us know how it goes.
[ February 05, 2003, 10:01 AM: Message edited by: Monte Jumper ]
-------------------- "Werks fer me...it'll werk fer you"
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Thanks for the replies. The bus service is a private owned local business. I am dealing directly with the owners on everything. They are letting me handle the ad thing totally.
I need to find where to get wholesale printing for the interior and exterior. These owners havn't owned a company like this before, (the guys dad drove for Greyhound for 30 years and helping run the co.) I won't be bidding on anything. I got it. I just want to find reasonable printing services.
I will be dealing with the ad company directly as well.
-------------------- Tony Broussard Graphic Details Digital Media Loreauville, LA Posts: 395 | From: Loreauville, LA | Registered: Jul 1999
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I've handled production on numerous bus projects through an ad agency I worked for. I produced many exterior and interior signs all the way through bus wraps.
Now, I didn't print them, I bought them through my vendor sources, but I'd be glad to shed any light I can to help you out. It's really not too hard to handle.
The most important thing I found is to hook up with an A1 vendor, and definitely don't cheap out on materials. It'll really come back to bite you in spades. Busses really get hammered!
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